Online reputation management is an essential part of doing business. When a prospect is considering purchasing a product, one of the first things most web users will do is research the product, company, or professional.

When performing this research, roughly a third will ask for additional input from social connections (sometimes in real life, sometimes using social media) and roughly 3/4 will turn to search engines for information.

Our online reputation and brand management team several components into account:

1. during our competitive intelligence and online strategy period, we investigate topics of importance and begin monitoring them on our clients behalf.
2. we looks at competitors in the market who have already had problems, giving recommendations for our clients to avoid potential land mines.
3. we build a robust series of social media profiles and on-going conversations. This content and social stream provides multiple sources of information for search engines to index, minimizing the chance that an issue will dominate search results and cause catastrophic damage.
4. when authorized to do so, we engage in social media conversations on our clients behalf and also communicate in the real world. This section of our online reputation and brand management begins to touch with more traditional public relations firms.
5. we constantly review onsite and offsite metrics, looking for unusual traffic spikes or areas of concern. Web analytics can often identify “long tail” search phrases that begin to quantify the number of people searching for negative terms related to related products and services.

Our evaluation and intervention process can include:

• creating and promoting additional content to engage the problem.
• creating and technically promoting valid search optimized content to prevent search loss.
• contact with websites, bloggers, or communities to address inaccurate information.
• work with legal and regulatory bodies to pursue official follow-up.
  (documenting work, investigation process, and damages)