The ORM Storm

Going by the number of agencies that have sprung up promising to save brands from the wrath of unkind online reviews, there seems to be a large market for reputation repair.

These are homepage grabs of two agencies claiming to offer "Online Reputation Management (ORM)" services:

The similarity between agencies of this kind go beyond their shared love for similar historical quotes. What they promise their clients is quite similar too. Broadly, the ORM pitch follows this pattern:

1. There is a lot of negative publicity for your brand generated by irate consumers, disgruntled employees and suchlike.

2. This negative publicity can cause your brand a lot of harm since business prospects are likely to find these pages when they google your name.

3. "Push down" these negative pages by the weight of positive pages.

Point no. 3 is where it gets tricky and sticky. Where do these positive pages come from? How can these pages push down the baddies? An agency tries to explain this on its website:

"...we have a comprehensive approach to eliminating negative information from Page 1 of the major search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Our approach includes using traditional search engine optimization techniques to promote existing positive listings that already exist. In cases where no other listings exist, our team of content specialists will develop informational postings to blogs, business directories, and social networking sites, or create completely autonomous web sites to which we then optimize for specifically for your situation."

Any brand of repute that suffers from bad blood on the web must take corrective action, but to say that this corrective action should consist of manufacturing fake praises and unleashing them on the web is not just dishonest, but useless and harmful too in the long run.

I can think of two strong reasons why brands should not indulge in praise manufacturing.

One, people would soon call your bluff. No matter how good your wordsmiths are, manufactured praises have a tell-tale trait in them. Your manufactured reputation may get some fame, but when consumers discover that you have been going around town with a disguise singing eulogies to yourself, you have lost your credibility forever.

Two, Google's site ranking algorithm is quite a complex maze of mathematical formulae. It is safe to assume that Google keeps tweaking its search engine to give precedence to sites that are relevant. It's like the cat and mouse game between writers of malicious code and anti-virus peddlers. Devious techniques to "push down" relevant search results may seem to succeed for a while, but the search algorithm will eventually catch up.

So how does one "manage online reputation"? Here are some pointers:

Keep your ears to the ground

Listen in to the online buzz. Know what people are saying about you. Setting up Google alerts is an effective way of keeping abreast of the online buzz about you and competition.

Make sense of the buzz

Listening in is not useful unless you understand which way the wind is blowing. You are in an enviable position if your brand is being discussed favourably online. The best strategy here is to be an unintrusive listener and provide your online fans with all the resources they need (e.g., easily accessible product data on your website). On the other hand, if vitriol is pouring forth freely, you surely need some correctuve action and that should consist of addressing the complaint and getting your official stand across to people.

Use your website effectively

Your official website is the most important mouthpiece you have, make the most of it. Make it easy to include important announcements at short notice without waiting for the entire tech team to go into a coding frenzy. If you can manage it, open up channels of communication with your customers through your website. Ensure that the information on your website is always correct and updated. Your customers, associates and employees should turn to your website every time they are looking for some information about your company, products or services. Include your website address in all your official communication, e-mail signatures and press releases. You may outsource SEO if you want to, but a good web development team and an understanding of building and maintaining a clean, honest site should do the job. If you do hire an SEO egency, make sure they do not indulge in devious techniques. These are likely to do you more harm than good in the long run.

Look within for support

Employees are the best brand custodians, the most trusted brand ambassadors you have. If they are on your side (most of them are, at least when they begin working for you), your brand stands to gain a lot. In their social interactions, employees are often asked various questions about the products and services they represent. Make sure they are equipped to answer questions, especially the difficult ones. If you are facing slander, explain your stand to your employees. Encourage them to participate in online conversations. If your brand is caught in controversy, they are the ones who are going to face tough questions everywhere. Their answers will shape public opinion about your brand to a large extent. Prepare them for the questions. Give them the knowledge, the data and the confidence to represent your brand.

Don't bury your head

If you are facing a lot of flak online and you think it is unjustified, it makes sense to present your argument loud and bold. Use your website to let the world know your stand. Clarify your stand to other influential sites. Most consumer sites that influence public opinion will gladly accept and carry the brand owner's point of view. Does it mean that you must reply to every unkind comment that gets online? Obviously not. That would be too stressful and may snowball into a larger controversy. The trick is to tell the difference between simmering collective discontent and one-off unkind comments. Do not overlook the odd distrunglement though. Say, you find a scathing online review about your brand from a customer who has had a very bad experience. You believe that the complaint is genuine but is extremely rare and unlikely to happen to other customers. Nevertheless, get in touch with the consumer and make it up for her. After you have ensured a reversal of opinion, request the consumer to update her online post. Chance are she'd oblige and you would've turned a negative review into a positive one without any search engine push and shove.

Hire an agency if you think all this can get too overwhelming to do internally, but steer clear of tricks like impersonating customers and generating fake positive reviews. The web might seem like a haven for impersonation, don't give in to the temptation. If too many people are saying bad things about you online, you must be doing something wrong. Direct your energies towards getting the act right rather than spin-doctoring fake reviews. Once you have done that, go out and shout out loud from the rooftops but don't try sneaking in on other people's roofs to make a point. You might get pushed over the edge.