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Protecting the brand

Brand protection is key to success, whether it is about your company or you personally. Many people do not think of themselves as a brand. However, when they look for a job they discover that just like any product they are being assessed and compared with others by consumers or employers. Making yourself stand out is important. However, when you stand out for the wrong reasons this can have a detrimental effect. Individuals own reputation can impact their companies and visa versa. Learning how to harness the power of online reputation management to improve the perception of your name online is key. Understanding the factors that can detract from your brand is also important to ensuring your reputation remains pure. 

If SEO is scoring goals, Online Reputation Management is about saving them. Most people put off by you or your business will not get in touch and give you constructive feedback on how to improve it. Most of the time you may be unaware that you gave the wrong impression, and simply not know. It is harder to measure a loss than a gain when it comes to your online presence. A good brand is one that is robust and positive. It provides a positive impression on those that interact with it. It may take you years to build your name up and earn a reputation, but only minutes to lose it. Having effective reputation management in place is key to safeguarding your name online. Individuals can leverage many of the same techniques companies use to protect their reputation, including having a strong Google presence. 

There are a number of ways that your brand can be tarnished. For individuals this mainly comes in the form of negative news articles. Having a negative article online can have a devastating effect on both your peace of mind and your reputation. Many individuals do not have the resources to combat a negative article on their own. They may be involved in many positive things offline, but publicising it effectively online is a different matter. When a negative article emerges, most people cut and run, deleting their social media profiles and stopping everything. This plays into the hands of those against you and means that the article does not have any competition and is free to climb to the top of Google for your name and stay there. Not confronting the negativity directly helps. Keep doing what you are doing, and let the world know about your successes. This is the key to giving the right image to prospective employers and business partners. 

For companies, damage to their brand can also come in the form of bad reviews. Having a negative sentiment about your business online can be very hard to turn around. You do not want to send happy clients to a review website that has bad reviews, which stops many companies improving their ratings. Having a solid strategy in place to combat this negativity is essential to your brand success. You want to portray an overall positive image, but a realistic one, reflective of your business. If your company lacks an online presence, then any negativity that emerges has an easy time being seen. However, there are a number of ways to remove bad reviews, negative articles or even Wikipedia page results. Consult with a reputation management company about your options, to understand what can be done. ORM is not an afterthought and seeming established and well liked takes work. Put in the work, and you will reap the benefits by getting more business, reduced cancellations and a business that is protected.