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Reputation management

Marketing technique

  • 7 min read
  • 4 chapters

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The ethical gray areas of online reputation management include the removal of mug shots from websites, the use of astroturfing in customer review sites, the censorship of complaints, and the use of search engine optimization tactics to influence results. In other cases, the ethical lines are clear; some reputation management companies are closely connected to websites that publish unverified and libelous statements about people. These unethical companies often impose exorbitant fees, amounting to thousands of dollars, to remove these posts – temporarily – from their websites.

Online reputation management, or ORM, focuses on the management of product and service search results within the digital space. A variety of electronic markets and online communities, such as eBay, Amazon, and Alibaba, have ORM systems built in, and using effective control nodes can minimize the threat and protect systems from possible misuses and abuses by malicious nodes in decentralized overlay networks. Big Data has the potential to be employed in overseeing and enhancing the reputation of organizations.

History

Public relations as a field was developed to manage the image reputation of a company or individual. The sub-field reputation management was created to broaden public relations outside of media relations.

As the Internet became widely available to individuals in the 1990s, online reputation management (ORM) became part of public relations. ORM focuses on a long-term reputation strategy that is consistent across Internet platforms. ORM includes search engine reputation management which is designed to counter negative search results and elevate positive content. Advocates of ORM say that if ignored, online perceptions may harm a company's performance.

ORM involves the monitoring of the reputation of an individual or a brand on the internet via social media platforms, addressing content which is potentially damaging to it, and attempting to solve problems before they cause financial damage. Reputation management also involves suppressing negative search results, while highlighting positive ones.

A 2015 study commissioned by the American Association of Advertising Agencies concluded that 4 percent of consumers believed advertisers and marketers practice integrity.

According to Susan Crawford, a cyberlaw specialist from Cardozo Law School, most websites will remove negative content when contacted to avoid litigation. The Wall Street Journal noted that in some cases, writing a letter to a detractor can have unintended consequences, though the company makes an effort to avoid writing to certain website operators that are likely to respond negatively. The company says it respects the First Amendment and does not try to remove "genuinely newsworthy speech." It generally cannot remove major government-related news stories from established publications or court records.

In 2015, Jon Ronson, author of "So You've Been Publicly Shamed", said that reputation management helped some people who became agoraphobic due to public humiliation from online shaming, but that it was an expensive service that many could not afford.

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