By far the best way to manage your online reputation and avert a PR crisis is to adopt a proactive approach. Actively building a positive online reputation at all times reduces the amount of negative coverage you attract, and helps prevent any bad press you do get from gaining traction. Not only does this reduce risk to your company’s reputation, it also works out a lot cheaper than trying to reactively handle negative publicity as it happens.
Attract less negativity
A proactive reputation management strategy helps to build goodwill with the public and press by focusing attention on your values and business approach as well as highlighting the communities, charities, environmental initiatives and other positive movements you are involved in. Not only does this make the media more likely to treat your business favorably (or at least not blow minor issues out of proportion), it also ensures if a negative story does break, your positive content puts the issues into context with all the good work you do.
Limit the reach of negative material
One of the biggest dangers presented by negative coverage of your business is that your search terms, including your business name, could become dominated by negative content about you instead of any of your official assets or pages. At least 71% of search traffic clicks happen on the first page of Google’s search results, so it is vital to control the top results on this page. This can have a major impact on your existing and new customer numbers, as that material might be the first result people see when searching for your business. 80% of consumers will change their mind after deciding to purchase due to reading negative information about a business, so keeping negative articles out of your search results is one of the most important goals of online reputation management.
By producing high-quality content for your own website, social media profiles and as a guest blogger, you can improve your search engine presence and hold on to the crucial first page of search results, keeping bad press out of the limelight.
ReputationDefender are experts at proactively building a positive reputation for your business online, and making your business better protected against online negativity.
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