Dealing With an Onine Reputation Crisis

Webmasters dread the online reputation crisis as much if not more than anything that can go wrong. Technical errors can be corrected by engineers with a coding change, but a reputation crisis is a 4 alarm fire. You can easily lose a lot of your visitors if negative feedback and reviews about your brand, products or services happen to be listed in the search results. This is particularly true if they are on the first page of Google, and even worse if they are above the fold.

You will have to be always well prepared against all kinds of online reputation attacks. There is never a day when you can stop being vigilant. Today, as many webmasters have already faced the wrath of online reputation crisis, most are taking precautionary measures to fight online crisis. This is the best approach to deal with reputation crisis.

Customers are becoming very cautious when it comes to dealing with businesses and companies online. They go to the extra trouble of making sure that they are choosing the right brand or the right products. You cannot afford to take any chances when it comes to your brand reputation.  Don’t wait for something bad to happen. Be proactive and start building your brand reputation, Start creating a positive online image so that if there should be any attack against your brand, your positive image that you have built already will guard you.

Of the more popular strategies available to create a positive brand image, some are more effective than others. You can use of social bookmarking, blog commenting, Blog Review posting, Press Release distribution etc. Unlike before, with the proliferation of Web 2.0 properties, there are many ways to reach out to your customers. This is your chance to boost your brand image. Use high traffic networks and popular social media to build your online brand reputation.

If you do fall under attack, do not panic. Take the right steps and swift action to minimize the damage that is caused by the attack against your brand. The longer you wait the worse it is. You will have to first identify the keywords that get the negative feedbacks and negative reviews listed. Once that is done, you need to post content that is optimized around those keywords. Multiple press release article distribution will help here as search engines pick up press releases faster than any other type of content posted online.

Timing is crucial when dealing with negative attacks.  Once you have pushed down the negative feedback and reviews to the safe levels, respond to the attack by giving your side of the story in the same forum or blog in which negative review has been posted so that the internet users will be able to get bith sides of the story. Negative feedback and reviews exaggerate the issues in many cases. So a rational response goes a long way. Give your target audience the right version of the story and then move on and get back to business.