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When you find out that your reputation has been damaged, be that fairly or maliciously, you have to take action straight away. Hopefully, the following reputation management tips can help you. That said, it is always important to team up with a professional reputation management company, who will be able to put strategies in place to prevent further damage from happening.
Tip 1 – What Is the Attack?
The first thing you have to do is figure out who is attacking you. It could be someone from your competition, a disgruntled employee, an unhappy customer, and so on. It could even be accidental, for instance if a journalist poorly represents you in a piece about something else altogether. Whatever the reason is, however, it is always difficult to mitigate the damage caused simply by having the negative opinion posted online.
There are two types of categories for attacks on online reputation:
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One time postings. This a passive attack. Someone may, for instance, have a genuine complaint about your customer service or your product. This is generally easy to resolve by simply addressing the customer and coming to a resolution.
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Malicious postings. These are the hardest to deal with, because the poster simply wants to pick on you and is likely to keep on attacking you as well. You have to find a way to get them to stop, therefore, which is often very difficult. It is very important that you work together with a professional reputation management company in this case.
Tip 2 – Seek Legal Advice if Needed
Legal help is expensive help. However, if you are being unfairly attacked and someone is being libelous against you, you may have to seek legal advice, if nothing else. Defamation of character and libel are both illegal acts, and you may be able to sue the attacker for damages. However, you also have to be realistic about the fact that online attackers are often very hard to find, which also means it can take a very long time before any legal issue is resolved.
Tip 3 – Get Positive Attention
Last but not least, you need to highlight all the good things about you and your business. Type in your company’s name, or your product or service, on Google and see what comes up. You need to update all the positive information that is already out there, so that it becomes more prominent than any of the negative things. Furthermore, you can use social media and blogs to create more positive content. Make sure that you know which keyword or keyword phrase leads to the negative opinions, and use that same keyword to write positive content instead.
Creating new content is always a good idea. Make sure it is shared far and wide, including on all your social media accounts. Do also consider sending out press releases, which gives you instant and wider exposure. An attack on your reputation is hard to combat, but it is not the end of the world. By working together with a good reputation management company, you should be able to recover and manage your reputation on social media.
