Guest Post by  Jill Rowen

Everyone who has ever been to high school, or had a friend enter into sorority/fraternity life in college, knows the importance of a reputation. Reputations could make or break your social life; Remember that time at that party when Doug dressed up as a monkey, shoved Richard, fought Mike and then up chucked in the living room?  You never knew Doug, that is, until yesterday. However, you have known of Doug for several years since the incident at that party. How are you reacting to meeting him, are you able to overlook what you know about his potential alcoholism and emotional instability? Are you willing to let your friends, family and colleagues know you associate with Doug? Are you able to believe that he has changed over the last few years?

Online Reputation is everything as we grow older and enter into business. The internet acts as a bathroom wall where anything and everything can be written about you, whether true or not, and erasing (managing) your negative feedback is even harder than taking a sharpie and scribbling over the words, hoping not that many people had read it yet.  How do we manage our Online Reputation?

You Are Your Brand

For starters, NO ONE, knows YOU or YOUR PRODUCT better than YOU do. Tell people what you do.  Tell people how great YOU are. Set the stage for everyone to know exactly who you are before someone else can define you.  

Whoever Strikes First Wins

Make sure when someone wants to post disparagingly about you there will be a debate about the post and posters validity. Whoever strikes first wins – and like Charlie Sheen, make sure to wake up winning.

Your Online Reputation Needs Some Work… Now What?

 On the off chance you have managed to anger someone out in the world and they decided to bring down your reputation… online. There are few steps that you can take.

• Contact the person directly and see if you can smooth this situation over and possibly have them remove or revise their post.
• You can always post a reply apology which may smooth things over with a third party viewer, but make sure to not admit fault or guilt. This tactic is only for extreme situations and only meant to make the poster of the bad press look emotionally unstable so no one values their opinion.
• If this doesn’t work, recruit your friends to write good things about you/your company/your services so the one bad review seems like an anomaly.
• Make sure to not do this all at once so it’s an obvious tactic to dilute your bad press.  Ask one or two friends per week to post good posts about you for a month or so, or ask all of your friends at once but do two to three friends per website.
• Blog for and about other people/companies. Make friends on the internet who will link to you and say great things about you.  Start by blogging about how great someone else is, then send them a link to your post.  You will surely get some link love if not a corresponding blog back.
• Comment on other blogs related to you/your interests/your company or industry.  This will not only make you an expert in your field (and who cares if an expert is criticized, it happens all the time) but it will allow people to form their own opinions of you meaning the bad press will not phase your public as much, if at all.
• Use your social media to build a fan base around you to protect you against Internet attacks. Even if every review you had was bad, potential clients have to ask what it is you are doing so right that everyone still loves you.
• Having a Facebook page with many likes or a twitter account with 1,000 followers doesn’t mean anything if you’re not active in your community. Post topically, post frequently, and when in doubt, just repost other people’s stuff – they’ll love it.
• Reposting is a must and is the ultimate online hype man move. It adds immediate credibility to the original post; everyone who has a hype man is going to return the favor if for no other reason than to ensure that hype mans value for their ultimate, continuing gain.
• If your online persona/professional persona is nothing like the way you behave at home, make your personal social media extremely private.  If you don’t know someone personally, don’t friend them on Facebook, and keep your tweets locked.  If you know them professionally and want to have an online relationship, that’s what LinkedIn is for.

Remember: 

Always take the high road. Try not to engage in negativity.  If you feel there is no other way to do this, you have one of two options: ask someone else to be negative for you, or commit fully to your new, jerky persona. At least with a jerky persona, people will know you for something rather than nothing, and know what to expect. I highly recommend only using this tactic if your product is in fact, the best, or just that hard to find.

Jill Rowen

Sales and Marketing Coordinator

Apple Visual Graphics

718.361.2000 (phone)

718.433.4587 (fax)

jill@applevisualgraphics.com

www.applevisualgraphics.com