Online reputation management-A case study

Online reputation management is about setting the wrongs right. Whenever things go wrong, we should look at how we can use the negative bit to our advantage and make it a plus point. To throw more light to this, let us understand through a case study about how a bank worked toward some smart online reputation management, inculcating both search engine optimization and smart PR skills.

There was a bank X which ran into some sort of rough weather courtesy disgruntled customers who were not exactly having a high regard for the company. One of them was my friend who was also a person who did not like taking things lying down. He ran an impressive blog in which he wrote really scathing stuff about the bank, and to make matters worse, the posts came up on the front page of the results page of a search engine inspiring a lot many people to add more.

My friend wrote in his blog that he had got a phone call from the bank some weeks ago for a ‘gold’ credit card. An executive had come to his place and noted all the details and collected proofs of his income and other relevant details. He was informed of the credit card to arrive by courier in a week’s time. He was promised that he was ‘prequalified’ for the card because he was an ‘esteemed’ customer of the bank. Weeks flew by and there were no sign of the credit card. Exasperated, he called up the bank three times and all the three attempts made a mockery of the man’s precious time. My friend said that he was waiting in the IVR queue on two occasions and just before he was transferred to the executive, the calls would drop.

Luckily when this guy did get to speak to a live person on the third attempt, he was informed that he did not stand the chance to get a gold card because he was not ‘qualified’ for it. It was but natural for the person to fume his anger into words and put it down on the blogging software and show it to the world. Of course, he found a lot of fans who had more gory stories to tell them about the bank and that too in a colorful language.

The poor bank (figuratively speaking) witnessed a lot of hate posts coming in various blogs. An online search on information about some of the products of the bank showed the blogs posts in the first two pages of Google. The company had to steady its online reputation soon or vanish in throes of competition. The bank decided to pull its socks and undo most of the damage.

The bank worked on a system of follow-up. The bank manager called up the customer, apologized for the inconvenience caused, and said that he would personally take care of the situation. The manager asked him for an honest feedback about how the bank could improve its services. The guy retorted with a classic ‘that’s your problem, not mine.’ In spite of so many ‘it’s your faults,’ thrown in by the customer, the manager promised him of superior service. The manager also requested the customer to check the bank’s blog. The customer conveniently ignored him.

My friend after tasting the first blood of vengeance decided to check his blog. He was touched to see the bank responding to his complaint (well, he had expected that they would turn a deaf ear!). There was a link on the blog website that directed him to the company blog. Once my friend was in the corporate blog, there were some positive news about the developments of the bank and information on some of the best consumer friendly services that he would be expecting.

The bank had added a blog to its website, and called it ‘problem solving junction.’ This was the place where the bank began to address each and every problem faced by consumers while using the banking services. The bank had hired a team of writers and problem solvers who were backed by research to handle every query with a steady resolute. The bank advertised its blog effectively and ensured that most of the traffic was directed to its blog.

As he went through the blog, he found some future news about the bank that was interesting to him. Two of the services that he liked were debt management services and a wealth management services that would show him how he could manage its investments at no extra cost. However he decided to wait and watch before going for the kill.

The same evening, the card arrived along with a gift, a watch. The bank had under-promised but over-delivered. He was all smiles as he listened to the advisor from the company who showed him about how he could invest his wealth by taking advantage of the wealth management services. The advice given to him was sound and fruitful. Impressed by the information on the blog and the tips given by the bank executive, he decided to buy the mutual fund and invest in monthly SIPs. My friend, a rational being that he was, bought the mutual fund of the bank, not just because the financial advisor was convincing, but because it had a consistently good performance over the years. Recently, he also received dividends from the fund which was appreciating steadily, thus adding to his cup of joy.

Thanks to some decent online reputation management, the bank earned a loyal long-term customer who held the company’s bank account, credit card and mutual fund. Wait a minute…online reputation management…well that term was not even coined at that time but the bank was doing it.

My friend has again decided to put his views on his blog and this time they are positive. Of course, negative posts do flow for the company from people but they are never on the front page of Google because the bank has perked up its online reputation management and has marketed its content and website in such a manner that only good news about the bank feature on the first page of the search engine. It is a nice thing to note that the bank is not just a spokesman of online reputation management but has also has lived that principle. When you have a good product, an efficient customer service and an amazing reputation management system, then you can be a preferred brand for a lot of people.

