How to Protect My Reputation Online: A Simple Guide
The reputation clash
A 60-year-old English businessman who spent his entire working life building his reputation as a serious and remarkable businessman woke up one morning to find himself staring at his computer screen in disbelief. A long-time customer referred you to the search results of his chain of stores as they appeared on the first page of the Google search engine. Page after page, result after result: Website visitors were discouraged from shopping at any of their stores. The chain’s customer services were described as appalling and business practices as dishonest. 35 years of rock solid reputation has been tarnished literally overnight. Lie after lie, accusation after accusation. 3,4,5 different websites, all of which seemed to have dedicated themselves to ruining their business and their reputation.
Dozens of Internet surfers appeared to have left their comments on each of the tarnished websites. The stories were highly damaging and were likely to capture offline media attention with the possibility of articles appearing in national newspapers. This was the point where the veteran businessman had suddenly realized that the world had changed and that negative comments from whoever it was could destroy a lifetime’s work almost overnight.
This very successful and somewhat old-fashioned businessman used to be in control throughout his business life. Now it seems that it was no longer. So he called his trusted attorney for the past 25 years, who admitted that this was also new territory for him. “Normal legal tools,” said the attorney, “may not work in this case.” “In fact, normal legal tools could further exacerbate the situation,” added the lawyer. “This is the unknown land,” he told his client, “We have to be careful.”
Watch your back!
A client at my Internet law firm, a small international book publisher, woke up one morning to find that he had no reputation or business left. A competitor in what is already a difficult market had been running a negative campaign about her company for a few months with the goal of putting it out of business.
This case ended up in Superior Court where, despite what the judge said, my client was left with a tarnished reputation that had, in fact, blocked any further attempts on his part to return to the same line of business.
So what does this mean for you?
On average, they say, 1 in 5 satisfied customers will speak well of you to a friend or family member, which may win you business this way. On the other hand, a dissatisfied customer will tell 5-10 people about their bad experience, which means that bad news travels much faster than good news. No matter how much effort you put into good public relations with your customers and employees, one bad experience can ruin everything. Can you do something about it? Safe! Here’s what to do: As a starting point, follow these 3 steps. They will reduce the risk of online damage to your reputation.
They are also general good business practices, so don’t delay and start implementing them now. The 3 steps you need to follow are:
Preventing
Listening
Influence
Preventing:
Learn to treasure complaints. You do not need an Internet attorney to tell you how important it is to you to respond to complaints quickly and avoid procrastination. Follow up on each complaint in order to satisfy your client’s anger and frustrations. It is a fact of life that complaints stay in the family for a very short time and if they are not resolved promptly, there is a risk that any complaint could end up being exposed to the entire world. Never get defensive. If you are wrong, just admit it and make things right.
Initially, all your dissatisfied customer wants is for you to fix things. Later on, your client’s goals may change, and revenge may become his new wish. At this point, you may have lost control over the entire situation, leaving you valuable for online attacks on your reputation.
Listening:
Read and hear what your customers say about you. Search the Internet for your business name and brand using the normal Google search engine, as well as Google Blog Search or any other free search tool that is available online. This will reveal many of the blogs and discussion groups where your company name has been mentioned. This is what your customers will see when they search for your business. Hopefully, you won’t find anything alarming, and in that case, you should continue to monitor these websites and discussion groups.
But if you come across nasty comments, it’s not the end of the world yet, and there are many things you can do to repair the damage.
Influence:
In fact, you can influence what your customers see when they search for your business online. Try to participate in online discussions and post articles and comments online using various methods, such as blogs, discussion group websites, and more. Whenever you find negative comments about your company, join the discussion by introducing yourself and trying to fix things. Don’t just stay away and hope this will just go away because it won’t. If you feel like the situation is getting a bit out of control, get the advice of an internet law expert. Internet lawyers provide constant monitoring of your reputation and the offer can provide you with good practical advice on how to come up with a strategy to combat online attacks on your reputation and how to protect your reputation online through the courts of law.
There are other companies that provide tools that aim to remove nasty web pages from the first page of Google Search, but using those companies should be your last resort because they are not cheap and in some cases they tend to require a long-term monitoring and management. .
An internet law expert can also help you manage your reputation online by using various legal tools that have been proven time and again to be extremely effective.