subject: Reputation Management And Understanding Your Bad Image [print this page] Twenty years ago, the internet in the home was nonexistent. Today, the internet has become its own metropolis, where people of all ages go to research, play games, and interact socially with their peers.
The universal accessibility of the internet has made it possible for anyone to publish anything they desire--including their negative, even if unfounded, thoughts on people and companies. Should their site gain popular appeal, it could very easily seriously damage one's reputation. That is why some people have considered, and used, reputation management.
Before hiring a company, it is important to understand how that negative comment about your company became a number one hit on a search engine to begin with.
Increasing in popularity on the internet are Web 2.0 sites. Basically, they are user-centered, interactive sites. Some of the popular ones include Youtube, for user-uploaded videos, Flickr, for user-uploaded photos, and Yelp, for user-submitted reviews. Also popular are Facebook and Twitter (social networking sites) and Wikipedia, where anyone with a computer can contribute to the definition of any word or company.
These sites tend to increase in search engine rankings because of their interactive nature. They often experience frequent activity, making them more popularly used and thus closer to the top of search engine results, which reputation management strives to remedy. Also, many of these sites have created now-popular iPhone apps, making using these sites ever easier.
So, when an employee of a company feels disgruntled, dissatisfied, or unhappy, or if a customer receives poor customer service, it is not implausible that they should air their frustrations on their Facebook page or blog.
Competing companies also sometimes plant bad reviews on Web 2.0 sites. And, as was stated before, these sites by nature receive lots of traffic and tend to rise in the Google or Bing rankings.
The search engine rankings are vital to a company that relies on the internet to generate a following. When a potential customer types the name of your company into Google, Bing, or Yahoo, a list of websites with those key words will appear, with the most popular sites at the top of the list. If the most popular site gives a negative view of your company, it might scare away previously interested customers.
So you as a company might have worked twenty years to establish a reputation, and because of one vengeful employee or customer, your internet-based image could be seriously damaged.
Sometimes, you can attempt to contact websites to remove material that is untrue, unfounded, and damaging to a company's reputation. However, users on Web 2.0 sites are difficult to contact.
This problem, if found unmanageable, may lead a one to seek out a reputation management company to remedy the problem.
