At Reputation Communications, we like to focus on all of the good the Internet can do for your reputation capital. Of course, in order to reap all of the Internet’s benefits, being aware of the side of the Internet that poses risks is Important.
- Websites can be created in your name that are intended to denigrate or attract inappropriate attention to you or your organization, ranging from responses to your political views to public protests of your company’s activities and direction.
- Anonymous and biased negative commentary about you can be published on public Internet forums.
- An attacker can organize campaigns on Twitter and other social media platforms that attack your credibility and views in dozens of daily tweets and posts.
- Malicious content, from caricatures and doctored photographs of you or your organization’s logo or website, to photographs of your home and listings of your home address, can be posted online.
- Attackers can mount social media campaigns that hurl abuse or other negative messages that can damage your brand, destroy shareholder value and cause company executives to step down.
Though these risks seem daunting, you are not powerless. Employing an online reputation management firm (ORM) makes sure your story is factually correct and positive, and makes sure that it appears in all the right places on the Internet. It can be told using text, video, audio, images, blog posts, Facebook, a website, and many other platforms.
ORM is also utilized when:
- Your company is attacked in a proxy battle, and defamatory statements are hurled at you online—where they stick.
- Your opponents use online tactics aimed at destroying your influence.
- Foreign nationals threaten to extort you and publish fake news to smear your reputation.
- You are sued for divorce, sexual harassment or other reasons, and legal notices fill the first page of your Google results.
- You dismiss an employee or end a personal relationship and the person retaliates, whether through writing an anonymous blog they created specifically to demean you, or publishing confidential information and documents that threaten the shareholder value of your company.
- Your address and satellite pictures of your home are readily found online.
Also remember that while keeping a low profile on the Internet may be less work than building and maintaining your online reputation, not protecting yourself leaves you vulnerable and defenseless to malicious online attacks.
Our founder and CEO, Shannon Wilkinson, recently wrote an article for Risk Assistance Network + Exchange (RANE) that highlights these reputation risks and how online reputation management can be used to avoid them. You can find it here.