Bad publicity on the web is a type of online marketing. It’s a type of marketing by a dissatisfied customer against you!

In the last post, Bad Publicity On the Web – Part 1, I talked about some ways to deal with negative feedback in sites like Ebay, Amazon, Guru, and others.

But there are two other types of negative publicity you can get which are harder to deal with: Scam reporting sites and hate sites.

Scam reporting sites are often forums where angry customers go to post feedback about a negative experience. While scam reporting sites do have value in alerting people to scams, they don’t always have the filter to weed out the difference between scams and dissatisfied customers.

Hate sites are sites that are specifically geared to a company (and often have the word "hate" or "sucks" attached to it). Obviously, these sites are magnets for bad publicity about the related company.

So what can you do about it? Here are a few options:

1.    Ignore it. There isn’t much you can because this stuff will appear. Continue to provide great service and, unless the negative feedback is ubiquitous, it shouldn’t bother. (If there is a lot of negative feedback, maybe you should take a look at your operation).

2.    Respond. This is risky but I’ve seen it work. It’s risky because you stand the risk of getting drawn into a fight where the odds are stacked against you (especially on hate sites). However, if you are professional and level headed and apologetic, it can work. I’ve seen it work although, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t pick this as the option I’d take.

3.    Ramp up marketing. That’s what I recommended last time and I’d recommend it this time, too. And, this is exactly what I would do if I ever found bad publicity about my business: Boost your marketing dramatically and don’t just aim to point everything back to your .com website. Work hard to own or control the first 20 Google searches. Buy the .net and .org and .biz versions of your domain name and set up separate websites. Create multiple Squidoo sites. Start producing press releases every week and articles every single day. You’ll not only get a lot more business but you can help to drive the negative publicity off of the first 2 pages of Google.

4.    Seek legal counsel. This can be challenging and expensive, so make sure that winning will be worth it. (Don’t respond this way only if you are fighting "for the principle of the matter). Libel is a common legal argument but sometimes copyright infringement is brought in, too, if they are using your logo.

5.    Rebrand. This is an extreme step but it could be the right answer if the feedback is brutal and widespread. If it is enough to hurt business but not enough to hire a lawyer, consider a brand new corporate identity: New domain name, new marketing content, new everything.

These options require some investment; it won’t be cheap. But, it might still cost you less than what you’d lose from the negative publicity.

Brought to you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

Bad publicity on the web is a type of "marketing". It’s marketing by other people to convince your prospects to shop somewhere else. But it’s not necessarily out of your control.

Recently, I was online shopping for a hotel for a trip. I found one and read the comments of people who had stayed there. Unfortunately, those comments were primarily negative. I continued my search and continued to find negative comments. I came to realize that, in hotels at least, people only give feedback if the experience is bad. I finally just chose a hotel based on other (non-feedback) factors and found it to be good in spite of what people said.

We see feedback forms in places like Ebay, Amazon, Guru, and on industry specific portals (like travel sites or hotel sites).

As a business owner, you can’t please everyone and one of the sad realities of life is: If people enjoy your services they may or may not give you feedback, but if they had a bad experience they will definitely let people know.

So, what can you do about it?

1.    Before it even gets to the feedback stage, inquire about the service. If someone complains, make it up to them with a surprising amount of service. This won’t always work but it can help.

2.    Rather than letting feedback take its natural (and often negative) course, remind EVERYONE to leave feedback. A simple reminder could loosen the tongues of more angry customers but it might also get your happy customers typing, too.

3.    If possible (and in some systems it is), provide an incentive for people to leave feedback. No matter what feedback they leave, offer them something for leaving feedback. This won’t stop the negative people from posting negative feedback but it should encourage the happy customers to leave their feedback. And, as long as you generally give good service, the occasional negative feedback will be eclipsed by the positive ones.

4.    If the feedback is searchable has been indexed (and I’ve seen cases where it is), it can be extra frustrating to you. In this case, ramp up your marketing and overwhelm the search engines with positive content from yourself (articles, press releases, etc.) which could appear higher in search results.

5.    If given the choice, consider responding but be extremely polite and respectful. (I’ve seen good and bad examples of this on the Better Business Bureau website).

So far I’ve just covered feedback in specific sites, but sometimes customers will either post negative statements about you at scam-reporting sites or at hate site. I’ll talk about these sites later this week and offer some ideas to help you do something about them.

Brought to you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.