The most common question related to online reputation is, “How do I get rid of negative mentions of my brand/company/product/me on Google?” This is actually backwards thinking when it comes to reputation management. What you should be asking is, “How do I get positive mentions onto the first page of Google results?” If you achieve this, you will push the negative comments so far down in Google, that people won’t see them. Even if a few people do bother loading the later pages of results, which hardly anyone does, they will figure that Google thinks the positive mentions are more important, and therefore more true. Remember, Google is reality to most people.
There is a simple formula for this that is guaranteed to improve your online reputation. It follows the old adage to accentuate the positive. All you have to do is create Google Alerts for your company/brand/product/your name, or anything else you want to enhance reputation-wise. When alerts arrive, sort through them to find the positive mentions that you’d like others to see. Then work on making these more visible to Google. You can:
- Post links to them on your blog
- Tweet them so others pick them up and possibly link to them
- Use a widget to spread these positive mentions onto other sites
- Share them on Delicious, Digg, and Stumbleupon
Think of this strategy as reputation enhancement through reinforcement. You are distilling the best links, and making them more visible in more places. Google will do the rest. Praise Google.
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Thanks for the info! It really helped. And for your comment on the google reputation stuff. That doesn’t help but you did.