Online reputation management-Dealing with troublesome blogs

The need for reputation management online stems from CGM(Customer Generated Media) furore that has spread in the Internet. Ever had a bad experience while using your credit card? Has the bank treated you unfairly? Are you pissed with the callous attitude or indifference shown by customer reps on the phone? Do you feel that they just dumped the vacuum cleaner at your place and forgot about installing it properly? You do not have to keep your grouse within yourself or express your sentiments to the neighborhood. You can tell about the unfair deal to the whole world through blogs.

Blogs are dynamic and can shape public opinion with the influence of something as trivial as a mere post. Unlike newspapers , magazines and huge online news portals which at times are politically correct and have to abide by editorial guidelines, there is no real censorship or editorial guidelines to adhere by in case of blogs. A blog is your very space to write about everything from termites to tornadoes. Many of them use blogs to vent out customer service grievances be they about billing, insurance, mortgage, the shopkeeper next door or about the company which sold you a refurbished printer rather than a brand new one as a replacement.

Since blogs are the medium of public expression, companies have to be very careful about its image as well as its products/services. When these complaints or posts appear in the first page of a search engine, it can be vastly detrimental to its image. Every company worth its salt should have an online reputation management in place to combat negative posts or complaints. Many a times, online reputation management is necessary for the company to explain its point of view, when it has been wrongly targeted by the consumers.

Though we have covered about the intensity and magnitude of blogs earlier, we will study as to how we can handle online management reputation to effectively curb negative sentiments about your brand, product, business or image. Given below are some of the approaches that can be conducive to online reputation management:

1. Collate all the information from various blogs and feed them in a database. Segregate it accordingly, according to various categories like positive, neutral and negative. Since the negative posts can be really damaging, you have to immunize them first. Negative posts can have varying degrees of intensity. Accordingly, make sure you give them different names according to increasing degrees of havoc they can unleash.
   
2. Get a background of the people who are behind the blog. Visit their profile and find out how much the audience reach these blogs cater to is.
3. Generate an ORM report on your findings. Conceptualize a plan of action. Collate the ORM data in a systematic order and if possible represent various aspects of the plan graphically. Have presentations done about online reputation management for your brand in the form of pie-charts, statistical diagrams etc that simplifies the whole idea , when you have to clarify your point to the better derstanding of the general public. Brand projection in the best possible light is the epitome of online reputation management.

Blogs which are posting negative information can be factually correct or incorrect. If the content in the blogs carry information which is misleading and not right, you have the right to ask the blog owner for removal of these posts. You can send corroborating proof that testifies your honest stand against the whiplash generated in the blog posts. If you are right, the blog owner should remove misleading posts about your brand.

If the blog owner is not agreeing to remove your negative and factually incorrect posts, you can use the comments section in the blog to explain your stand. Make sure, you explain your stand with proof, convincing that makes people doubt about the veracity of the negative posts published by the original blogger. In other words, your reply should be convincing, firm and assertive. Make sure you also add a link that redirects people to the company blog or the company website. You can also post your company’s plus points and positive points in many blogs and forum sites to make sure that can highlight the strong points of the company is always recommended.

Online reputation management-Customer Generated Media and Tracking tools

Every single moment, someone or the other is talking about you, your product, your services, your business, your competitors or your industry. They may be complimenting about a particular aspect of your business, appreciating certain things or generating hype for your business. There are also people who do not think too high about your service. They are cribbing, complaining or criticizing about your service or your product.

Let us say a much-hyped movie is on the verge of release. A lot of money, time and efforts have been spent in creating the magnum opus, and an equal amount of money has been spent on publicity. Can you imagine how much it can hurt both the distributors and creative team when the pre-release hype is countered by negative posts and scathing amount of criticism. A lot of people who read negative posts and information are bound to stay away from the movie affecting its business.

