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.