You’ve discovered malicious comments about your company online and you know it’s time for some serious Internet reputation management.

But, what do you do?

You recognize that these negative comments can significantly hurt your business and your bottom line, perhaps by millions of dollars. So, you know that you need fast effective Internet reputation management. But, how?

It may be tempting to immediately respond to these comments, displaying outrage over the vicious lies posted online, but that just creates fuel for more online flaming. Instead, you’ll want to fight the evil by providing uplifting positive news and offering helpful information. So:

1) Create an Internet brand management company policy about who should respond to negative comments.

It’s far too tempting to fight fire with fire and that could led to angry back and forth posting that will make your company look unprofessional and even childish. Choose someone who can effectively and calmly address these comments.

2) Create an Internet brand management company policy about how the designated employee should politely and professionally respond.

Let’s say that someone writes about how she never got a question answered about a product you sell. Rather than debating that scenario, apologize for any frustration experienced and provide useful information in a helpful and clear manner. Remain professional throughout and that will present your company in a much better light. However, that’s still not enough.

3) A key component of any Internet reputation management campaign is to ensure that searchers will find positive news about your company and brands.

When someone does a Google search on your company, you want positive news to appear in the top search engine results pages (SERPs), but that isn’t always what you’ll find. So you’ll need to create enough positive text to bury the negative.

Read this article for more information about how to use Google alerts to monitor your Internet reputation management campaign.

Or, if you’re already effectively monitoring your Google alerts, you’re ready to move on to the next stage of your strategy.

The next step is to create a logical and orderly campaign, focusing on the branded keyphrases – you company name and/or your brands – that have negative comments appearing in the SERPs.

4) Create positive content using the branded keyphrases found to have the most negativity surrounding them (based on your Google alerts info).

One of the easiest and fastest ways to get more positive content on the Internet is to post it on your own web site and your own corporate blog – or by starting a corporate blog if you don’t already have one.

But, again, that’s not enough.

As part of your Internet brand management, you’ll also want to:

• create profiles at popular social networking sites
• write optimized press releases and distribute them effectively online
• request to have articles and blog posts from your company appear on relevant and influential sites elsewhere online

A good reputation is the most precious asset a company can own. So, don’t skimp on your Internet reputation management campaign!

You may discover that it’s time to call in the experts – The Search Guru. If you’re:

• feeling overwhelmed by all that an effective Internet brand management campaign entails
• unwilling to risk negatively affecting your reputation because you haven’t created a proactive strategy to protect your good name

then contact us immediately. Request a free gift session with The Search Guru today to discuss your comprehensive Internet brand management strategy!