Recently a small dental practice in Northern New Jersey that I work with has discovered that it doesn’t rank first for the doctor’s name on Google. Instead, a listing from a large directory of doctors takes up the coveted first spot. As if that wasn’t enough, that page also contains reviews from a few patients. Although all the reviews were in fact positive, the owners were shocked and disturbed. Their first knee-jerk reaction was to try to control the comments and they complained bitterly about the loss of control over their reputation online. If this scenario sounds painfully familiar, here are a few lessons on online reputation management to keep in the back of your mind.

Lesson 1: You Cannot Control Your Reputation, Only Manage It

Businesses from big to small seem to think that they somehow have control over their reputation, or at least they used to have it before the Internet came along. The truth of the matter is, reputation has always been controlled by the customer. Thus, it is important to view the Internet as an opportunity rather than a threat. Do you think people haven’t been talking about your products and/or services before the era of online reviews? Of course, they have. Granted, the comments were more isolated then but the only real different now is that you can monitor much of that conversation. That brings us to our next point.

Lesson 2: Monitor Your Online Reputation

Use the ability to monitor the discussion around your products or services to your advantage. Meet your new best friend: Google Alerts. This free service will notify you of any updates on a selection of keywords you choose to monitor. Things you should monitor include your company name, names of the owners and key executives, names of products and/or services you offer and so on. Although there are a number of paid tools out there, for many business a free service like Google Alerts should suffice. If the features of Google Alerts are not enough, here is a good list of monitoring tools.

Lesson 3: Once A Comment Or A Review Has Been Spotted, Engage

This is a tricky part as engagement is not always the best course of action. One thing is certain, you should not engage by sending out a cease and desist letter. 99.9% of the time it will spectacularly blow up in your face. In most cases you should engage, both positive and negative comments. If there is an option to respond to a negative comment, do so. If a blogger is attacking your brand, figure out why and address the issue. A healthy dose of constructive criticism is often times a good thing. Thank for the feedback and promise to improve (not only promise but do so as soon as possible). As for the positive comments, monitor them carefully as you might be able to spot brand evangelists you didn’t know about.

Once you’ve responded, it is time to address the negative comments in the search results. Any web pages with negative comments that come up for your brand keywords will be damaging to your reputation and your bottom line. The best way to tackle these results is to make sure positive reviews and comments, as well you as your own website pages, appear above the negative comments. Consider these strategies:

• Get more links to your own website using your brand keywords or get more link juice flowing to other pages that present your business in a positive light.
• If the reviews are on a well-known, authoritative website, it might be easier to get that page ranked rather than your own.
• Bring your brand evangelists (if you have any) into the game and let them defend your brand for you. At times this works much better than engaging the negative comments directly.

Lesson 4: Be Proactive And Take Preventive Measures

As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. If you wait until a crisis hits, it’ll be too late. Take the following preventive measures to insure your online reputation is protected:

• Monitor any keywords relevant to your brand as well as any websites, message boards and social networks
• Make sure your website appears at the top of the search results for crucial keywords
• Register key domain names and social media accounts to make sure none of them get hijacked in your name
• Respond and actively promote pages with positive reviews and comments
• Optimize any promotional material published by your organization

The Internet presents challenges as well as opportunities for those looking to manage their reputation online. While total control over your brand was never possible, chasing after an individual blogger or a commenter is also a failed proposition. You need to be proactive, monitor and optimize any positive content (both internal and external) and if the worst happens, have a clear plan of action to engage the conversation and repair any damage to your reputation.

Additional Resources

• Radically Transparent – a great book by Andy Beal on the topic of reputation management in the Internet age
• Reputation Watch – an excellent online reputation management (OMR) blog by Anvil Media, a well-respected search marketing agency and a team I know well
• Social Media Strategies for Corporations – PowerPoint presentation by Jeremiah Owyang, a respected expert on social media marketing
• 34 Online Reputation Management Tools – list of ORM tools
• Online Reputation Management: 16 Free Tools – some more tools
• 200+ Resources and Tips To Help Manage Your Reputation Online – an even bigger list of tools and service to monitor your reputation. It targets personal brand but most of the same tools also work for businesses. Now there is no excuse not to monitor your online reputation!

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