Saving Face Online

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, negative comments can travel fast. How to watch the Web and fight back

By Rachael King

When Barry Schwartz logged on to Twitter on Jan. 27, he had 20 messages waiting for him, all with unwelcome news: Someone was impersonating his company on the social network. Schwartz runs RustyBrick, a 15-employee, $2 million Web development company in Suffern, N.Y., and uses his company's name as his Twitter handle. The impostor had set up a profile using a slight variation of his company's name and started following Schwartz's 4,000-plus contacts, which included clients. Those folks who in turn followed the impostor saw a Web link with a message reminiscent of spam: "Hey guys, you have to get this new Twitter Success Guide. It's priceless." Schwartz, who doesn't use Twitter for sales promotion, was chagrined. "The last thing I want is to have people thinking that I'm following them and [that] I'm selling a Twitter Success Guide," he says.

With the growing popularity of blogs, social networks, and customer review sites, the job of managing a company's online reputation is becoming ever more complex. And it's not only strangers who pose a threat. With the viral nature of social media, it's now possible for an unhappy customer or a disgruntled former employee to reach thousands of people with the click of a mouse. Clint Page, CEO of Dotster, a 100-employee, $50 million Internet service provider in Vancouver, Wash., says his company regularly patrols the Web looking for negative comments. "A comment left unchallenged becomes perception, and perception becomes reality," he says.

You don't have to handle all this yourself. There are plenty of services that can help you monitor, and if necessary rehabilitate, your business' reputation online. You could choose a full-service solution, which can easily cost thousands of dollars, but there are plenty of free tools that will at least help you keep tabs on what's being said. From there, you'll have to develop a strategy for any response, then use a few well-tested techniques to bury unfavorable links in search engine results.

If you've got a particularly thorny problem, you might pay $1,000 or more a month to retain a full-service public-relations and marketing firm such as International Reputation Management in Washington, D.C. They'll handle the immediate crisis and also develop new Web pages that will force the unflattering ones to the bottom of search engine results. ReputationDefender of Redwood City, Calif., produces reports detailing what has been said about you online for $14.95 per month. For $29.95 per item, the company offers an additional service called Destroy that tries to delete (often, through negotiation tactics with a Webmaster or the person who created the content) an inaccurate record or an outdated or unfavorable blog or forum post.

A number of free tools also can help you scout the Web, social networks, and online forums for mentions of your company, brand, or products (chart). Google Alerts, for instance, will send an e-mail each time your name shows up in Google () searches. "One of the most important steps is to do an audit of what people are saying about your business," says Andy Beal, a reputation management consultant at Marketing Pilgrim in Raleigh, N.C. He suggests doing a monthly Google search to see what shows up in the top 20 results, which might call up a customer's comment or review on sites such as Yelp, CitySearch, or TripAdvisor. You might be dismayed to see unflattering results high in your Google search. "Google is ambivalent to the tone of the results—it doesn't care if it's positive or negative, only if it's relevant," Beal says. If you do see a negative comment, it's best to respond as soon as you can, within the first 24-48 hours if possible. Use a nondefensive tone and ask for more information, offer to help resolve the problem, or offer your perspective or an apology if warranted. Then, to push those negative results further down in a search, create some new content.

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