Imagine this: You love your business. You’ve invested years of your life and a lot of money into making it successful. So you’re not happy to discover that a former business partner (now a competitor) has begun badmouthing you on the Internet. In fact, he’s pretending to be a customer and has posted negative reviews about you on review sites.
So what do you do? Fight fire with fire and blast back with negative reviews of his firm? Enlist your acquaintances to badmouth him online? Hire a so-called Reputation Management firm to vaporize his comments?
Before you answer these questions, we’d encourage you to contemplate the ethics of your situation. On the one hand, the quality and integrity of your business has been questioned, and you’re right to be angry. But that doesn’t mean all defensive actions are appropriate.
To help you decide on an ethical response, the National Ethics Association has compiled the following Ten Commands of Reputation Defense. Consider them carefully before responding to any online reputation attack.
#1. Thou shalt not overact to Internet criticism. If your business has an online presence, expect that a small percentage of comments and reviews will be negative. That just comes with the territory. Overreacting to negative posts will likely make the situation worse.
#2. Instead, engage with complainers to resolve their problems. Customers who believe their concerns were heard will usually remove negative reviews. You should also view such events as an opportunity to get closer to your customers and to improve the way you do business.
#3. Thou shalt not hire “black-hat” reputation management firms to flood the Internet with poor-quality content designed only to hide negative information. This is a losing strategy long term.
#4.Instead, create content of real value to customers in order to provide a more accurate and balanced picture of your company. Then use legitimate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to make such content more visible to your prospects and clients.
#5.Thou shalt never post positive reviews about your own firm or direct your employees to do so. Nor should you post negative reviews about a competitor. Not only are these practices unethical, they are now illegal under the Federal Trade Commission’s “Blogger Rules.”
#6. Instead, let your customers know you welcome their feedback and encourage them to post their opinions on Yelp, Google Places, Angie’s List, and other review sites. Converting satisfied customers into Internet brand ambassadors will always be your most productive reputation-management strategy.
#7. Thou shalt not post exaggerated or untrue information about your firm or career on Wikipedia. Nor should you ever remove negative, but true, information from that site, even though it damages your reputation.
#8.Instead, monitor articles about you on the Internet, including those on Wikipedia, to make sure they’re accurate. If you uncover inaccurate information, request a correction or deletion from the site’s editorial staff.
#9. Thou shalt not view Internet reputation issues as primarily an SEO challenge—i.e., one that can be solved by creating volumes of neutralizing, but pointless, content.
#10. Instead, view reputation problems as a symptom of flawed business processes or customer relations and realize that the only way to fix such problems is to address their root causes. Papering them over with SEO techniques may mask the problems in the short term, but perpetuate them over the long run
Because you love your business so much and have so much invested in its success, it’s easy to overreact to reputation attacks. And when such attacks come from former business colleagues or from clients you tried hard to please, it’s doubly hard to keep things in perspective. At the National Ethics Association, we encourage our members to consider the ethical implications of their online actions and to implement lasting solutions to reputation problems, rather than technical quick fixes.