Online Reputation Management Part 4: What to do When Something Goes Bump on the Net

Knowing what to do when you find negative information about your brand online is one of the most important, yet least understood steps in a first-class online reputation management program.  As you will recall, in prior steps, organizations lay the groundwork first by:

1. Understanding that reputation management is not quick and cheap;
2. Determining the voices that matter in your reputation or your issues; and
3. Aggregating all of the content that matters in one place.

Once all of that is done and you find a piece of information that you think may present a threat, you have to have a process and even methodology in place to a) assess the threat or opportunity posed and b) calibrate your response to it.

Again, I harken back to my days in the agency world, during which we would uncover an unflattering or profane posting, web site or some other material, and our clients' knee-jerk reaction would often be what I would call "killing a fly with a sledgehammer," e.g. calling in the legal department.

Bad move.

There are indeed times in which litigation is necessary, but understand that it is often the last resort.  Trying to sue someone to take down something that you deem offensive only adds a lot of gasoline to a fire that may be merely smoldering.

So after taking a deep breath and encouraging others within your organization to do so, there are some basic steps that you can take to determine when - or if - to take any sort of action.  I suggest:

1. Take a look at the credibility of the site, blog or board on which you are being attacked.  Check their Technorati, Google Page rank, BlogPulse or Alexa ranking.  If all else fails, do a backwards link check and see how many other sites link to them.  If no one reads it, as they say on the "Sopranos," "fuggetaboutit."
2. Think carefully about the importance of the online venue with your stakeholders.  If you are a meat packing company with food sanitation issues and it comes up in the Journal of Accountancy, you are probably just fine.
3. If negative information appears in a place that appears to have some credibility, take a look at the level of visibility within it  (e.g., on home pages versus deep within the site).  It's just like being above the fold in the New York Times vs. on page C47.  Big difference.
4. Examine the viral nature of the information.  If it's negative and slams you, it's one thing, but if there is a call to action like a petition, boycott, protest or something similar, start sweating.

If the information that you find, after examining all of the criteria above, is still something that you need to worry about, it's probably time to take some form of action.  It's critical, however, to remember to calibrate your response with the threat posed.  Again, don't kill a fly with a sledgehammer.

1. Maintain goodwill with your publics that give you the societal license to operate.  This could be on the cover of "Duh" Magazine, but if you have generally good relations with your stakeholders, when bad things happen, it won't seem that bad.  Think about Tylenol and Johnson & Johnson.
2. For non-threatening issues, take no active response except fact finding.  Check the box and keep it in your monitoring system if a blogger with a Technorati authority ranking of "1" says you stink.
3. For emerging issues, use primarily a one-on-one response method, for example, if you find something on a consumer complaint site that attacks your company.  A good strategy would be to respond - on the blog or message board - with an apology, and offer to help along with your contact info.  Be sincere, present transparency, openness, and a desire to help.  The problem should go away.  Botch it, and you are in trouble: example.
4. For expanding issues, begin to craft a public message strategy and seek the endorsement and support of third parties.  I could write ten other articles on online rumor control, but think about Procter and Gamble and rumors of associations with the "Church of Satan."  They reached out to Snopes.com, a leading "de-bunking" Web site and got third-party validation that the issue was false.
5. For "red alert" issues, begin to actively mobilize grassroots stakeholder networks.  You are going to need friends in a time of crisis that will speak out on your behalf.
6. Finally, when it's Defcon-4, it's time to implement your online and offline crisis communications plan.  Online elements might include things like a dark Web site, blogger outreach, sponsored links, supporting statements on third-party sites (linked to yours) and another look at your search engine rankings. 

Finally, it's important to understand that 99 percent of the issues that go "bump" on the 'net don't require a full-blown crisis response; you can often nip an issue in the bud with a politely worded email or blog posting.

Mark Story is a part-time, adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a full-time communications professional at a government agency in Washington, D.C. Prior to the government, Mark worked for 11 years in some of the largest online public relations shops in the world.  Tweet him at mstory123.