Joel, our web design and search marketing firm’s founder, demonstrates the value of reputation management in this video clip (hosted on Youtube).
I’ll provide you with a brief summary of who needs reputation management, when it should be implemented, and how it works.
- You need reputation management if your name/ identity/ reputation has the power to impact your income. This statement is true for almost everyone, but especially for company executives, celebrities, athletes, corporations, politicians, and other high profile figures. It doesn’t matter whether you live in Seattle or LA or Des Moines, Iowa. If your reputation has the ability to positively or negatively impact your income, then reputation management is right for you. Seriously, its a fact. Whether you’re applying for a new job, or up for review, or looking at seeking investment, or reelection, it doesn’t matter. As long as your reputation has the power to guide that process, then you are an excellent candidate for reputation management.
- So we’ve established that almost everyone needs reputation management. For those of you who realize that a negative article or review or criticism could have a large effect on your income, revenue, profits, votes, etc, then you likely want to begin reputation management immediately. Yes, I said immediately. Why? The simple fact of the matter is that most CEOs, Senators, athletes, and companies have a rather tenuous hold on their reputation online and thus have a significant Achilles heel exposed for competitors, disgruntled employees, and hungry journalists eager to make a story. They have one or two personal and corporate websites and a few social media profiles, but none of them hold any significant weight with the search engines. Should one article be written, properly published, with good SEO structure, and a few links pointing to it, you could very quickly find your reputation being trashed every time someone looks you up online. Reputation management is most effective and provides the best buffer, if you begin building your online name space now, using hundreds of social media sites, websites, and blogs to thoroughly cover your search rankings with content you control. A firm like ours, based out of Venice Beach, Los Angeles, can help create those profiles and then organically increase their prominence in the search rankings so that they are more secure from breaking news stories, smear campaigns, or litigation.
- You’ve already gotten an inkling as to how reputation management works, and we’ll cover why having a skilled web design team, a great set of search engine optimization techs, and excellent marketing consultants can work to your advantage. Most businesses understand at this point in time that SEO can be used to increase their customer base and client leads. What most of them don’t know is that it also has an important role in how their business is perceived online. (This also applies to individuals). Most clients/ investors/ voters/ businesses examine what we call a ‘name space’ online. Using a search engine like Google, they look up your business or your name (PetSmart was the example that Joel used in his video). Often your actual website property appears first in search ranking. What happens behind that in ranking usually are a loose conglomeration of articles, social network sites, etc. BUT most of these items are very loosely ranked, meaning that they can be easily dislodged. One targeted news article or complaint, or bad piece of publicity can climb easily up your rankings and even supplant your top search results. IF we’ve begun reputation management (RM) in advance, those articles and negative reviews have a very difficult time even reaching the first page. If there is a significant amount of publicity around them, they might still break into your top ten results, but you should still hold the highest rankings. Because of this, the end user who carried out the search query, will see four or five or more articles showing how you want to be perceived, before they find anything bad. At that point, you’ve already made the most important impression- the first one. Coalition uses organic, white hat search optimization and marketing techniques to cement your control over the top search rankings. By content management, web design and coding reviews, social media campaigns, link building, and more specialized techniques, we can control your reputation online.
Best of all, we’re much more discreet and subtle then a traditional PR firm. Public Relations firms generally make a lot of noise when they try and help you. Sometimes, the fact that you’ve even employed a PR firm makes your own statements and press releases more suspect in the general public. With Reputation Management, we can quietly generate positive results in the one location most people turn to for information- online.
Contact us at 310.736.2848 if you are in the Los Angeles or LA county area. Or call toll free at 310.827.3890 if you are a national or global customer.
