Reputation Management Tips for Negative Posts

The challenge that every reputation management team is faced with is the one that comprises their stance against bad press. Consumers and users who are not happy with the brand will vent out their ire through online platforms like blogs, articles and social media networks. It is a common human psychology that when the brand works and lives up to the expectations, fewer people write about it online. When things don’t work out, they take up the keyboard with a keen sense of urgency to share their experience with numerous other users across the globe. This psychological battle is what online reputation management teams have to work on. The catch is, how wise an idea is it for reputation management service executives to comment and respond to negative posts?

Let’s take up the discussion from the perspective of search engine optimization (SEO). Users search for a brand or product on the search engines with the help of certain keywords. The brand optimizes the website and other content about the brand with the same set of keywords. However, when the reputation management team starts work, they have to generate a different set of keywords. The simple reason is that users looking for information about certain negative reports about the brand will search with a different set of keywords. For example, while buyers will use something like ‘DISH TV’, users looking for negative posts will use ‘DISH TV scam’. Online reputation management teams have to optimize their content through such keywords. When the reputation management service writers make comments on a negative review, they are actually causing more damage to the brand reputation. That is so because they are adding fresh and unique content to the page.

Search engines provide higher SERPs (Search Engine Rank Pages) to web pages that are regularly updated. The reputation management responds to the negative comment and adds a certain amount of content to the page. When the other users in the network write replies or retorts, more unique content is added to the page. Whereas the online reputation management team wanted to bury the negative posts under online sludge, they end up boosting the page ranks of such posts! That is a self-defeating move and most reputation management services make the mistake of doing so. They rush in with a reply or a clarification, not realizing that they are playing into a trap that will be their undoing. To steer clear of this, you can make use of the same platform and start a new thread. That will be a better idea because the website or the platform already has heavy traffic. It will add to your advantage.