Not just a movie, but every conceivable product or service has its online reputation at stake thanks to the open platform offered by the web 2.O tradition. A blog post or a couple of comments posted online can either be a windfall for your business or topple it down like a pack of cards. There is also a term for this phenomenon-it is called customer generated media or CGM. To tackle the negativity generated by the consumer generated media, you need to take resort of online reputation management.

Online reputation management involves the method of tracking or monitoring every hour. Make sure you track everything that involves your product or service, right from product lines and employees to marketing strategies and competitors. You can go to morever.com; a website gives information on your industry and the latest developments and news in your industry.

You can collate all possible keywords that a user usually searches on in terms of your product or service. You can then set up ‘alerts’ (Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts) for all of these keywords so that you are alerted when something about your company is posted online with the listed keywords in the ‘alerts’. You can also go to monitorthis.com which helps you keep track of a single keyword across different search engine feeds simultaneously.

Based on your keyword searches, you can make custom RSS fees from places like Technorati.com, Topblogging, Google News, Yahoo News and such others sites. It is even better to maintain all feeds into one RSS Reader like Google Reader, My Yahoo, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Bloglines, Newsgator etc. Find out some of the different forum sites or message boards that talk about your product or service and then closely track whatever is being written about. Similarly you can also track message groups like Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, MSN groups, AOL groups etc.

For online reputation management, you can also keep a track on some of the web pages through tools like watchthat.com and websitewatcher.com. You have to make sure you monitor every keyword and every page of the website that has anything even remote written about you. Monitoring and keeping a close watch of anything associated with your business is the one of the most important steps in online reputation management.

Online reputation management—Damage control in practice

Picture this. You have consciously built a brand image for yourself and everyone around is happy because you are on top of the world. But then as you become successful, you attract detractors too. One or more such animals with an axe to grind against you start spreading stories about you and most of them are not pleasant. Some of the posts appear on the first two pages of a popular search engine. You find yourself as the object of ridicule and contempt. You have been branded as an alcoholic rather than a workaholic.

People read negative, exaggerated information and then spread stories adding their own dash of spice in their discussions about you, with their colleagues. You have to seriously safeguard your reputation before some more negative posts appear on the front page of Google.

A reputation-maligning post like this on the front page of Google or such other search-engine is as bad as infamous front page news. When you see a scandalizing post like this affecting you, your profession or business, you have to first analyze the gravity of the situation. Is it really bad for you? Can it affect the way you live or deal with people? A celebrity friend of mine was in a similar situation where her image was taking a beating due to some posts that made their way to the front page of the search results of Google.

My friend cried foul, harped that she was misquoted but the posts kept on coming. She contemplated calling the website owner and threatening to issue a law-suit. However, there was risk involved and it could take off some of her time. She had to protect her image and online reputation management was the first thing on her mind. Some websites were getting regular hits by writing trash about her.

My friend then decided to act wisely a built a strong, positive image about herself through online reputation management. She hired someone who could write keyword driven content for her that put her in the positive light. She joined some of the social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Since they had a fair amount of privacy, she invited people on her friends list. Since she was in direct touch with them through the social networking sites, her friends and fans began to write positive about her in their forums and blog posts.

My friend hired an online reputation management specialist who kept a close tab on posts that appeared on famous blogs, forum sites and major websites. With online reputation tools, and close monitoring of written about her, an action plan was made to make sure that her online reputation was not just salvaged but maintained also. Things began to take a 360 degree turn as my friend’s reputation online was kept in good stead after working hard on the concept of online reputation management. With meticulous care and effort, she saw to it that her image remained squeaky clean from there-on, thanks to some smart online reputation management

Blogging career in Online Reputation Management

We all know that blogs are web-tools that can shape and influence public opinion. Every company online is wary about some negative post that can crop up in the first pages of a search engine like Google, and affect the business. In a manner, which is akin to an eye for an eye, companies use their corporate blogs to come clean and clarify speculations written about them.

For a company that wants to have a positive image and favorable information written within the top 2 results page of a search engine, blogging becomes very important. The benefits are in the form of free advertising and clear information provided in the form of enriched and enhanced content. Secondly, blogs form a medium to forge a wonderful relationship with its customers. Thus all said and done, a professional blogger assumes an important and some times crucial position in the spectrum of online reputation management.

