But first, a fair warning to CrunchGear: Had you missed it on this one, you’d have a reputation crisis of your own. Pointing out individuals/companies without factual verification is opening the door to potential error, lawsuits, and damage to one’s reputation. A easy solution for this is to liberally apply the word “allegedly”: “So and so allegedly paid users to give positive reviews.” That is easier to swallow, because it communicates that you have not verified the information yet, but are passing along the rumor.

Having said that, let’s take a look at Belkin’s public statement about the Mechanical Turk fiasco:

We want to stress that this is an isolated incident and to re-instill trust with you, we have taken the following courses of action:

- We’ve acted swiftly to remove all associated postings from the Mechanical Turk system.

- We’re working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed.

It’s also important to recognize that our retail partners had no knowledge of, or participation in, these postings.

Once again, we apologize for this occurrence, and we will work earnestly to regain the trust we have lost.

Sincerely,

Mark Reynoso

President, Belkin

Belkin offered

1. Humility
2. Acknowledgment of the need for rebuilding trust
3. Removal of ads
4. Removal of paid recommendations
5. Protection of partners’ reputations
6. Sincere, straightforward apology
7. Humility (again)
8. Addressed by President of the company

Time will tell how effective this strategy was, but I commend Belkin for conducting reputation repair from a non-defensive posture. Some executives have an irrational sense of “no one can touch me” syndrome, which will ultimately lead to even hairier scenarios before all is said and done. The attitude of Belkin’s reply is commendable, though the scope or reach of its message may not be able to compete with the reach of its crisis. Ultimately, the news of a scandal spreads faster and farther than an apology or a retraction.

Lesson learned? Proactive reputation monitoring and building would have caught this fiasco within the first hour of posting, and could have prevented most, if not all, of the damage done.

Are you paying attention? THIS is why you can’t afford to assume it won’t happen to you. This is why you can’t afford to wait until something bad happens. Repair is more expensive and costly than building.

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• Reputation Repair Versus Reputation Management

Without proper checks and balances, the future of black hat marketing is sabotage. False profiles, false ads, false statements. It’s coming, and is already here. You just don’t know about it because you’re not looking.

At this very moment, I have some black hat related domains sitting in my domain shopping cart. The Dark Side is tempting. Make no mistake. How easy is it to make money at black hat? Just don’t get caught. But ultimately, you reap what you sow. That is a certainty. It’s a universal principle.

Several of you are going to launch services, either openly or in secret, that offer sabotage-related services. It’s going to damage company’s reputations. They will need hardcore reputation management. But as much as that would provide me with job security, don’t go there.

It’s going to happen, though. I’m as certain of this as I am certain that human cloning will happen (if not already). And when sabotage takes off, God help us all. Filtering inauthentic chatter will become an all new expertise.

Example: if you read the comments made beneath the post I linked to above, you’ll see someone impersonated me just to prove my point. The first and third comments are by me, and the second is by someone else.

But as I mentioned in my comment, some sort of OpenID would have to be accepted universally for all things Web in order to prevent identity theft and sabotage. Don’t think that people aren’t already pushing for that, either. Just like American Presidents and war, some of the ID protection people are or will be responsible for highly publicized sabotage and reputation theft in order to scare the masses into adopting their ready-made solution.

This is the way of the world, folks. Build the solution, then exacerbate the problem to nudge people in your direction. So it begins.

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It’s rather obvious that most executives are not going to understand the value of proactive reputation management. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… right? Managing something you don’t know or believe could actually become a problem is not worth the monthly maintenance fee of several thousand dollars. Or is it? Only the cautious, conservative investor is likely to acknowledge the wisdom in proactively managing and guarding the corporate brand reputation.

Why spend money on something that hasn’t happened yet? Well, as Downhill points out, “Extensive reputation repair can entail building out as many as 10 sites – in other words 10 separate SEO jobs. At the heart of reputation management is an effective organic SEO strategy, and as we know – good organic SEO is not cheap.”

Well said. Building out sites and pages to fill the top 10 results of Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, and Ask will inevitably cost you much more when you’re competing with a solid negative authorities already in the top 10. The earlier you establish your presence, the better your chances of remaining at the top.

Let’s consider the options:

$3k-5k per month for proactive reputation management, OR

$40k+ per month for last minute emergency reputation repair.

Hmmm….. tough decision.

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• A Look at Belkin Mechanical Turk Response
• Green Trendsetting through Telecommuting
• The Slippery Slope of Celebrity Reputation Management
• Data Loss Leads to Reputation Crises
• 6 Easy Steps to Personal Reputation Management

Regardless of the manner in which sensitive personal information is lost, the result is always a loss of funds and damage to a company’s reputation. As an executive for such a company, you’ll need to monitor your reputation online. Angry, hurt, and dissatisfied customers are more prone to comment online than happy and satisfied customers. Look for negative statements made and respond to them quickly.

In order to do this, your company needs to have a public statement/response prepared in advance. Know what you will say to your clients and customers before they complain, so that you can be first to comment on negative blog posts and forum discussions.

Even a meager data loss in case of business loan may lead to severe reputation loss for a financial body. Data management is a critical task for every single occurrence of funds transfer be it for any cheap loans or for a highly secured heavy loan. Some specific funding institutions, like home loan bank, grant long term loans even to the customers who are not eligible for bad credit loan. In most of the cases choosing a bad credit need loan may incur much higher interest rates than usual making them always the last resort.

In the case of data theft or loss, be prepared to announce how the company has taken action to pursue justice and/or what steps will be taken to ensure said loss does not happen again. Some percentage of customer fallout is unavoidable, but you can manage that percentage with a well-timed and worded response.

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• Circuit City will close 155 stores this holiday season – reputation management needed
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Experience tells me that small companies are often subject to unfair criticism from ex-employees or poor vendor relationships. Small business lends toward a more comfortable, personable atmosphere in the workplace, which can be great for morale, until a relationship goes awry. Just one disgruntled employee might feel empowered to slander or even falsely accuse a former employer. I’ve even seen instances where former employees or business partners take on false identities in forums and pretend to be the voice of the company.

Any company that utilizes a website for any amount of lead generation or business interaction will suffer from accusations or any level of bad press. Imagine how difficult it could be to sell a high level product or gain an investor if anyone checking your name online first reads accusations against you and your company! The damage is irreparable… or it would be, if not for online reputation management!

Just keep in mind that the goal is to create positive results which replace the negative results. More often than not, you won’t convince a webmaster to remove content from their site without a lawsuit. Your most reliable option is to hire someone to do some SEO/ORM for your name or company name. I would personally recommend MarketNet, especially if you’re looking for a Dallas-based Search Engine Optimization company. That said, there are other professionals out there who can help (and MarketNet handles search and social marketing for clients all around the country, as well).

Regardless of whom you choose, make sure they know what they’re doing. If you’re not sure, contact me and I’ll review their website and claims and let you know whether they appear to have it all together.

This site is meant to be a useful tool for business owners, marketing managers, and PR professionals. It’s more of a hobby for me, so I don’t have much to gain from giving you advice (unless you click on my AdSense ads). I think I made a total of $35 for last year from my other website, so I’m obviously not doing it for the money.

Questions and comments are always welcome.

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