Handling Criticism and Reputation Management

We’ve all been in situations where we had to handle fallout. We ticked someone off, did something better than they did, called a bluff or pointed out a lie – and wham! here comes the counterattack. What do you do?

Follow the eight steps to reputation management in a crisis!

1. Don’t stoop to their level. Keep your cool, and evaluate the situation. It doesn’t do your image any favors if you start slinging mud back.

2. Evaluate. How whacked out do they sound? Can you simply ignore it and let their own insane squalling make everyone discount them?

3. Plan. If you do have to respond, do it all in one fell swoop. Decide what your response is, back yourself up, and unleash all your effort on a single mass release – press release, social networks, blog, etc.

4. Shut up. You’ve calmly said your piece to set the record straight – don’t let yourself be dragged into debate.

5. Leave it alone! Most problems are quickly forgotten, and you can do some PR to divert attention in teh coming weeks.

6. Use every tool at your disposal to SEO any bad press down the results. Make it a priority from the beginning to dominate for your brand name, and others won’t be able to bump you with smear campaigns.

7. Work to dominate all venues as far as your brand name is concerned – you want to make sure that searches in any format come back to material under your control.

8. Think about the furture. learn from past attacks to find out how to protect yourself from future ones. If you are prepared, it will take less time to mobilize if needed.