For a person who likes to blog instinctively, this piece of information comes as a veritable opportunity. A professional blogger is hired on a contractual period to write keyword rich content which talks positively about the company and its product/service. Anyone who can prove that he is a good writer can become a publicist or an online management reputation spokesman for the company. How can a blogger turn this opportunity into a gold mine?

A blogger, who is passionate about writing on a certain brand, service or an individual with enough substance, can have a lot coming his way. Look at it this way: if you are quite self-assured and consistent in a given field (say insurance, banking, telecom etc), you will sooner or later be noticed as traffic streams into your blog. Top companies who want to enhance their corporate image will go through your blogs and may hire you for a contractual period for a flattering amount to write for them. If you like, you may be even absorbed in the company. In ‘Blogger,’ there is also a section called ‘profile’ where you can talk about yourself and your contact details. Companies can look at your profile and hire you for their online reputation management. A ‘blogger job’(without quotes) in the search field of a search engine like Google will also give you a lot of opportunities, some of them which may lead to a lucrative career in online reputation management.

Online Reputation Management-More than just a PR

We know that public reviews and opinions on blogs can be quite influential and overwhelming upon a company. However it can also have an impact on a person’s life. Success can be harmful at times. A celebrity, an influential person or even a layman is susceptible to bad publicity online. However, it is even more ruthless and embarrassing for someone who is in the public limelight to be shown in the poor light.

People generally check the first page of results in a search engine. If something bad or embarrassing about a particular celebrity is mentioned in the first page, people actually start forming opinions and passing judgements. Tongues begin to wag and the celebrity’s maligned reputation begins to cloud around him like a ball of smoke. The media has a field day sensationalizing the whole issue leaving a lot for the public figure to clarify.

Blogs and forum sites can tarnish the image of a person in a matter of minutes. If these views find their way on the first page of a search engine like Google, millions will read them and form opinions. If a celebrity has a PR agent, it is not enough. How many people can he explain to? There are millions of people online at a given point of time. The amount of people actually watching television is lesser than the previous decade, even though there are a lot more television channels now. Most of the time is spent online nowadays. So it is important for the celebrity to give the whole matter a ‘personal touch’ by posting his or her very own blog online.

When a celebrity has a website online, he or she is in immediate and direct contact with the fans. When the celebrity runs a blog from personal website or runs an independent blog, it is even better because it become even more easy for him or her to be in touch with the fans regularly. The tone and language of a blog is informal and friendly and more importantly, you get the answers directly from the horse’s mouth. Though most actors or professional may choose to hire a content writer or an editor to do the work of online reputation management, people who are serious about their image and love to be in touch with their fans, will actually write their own blog.

Thanks to online reputation management, a person can put the rumor mills to rest and spread some fresh air. In ORM, the person should set up Google Alerts, and continuously employ someone who takes stock of the negative information spread in various websites, blogs and newsgroups. Of course, the blogging part should be ideally done by the celebrity or professional only. A link of the celebrity’s website or blog can be posted in various related websites or blogs so that the traffic can reach that particular blog.

Online Reputation Management(ORM)-Setting things right proactively

Anyone who runs a business or a professional agency will swear on his or her last buck that a negative publicity can be quite eroding. If the first page of a search engine like Google has some not so good things about your company or the brand, it means that there is something you have to do before you clientele and customers head for the exit door. God has blessed consumers with the power of the Internet. Decision making has become easy for them because they can share their opinions, views and interests with a lot of like-minded people through reviews sites, forum sites and blogs.

What do you do, if your company is the object of scathing attack and relentless criticism? A place in the front page of a search engine is important, but it is equally important that something good or positively interesting is written about at the same time. If there is some negative information written about your company found in the first page of results in a search engine, you have to really do something constructive to undo the damage. It is important to realize that you can’t really remove negative information. However, you can push the negative information down and out from the public view.

