06/26/08

We’ve all heard the term “reputation management” as it applies to businesses. It’s really what every good PR professional or PR firm considers the central focus of their job.  But consider this take: the notion of “pre-emptive reputation management,” or PRM.  It’s a term I’d never heard before, so I was fascinated when I came upon a blog post on the topic.  It was written by Jeff Quipp, who’s CEO of a search optimization firm named Search Engine People in Toronto. He’s also a regular contributor to the well known SearchEngineWatch.com.

In his blog post, he defines PRM as “the ability to prevent most negative stories about you or your company from reaching the first page of the main Google search results.” How in the world does one accomplish such a thing?

Well, according to Quipp, the practice of PRM just requires that you apply some effort in advance. The actions he recommends are intended “to prevent negative stories from ranking high for key terms before they are even written.” (My italics.) Conversely, he refers to actions taken after the fact to remove or push bad stories beneath the fold or first page as “Reactive Reputation Management” (RRM) techniques.

“Obviously,” says Quipp, “it is better to communicate with customers continuously to ensure that such (bad) posts do not appear...."That said, I also think that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’. Why risk the possible resulting damage when you’re not necessarily dealing with rationale behaviour or people?”

Quipp says that, In most cases, PRM techniques involve (1) identifying the term or terms that pose the greatest risk to the person or company, (2) ensuring that a number of other powerful pages rank for those selected terms, and (3) maintaining and strengthening those pages continuously over time.

He goes on to say that his company’s calculations suggest that roughly 90-95% of negative stories about a company or person can be prevented from appearing in the first page of search results for the given terms, and, in the other 5-10% of cases where a negative piece does make it to the first page, it will either appear below the fold, or disappear from page one of the search results much much faster that it would have without engaging in PRM. Fascinating, huh?

If these calculations are correct, he says, “how can a company that has spent years building its reputation, not engage in Pre-Emptive Reputation Management? There is just too much at risk! It just takes one really bad piece, and your pristine reputation can be popped like a balloon.”

What do you think?  Is your reputation, or that of your employer or client, worth a little PRM?

UPDATE 6/27/08: Just found another good article on this same topic, on Ragan.com: How to Protect Your Online Reputation, which also touches on the aspect of hiring outside help.