Preventive Online Reputation Management

This post is a guest post by Brennan Sayre who is President of The Sayre Group, a leading online reputation management and monitoring firm that also consults on public relations and social media.

The industry of online reputation management is becoming a hot one as numerous companies are now offering the service or starting brand new companies to focus on this. The reason the industry is growing is because there is a huge need to protect businesses and individuals online because of the rapid pace of growth on the internet as well as the introduction of consumer and user generated media. User and consumer generated media would be things such as customer reviews, blogs, and social media websites. These types of websites can help influence decisions in purchases or can be used to falsely destroy a company’s reputation. That is where online reputation management comes in. Online reputation management companies for the most part are only protecting clients from search engine results instead of doing what they should be doing and that is monitoring and keeping a pulse on the internet and the consumer.

Preventive online reputation management is what sets my company, The Sayre Group, and others apart as many other public relations professionals know once the rumor or damaging information gets out to the masses and goes viral it is next to impossible to stop. Having control over the message is key and to have control over the message you must be able to see everything that is happening in real time. The way we monitor is through custom programs as well as a danger algorithm which alerts us through over 100 key factors on when something may be a problem. We can see everything that is being said about your company on social websites like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter to major news organizations such as Fox News, CNN, and NBC News and we can even see all consumer reviews on over 10,000 product websites.

In years past businesses may not have needed an online reputation firm to protect them but as companies such as Dell, Dominos, and Kryptonite have seen it only takes a few Youtube videos or blog posts to destroy your company’s reputation and profits for the short-term and even with some the long-term. So in ending the internet has now become a very powerful and complex place that if managed right can be a great asset to your company but if you do not have someone monitoring and being able to act with strategic actions then it can be a very dangerous place for you and your company. As newspapers decline and bloggers take over it may even become more vital to high profile individuals and companies. So the real question is how much is you and your company’s reputation worth to you? If you are looking for this service by industry professionals who have had past Fortune 500 clients then contact The Sayre Group today.