Here are some of the steps; you can take into account while latching on to online reputation management:

1. Contact the blog owners or webmasters: You can always contact the webmasters or blog owners of the site where trashy or negative stuff is written about you or your company. Request them politely to remove the negative set of comments. Chances are that they might decline your request. Chances are also there that they might agree and remove the comments. If such is the case, your headache is relieved quite easily. However, you should note that if they do remove the posts, there are fair chances that these comments still remain in the ‘cached’ pages of the search engine. However users who click at that particular link will not see the bad comments.
2. Network with the people who write positive about you: Your company must be doing something good, which is why it is still in the business. Seek such sites that write positive about you and send them an appreciation or a ‘thank you’ mail and tell them that you are giving a link back to their website from your site.

3. Social networking: Social networking is spreading like wild-fire online. Create a community account in sites like Orkut, De.licio.us etc and collate all positive information, videos, interesting content, new product notifications etc. Make your content keyword-driven in social networking sites too with the name of your company appearing in the title and in the body. You can choose to invite only those people who are really interested to know about your company.

4. Audio-visual treat: Upload videos of some of your products or companies online in sites like YouTube and Google videos. You can even make a catchy, promotional video that looks attractive to users online.

5. Google alerts: Set up a Google alerts where you post a certain number of negative or positive keywords or phrases which are most likely to be used in reference to your product or service. In turn, Google alerts automatically send you an email that has new Google results carrying the keywords or phrases that you had listed. This simplifies your online reputation management efforts and keeps you in control of matters beyond the usual human control.

Online Reputation Management is a long-term thing and you cannot expect results the next day. If you channelize your efforts in the right direction, you will earn positive rewards. A close monitoring and optimization of content can surely help you achieve success in your endeavor.

Online Reputation Management- Three words, three-fold success

The world of online marketing is growing exponentially. No one can combat the reach of the Internet when it comes to spreading information. Information can be easily transferred in the form of text, images, competitions, video clips etc. The cost of sharing information is very low or negligible and quite evidently, it has become an outlet of people to express their emotions, feelings, views and opinions.


Mom, dad, son, daughter, the gardener and the pet of the family-everyone turns to the Internet to check the review of the latest product, the latest gizmo, the funky outfit or the new movie which has hit the movie-houses. People form a verdict about a certain thing or service based on the reviews they read or the comments made by other people in blog posts. No wonder, my friend who wanted to buy a Hyundai car ended up buying a Wagon R, after checking the reviews online.


A person or a company’s reputation is available for everyone online to see. Thus, it is important for personalities, brands and companies to have a positive or likeable image so that the popularity is sustained or built up. Online Reputation Management is fast becoming a medium of the new generation online. Ironically, the concept is tangential to word of mouth publicity. We know that people talk, spread rumors and form opinions; it is viral in nature. ORM helps in keeping a close watch on what is being spread online about you or your company.


ORM has two principal functions-listening and responding. Of course, you can’t really listen but you can observe what is being written about and draft a plan of action to counter the negativity that is rampant. You have to let your prospect, customers and readers know about what is right. You have to present your side of the picture. And what do you get in return? You earn the trust of the readers and customers. They feel confident that someone is there to listen and make note of their problems and feedback. It feels great to be heard, doesn’t it?


In Online Reputation Management, it is important to reach out to your prospects and tell them in absolute frankness about how their problem can be resolved. You have to share with them some options that can be fruitful to them. You have to keep them engaged and rooted in to know more about the developments of your company. Since most of these posts are sent by people in the form of blogs, it is advisable to run a blog that carries a link to the grievance or complaint, with a reply about how things can be smoothened out for their benefit.

When Search Engine Optimization meets smart PR skills

It is an obvious truth that 90 percent of consumers make use of search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN etc to find what they are looking for. This means that when they enter the name of a particular product, service or brand, you hope that your company website or a positive review about your company ranks at least on the top search results page. In more ways than one, the search engine page is a barometer of the success of your enterprise. It is not just about a company but about an individual too. Everyone likes good things to be written about them, don’t they?

The flip side to this whole thing is that is not possible to have a control on what people write in various blogs and article directories. Apart from the consumers, what appears about the company on the search engine listing can affect your potential clients, employees and even prospective candidates who are on the look-out for a job. In order to thwart or stop the negative information, you need to exercise Online Reputation Management (ORM).

