Today, your search engine results are like your resume. It is what makes up your online reputation, and it is basically what people use to form an opinion about you. Whether it’s your personal or business brand, it is very important that you manage your reputation if you don’t want potential clients, business partners or employers to turn away from you.
This is the reason why reputation management companies are gaining in popularity. The problem with the online world is the fact that if someone gives a bad feedback to your brand, it stays there forever. Your only solution is to address the feedback as soon as you can, or make sure it’s buried by other sites or pages that give good reviews about your brand.
Track and monitor
Of course, it can be tricky to manage this all by yourself, as you’re already managing a business or your personal brand campaign. Do you really have time to make sure what appears in the search engines about you are the information you want? Well, this is where reputation management companies come in.
Of course, it can be tricky to manage this all by yourself, as you’re already managing a business or your personal brand campaign. Do you really have time to make sure what appears in the search engines about you are the information you want? Well, this is where reputation management companies come in.
These companies basically help you with your branding campaign, making sure that you have an excellent reputation online. They monitor what’s being said about your brand, and help you address these with their recommendations.
Negative feedback can be the death of your brand, which is why it’s incredibly important for you to track and monitor what people are saying about you or your business. If you do get bad feedback, you can either do damage control by making sure to address the problem, or employing the services of reputation management companies who will bury the page with the negative results and make sure other pages that highlight the good things about you are on the first pages of Google.
These companies can also help you achieve better rankings in the search engines, effectively giving you an advantage over your competitors. There are a lot of pros to obtaining their services.
What are the cons? Are there any problems that are associated with getting these types of services?
One definite con is the cost. Monitoring and managing a brand’s online reputation can take a while and should be done continuously to really be effective, so it can be rather costly for businesses. Of course, if you consider your online reputation a worthwhile investment, and don’t really have the time or the skills to manage it yourself, then it would definitely be better for you to employ the services of these companies.
Also, “burying” a bad feedback may not be enough to remove it from people’s minds. The best thing to do is actually to address the problem and hopefully come up with a solution to it. After all, you wouldn’t want your reputation to suffer because of a small incident that gained in importance because you basically ignored it.
Ultimately, there seems to be a lot more pros to obtaining the services of online reputation companies than there are cons. As you know, your reputation precedes you, and it can even become a reflection of you or your business’ character. So it’s really essential that you manage it well, and if you don’t have the time for it, these companies can certainly do an excellent job at it for you.
The Internet has a way of shaping, creating and dictating people’s opinions on everything. Online graduate degree programs are bad, Facebook is good and Google knows everything. These societal ideas were taught to us by simple Internet searches and their repetition has turned them into truths.
On the individual level, the Internet can catapult a career into orbit or put it into the ground (as was the case with online schools). For those that aren't as tech savvy as others, an online reputation could be worth cultivating, but it definitely worth considering.