Are You Managing Your Online Reputation?

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Reputation Rhino for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Honestly it wasn't until I became a blogger that I started learning about or even considering that someone would need online reputation management to help a company or business person who has had a torrent of negative publicity online (maybe true, maybe 1 case that was since resolved that left lasting negative results) recover from such an event.

Most people wouldn't think they need reputation repair repair until it happens, you may notice that searches for yourself or your brand on Google or Bing will reveal a glutton of negative reviews from forums, blogs and websites setup that have some of your brand's name in the DNS name, title and tons of negative posts.  Most big companies tend to be targets but they have more at their disposal to help address the situation, it is the smaller affiliate marketers, bloggers and companies that have the most to lose in my opinion.

This is why I always say your reputation is the most important thing as an affiliate or blogger, you can't be bought and sell shoddy products that you don't review, know and believe in.  If you create a product it must solve a need and provide at least a reasonable expected value to a customer and service must meet expectations as well.

You can't afford to half-ass a business, even if you are trying to find a way to make an income online part time you must put a proper business plan in place and take a true business professional mindset when attempting to start any online business.

Still if you find your company or brand is in a situation where more negative feedback and results are dominating the Google SERP for your brand, product or name then you may want to consider a company like Reputation Rhino to come in and rectify the situation.

Reputation Rhino will work with you even before any negative feedback may even exist, they provide reputation monitoring services and help secure your brand's reputation on over 100 top social media sites.  They can assist by helping generate the buzz and positive feedback to quash and diminish negative feedback on search results pages and help give your brand a chance to recover from any reputation damaging disasters.

Now, even people who don't do anything negative can suffer backlash from someone who just didn't get the service they expected or felt distanced, isolated or slighted even if it was just poor communication and perception.  So make sure you check your brand, product and public profile names often and I know if I had to deal with an publicity issue affecting Dragon Blogger's reputation I wouldnt' know really where to start beyond just contacting the sites/individuals and trying to resolve it myself.  This is where I would probably need to leverage a service like Reputation Rhino myself.

Have you ever had a communication mishap or reputation damaging disaster for your brand or blogging image?  I am curious for you to share your stories and how you resolved them.

-Justin Germino