Online Reputation Management or ORM is a healthy amalgamation of PR skills with search engine optimization. Smart PR skills meet with technical prowess to form Online Reputation Management. When you get top rankings on a search engine page thanks to smart optimization and good informative content and publicity, you will be able to push the negative publicity and negative review down and away from the first two page listings of the search engine. Soon, they will go away from public view and people will focus on the good news It is important to know that an online surfer on search for information will not look more than the first two pages of search engine results.

Things like positive reviews, case studies, testimonials, and press releases are not optimized properly in the company website page. This is the main reason why they fail to come on the top search results page. Thus it is important to write more of product or service friendly content and also answer all kinds of queries, doubts and negative information spread by people. The more search engine friendly content you have, the higher is the probability of getting a high ranking on the search engine results page. Pay special emphasis to keyword rich content, but at the same time make the content interesting, informative and relevant. When you optimize your pages well, the search engine pick them up easily and are picked up quickly by search engines. When you have a dominating web presence, and knock down all the negative clutter about your company from the first two search engine results page, you are said to be efficient and effective in your online reputation management expertise.

The mechanics of Online Reputation Management

We all know that gossiping is a universal hobby (hobby is called a pastime isn’t it?). Gossiping has been there in this world since the time man existed. It is just post 2004, the gossiping that was restricted to just the office corridors or college campuses, has extended multi-dimensionally in the form of blogs. Now what you gossip about, can influence millions of people especially when they appear on search engine results page. Review sites, forums, blogs, RSS feeds are the media available to consumers to air their thoughts in full color. Imagine the damage that can be done to a company as a result!

Online Reputation Management works on the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threat) basis. The company has to analyze its strengths and weakness. It has to find out the areas which can cause threat to the business. A blog post or a forum post if it lands on the top two pages of a search engine (in many cases it does!) can be immensely detrimental to the image of a company. The company can take the help of the most crucial weapons online-blogs and convert them into its source of strength. How? Read on to know more….

The company has to maintain a database of positive, negative and neutral sentiments voiced by different people across different blogs, review sites and news sites. The company has to filter out the irrelevant bit of information and focus especially on the negative and neutral sentiments. In online reputation management, it is important to find out the nature and the source of the complaint. A complaint can be from a disgruntled consumer, an ex-employee who wants to air his negative sentiments, a competitor who wants to indulge in a wicked and free game of mud-slinging or a person who just wants to vent out a frustration thanks to his preconceived notion of the company.

How do you keep a track of negative comments? The company can set up search engine alerts results. You can select alerts with regards to your company name, products or specific key words. Search engines like Google and Yahoo sends you an ‘alert’ or a notification whenever there is a fresh search or reference of terms mentioned in their database. You can also take the help of Blog Search Engines like Technorati, del.icio.us, Feedster, TopBlogging are recommended search engines to check fresh posts by blogger on your company and its products or services. Apart from this, searches on industry-related sites, social networking sites can help you collect important data.

After this is done, the company should try to fix the problem or issue. If solving the problem is extremely difficult or impossible, then as a part of online reputation management, the company should suggest options or choices that can lead to a better or relieved consumer experience. A corporate blog is a good move; it is an outlet which provides the company’s side of the story. You can also include a section in the company blog or company website that links to the complaint page and explain your version. If you optimize the blog or the website well, it can help the blog or website with positive reviews and information come up on the top results pages of a search engine. You can even encourage your readers to suggest ideas or views so that you can serve them better. Online Reputation Management is not difficult, but it is quite rewarding and productive if done properly.

Blogs and Online Reputation Management-The heady Mix!

Did you know that every second 14 blogs are added online? Blogs and forum based websites are becoming fast popular. Blogs cater to every taste and all genre conceivable. The reason why blogs are more popular than websites themselves are because of the fact that they are quite dynamic and can be operated by an average computer user. Of course, it is an unbeatable communication tool online, influencing opinions and fostering interactions.

There is a strong connection underlying the concept of online reputation management and blogs. Online reputation management is a developing field that encompasses public relations and search engine optimization. In forum sites as well as blogs, people freely air their views and express their feelings about a certain brand or product. Consumers can be either patronizing or ruthless. Why just the consumers? Even the employees who had a bad experience with the company can bad mouth the products and the company, affecting the brand image of the product in the process.

