Posts Tagged ‘Reputation’

Social media is providing a fantastic return on investment for countless businesses, organizations and individuals.  With a steady and controlled campaign to build up a brand and a positive reputation, no matter what your budget, the result is an online presence that is priceless.  But what happens when something goes wrong or some group attacks your brand or reputation (right or wrong, truth or lie) in the public networks?  Like acid, just a little bit of strong negativity can quickly disintegrate a well built foundation.

Fortunately, there is someplace to turn and it doesn’t always have to involve your attorney. To the rescue is Reputation.com.  As a business with an online presence, here’s what you should know about their main product, Reputation Defender. As they put it,

You need this if you:

o    Are being attacked or smeared online

o    Have been wrongly accused online

o    Have negative reviews online

o    Get mistaken for someone else online

o    Are dogged by outdated info online

The service provides a two-pronged approach to both delete the negative content where possible, and primarily to build up the positive content so that it rises to the top of the search engines and pushes the bad content below page 1.

What struck me about their service is that it is less like radical surgery to remove a fast-growing virus and more like reconstructive surgery where they fix the problem by restoring you to your previous self.  It also seems to reflect a basic social media strategy in that it focuses heavily on reiterating your positive attributes  to build (or in their case, rebuild) good reputations.

Reputation.com’s resource center is chock full of great articles and references on security, privacy, search engine optimization,  and many other interesting perspectives for those of us engaged in social media and for parents. For example there are resources regarding protections for children from cyber bullying and tips for reputation development for new college grads.

I’m particularly impressed with, fittingly, with Reputation.com’s reputation. If you haven’t already heard their radio ads, their recent $41 million dollar investment will assure that you hear lots more about them, and this is just another indication of the strength and growth of the social network.

Reputation.com Founder and CEO, Michael Fertik, comments  “With the explosion of social computing — including gaming, social networks, online sharing, social media — we increasingly live our lives online. But that doesn’t mean we have to hand over our life’s keys to the Web. Digital identity control is a necessary antidote to the architecture of the Web, and one that consumers are demanding.”

Here’s hoping you never need it, but in case you do, it is good to have a reference.