Social networks, the ensuing over-sharing of sentiments and a flurry of comments online have created a significant self-sustained source of relief as well as threat. The businesses now realize that the medium is popular and potent enough to put their reputation at stake. If privacy is a concern for individuals, for corporate houses it’s their brand image.
Erasing the discomforting digital past
Managing their online reputation and erasing the discomforting digital past is the trick that today’s corporate houses need to master. This is not an easy task because once something is put up in the online realm, it can get very inconvenient, if not near impossible, to take it out.
In a way, tweaking online reputation will usually boil down to harnessing the power of top search engines. Outwardly, it may seem just a matter of time to populate the Web with positive content. But the issue is its search friendliness. No surprise, image-conscious brands seek the help of experts who have a good understanding of the Web’s complex architecture.
To begin with, the process involves setting up a business site, running a blog, or resorting to social networking platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The next stage is targeting your target audience through optimization techniques.
Circumventing search engines
Online reputation managers have a thorough understanding of how search engines work. They know how Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines rank webpages based on how frequently they get linked from other good or bad websites. Some indulge in tricks aimed at the search engines like creating dummy websites, which link to a client’s approved list of domain-specific search results. The more favorable links, the better the approved sites rank!
There are savvy programmers who write code, aimed at circumventing search engines for their hassled clients. They promise to ‘fix’ Wikipedia and even the top results on various popular search engines. Of course, these promises come with a hefty price tag owing to the higher degree of finesse required and also simply because the stakes are that much higher…
It’s not just a matter of luck that the content favorable to you will appear in the top Web searches, and hide any offending text material by default or through proactive steps. This demands skill, perseverance and constant monitoring. And that’s where you need expertise of those specialized in the task.
For example, they may directly get in touch with the Webmaster or blogger, especially in case of smaller sites, and request that the specific portions be deleted. This they try, by appealing to their ability to judge a situation or subtly questioning their sense of fairness so as to change their minds. But then some sites can be far more challenging than other smaller ones. Erasing content from them is not that simple. By the time you manage, damage has already been done.