It is amazing the way blogs have changed from an outlet for expressing teenage angst to a rewarding and productive tool for business houses. There have been many instances in which companies have resorted to their corporate blogs as a way of damage control. There has been a conscious move to enhance the brand reputation within the top 10 results of a search engine.

It is not just the consumers who are influenced by negative posts or ill-feeling written about a product or company in the search engine. Even a client who is thinking about partnering with a company may think twice after reading a negative post. Let us say you have pitched a proposal with a client and he is ready for a merger. Just before taking the plunge, he checks online through Google or any other search engine about your company. He comes across the not-so-flattering pieces of information written about our company in the top ten search results. Will he like his company to be dragged into this? Surely, he will reconsider; in most probabilities, he will head for the exit. There is thus a need for online reputation management to straighten things, undo what is wrong, address consumer grievances in their blogs and make sure that the corporate image is maintained. This is the key to successful online reputation management.

Online Reputation Management -It's all about spreading the good news!

We all know that bad news travels faster than good news. A bad or negative consumer experience can affect a business ten times more than a positive experience. It can impact the decision of the buyer and make him shift towards a competing brand. Let me illustrate a real life example that happened with me. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to buy a new mobile phone for myself. I had a brand and a model number in my mind. However just before purchasing that particular cell-phone, I decided to do some online research. After all, as human beings, we are driven by user experiences. Well, what I saw changed my decision.

The top ten online search results which popped up as I keyed in the query left me in a bit of daze. Pieces of text lying below the name of my favorite product in the search results page, had some negative information that put me off. I did not even click on the link to venture further. I then keyed in the name of a competing brand. Things were much brighter here. There were some positive reviews about the product on the top ten search results that came up. My mind was made; I went ahead and purchased the product which initially had not ranked top-most in the list.

Like me, there are many consumers including you who may decide to do some research and learn by other consumer experiences before buying a product or subscribing for a service. With the Web 2.0 search culture coming and the Time Magazine declaring the Person of the Year as You, it is evident that each one of us can create a magnanimous impact with a click of a mouse or a keyboard button. In the olden days, it was a well-known fact that the pen is mightier than the sword. That proverb can be modified to say that the Internet is a greater weapon than the biggest ammunition in the world. Needless to say, the greatest and most dynamic weapon online that can influence, provoke and even manipulate the human mind-a weblog or a blog.

The year 2004 heralded ‘blog’ as the word of the year. Years later, the word has transformed itself into action. Today it is a revolution and in the future, blogs are poised to change the way decisions are made. As these are usually free, blogs are both convenient and invaluable. In fact, we can see them people pouring out their sorrows, venting their frustration, expressing their joy through blogs. Evidently, people are also venting out their dissatisfied consumer experiences which influence others to think twice about brand loyalty.

One can imagine how much amount of losses, companies will have to suffer due to the whiplash and nasty comments written by these consumers. This calls for an immense amount of damage control and repair. Companies have to be careful that nothing negative or untoward comes up on the first two pages of a search engine. A forward thinking company will have to have a corporate blog in place that can combat such negative news. The methodology, a company adopts to combat apprehension and negativity, and sustain its goodwill and positive image forms the crux of online reputation management.

Let us see how a company can use the power of its blog as a valuable online reputation management tool. ABC company does online research and finds out how well (or badly) its product and customer service rate in the top ten search results of the search engine page. It collates data from various blogs, finds out the nature of the complaint and its severity. After this, the company suggests solutions or shares options with the help of blog posts that can ideally solve the consumer queries and keep their speculations to rest. While a company gives its story though its blog post, both the parties are benefited. The consumers restore their faith and confidence in the company because they know that the company truly cares for them. The company on the other hand, gets an opportunity to clarify its stand and earn the goodwill of the consumers. This translates into repeat purchases, brand loyalty and of course a bigger market share. Thus we see that the online reputation management is an infallible tool to a company because it can simplify and clarify a lot of issues and problems which consumers face purely because of miscommunication. No wonder the company I purchased the product from, had a stronger online reputation management compared to the first one.