Taking responsibility for your part in your reputation

Taking responsibility for the mistakes you made is the fastest way to rebuild your reputation – on or offline

If you listened to some of the ‘experts’, you’d think that online reputation management is about filling the search engines with more of your own propaganda.  It isn’t. Its really about learning to listen what other people are saying to you – and about you.

When you first discover an online reputation crisis you can either fight it or you can acccept what it’s trying to tell you – and it always has something to tell you. Most people, however, react defensively when they discover someone posting negative comments about their products or services in a forum online.

As a business, if you find your reputation is coming under attack, then the first thing you need to do is to not react defensively. The second thing you need to do is to find out – and then admit to – whatever you did wrong. Culturally, of course, we’re not very good at doing that.  We tend towards flight or fight and these responses lies behind all online reputation problems.

In most of the reputation problems I’ve handled, the client has played some part in their problems. Often, businesses will have done something that’s unacceptable to their customers and then compounded the situation by refusing to listen or put it right. A private individual might have made one or two foolish mistakes and paid for it with negative attention from the press that sticks.

Some people advise not responding to serious online reputation attacks.  Contrary to that advice, we’re finding that helping our clients take responsibility for their mistakes publicly (and then make amends) is the single most effective way of helping them to rebuild their reputations.

There’s no software solution to help you do that and that’s why we’re here.

As we always say ‘Find it, Face it, Fix it’.