Intellectual property aside, a company’s reputation is pretty much in the public domain. While everyone hopes that their company is well liked, it is a bad idea to take this assumption for granted. The internet’s increasing reach make it a medium hard to ignore. When your online reputation is taking a beating staying silent is not a good idea, as a client of ours discovered.

The Case
The client’s problem stemmed from a reputation issue that they had noticed but did not resolve hoping it would die down with time. An ex-employee had been spreading false rumors about the organization on various portals related to the industry and this was slowly eroding the goodwill the company enjoyed. Potential employees walked away and, they later guessed, a few potential clients too. Our client had no idea until someone pointed it out to them. The posts were read in horror, duly noted and the company decided to wait it out. This was November 2009. A few token efforts were made to douse the flames but discontinued when they realized they were egging on the bloggers. An email began circulating saying blatant lies about the company.

In March 2010, an old customer pointed this out to them and they knew something had to be done. Legal notes were sent but the forum owner was neither legally liable nor could he violate the integrity of his website by deleting posts. The only option left to them was to take the bull by the horns and they were little equipped to do so.

This is when iridium Interactive was called in. Here is a snapshot of the things we did to build a stronger reputation

Listening:
iridium set up its monitoring tools starting with simple free ones like Google Alerts and free online monitoring tools along with our own social media monitoring system. We listed out in detail all the forums and websites where the company was being spoken about favorably as well as negatively and set about identifying influencers who really affected the online reputation of the company.

Responding:
As soon as we got a picture of the kind of things that were being spoken about, iridium swung into action and listed out appropriate responses for the same. We engaged clients and employees to promote a positive view of the company. where there were negative reviews, we stepped in and resolved people’s queries.  Our SEO machinery swung into action working to position relevant information on the first few pages of major search engines instead of the false rumors. We went a step further and created positive conversations on more credible communities.

Engaging:
iridium set up social media accounts to represent the company online. We dug into twitter and started slowly to interact with the influencers in their field. A facebook page served as a touchpoint for the employees of the company, slowly evolving as an extended platform to promote activities, updates and discussions.  The blog which we set up and maintained was a mix of industry news and company updates positioning the company as a thought leader and industry peer.

Within six months we noticed a remarkable change. The damaging reviews and emails subsided. The company’s sentiment index swung from red to green. A greater chunk of information about the company was positive and positioned in the initial pages of web results. At an industry conference they were recognized for what really mattered, their performance, and pulled in greater business. iridium’s efforts on the online reputation management program had worked. This is now an an integral part of the company’s work ethic. Never again will they ignore the multitude of voices that speak about them.

iridium Interactive is a pioneering company with over 10 years of experience in the field of internet marketing.  we have been in the ‘social media’ field from before the term existed.

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