Online reputation management is a specialized field that requires a solid understanding of marketing, branding, public relations, website content, social media and more.
Since online reputation management services are in high demand, many companies enter this industry despite not having the required skills. They attract clients by making big claims, unrealistic promises and commitments they probably cannot fulfil. This can end in a waste of money for their clients and damaging to their online reputation.
One common approach us to offer what seems to be a great deal, complete with guarantees. But when the project has started, then the client finds out that the contract only covers basic work and a lot of extra payments are needed to complete the work to a good standard.
E.g. only carrying out very basic SEO improvements and wanting more money for anything further.
Once you have an Online Reputation Management in place, they will have all of your logins and passwords for social media accounts, website etc. And that can make it difficult to get rid of them safely.
Some poor online reputation management companies work really hard in the first month to win the client’s confidence, then sit back and simply monitor until near the end of the contract when they wake-up again and start new actions.
The Fake Guarantee
Many online reputation management business offer a guarantee for the client of being at the top of relevant Google searches, double the number of visitors to a website, 50% increase in sales etc. But these are unrealistic. There are ways of fulfilling the guarantees without providing anything of value to the customer so don’t be taken in by these.
E.g. it’s easy to be number one on Google for a long keyword phrase that no-one would ever use.
The worst scam is where the fake online reputation management companies create negative content themselves and get it ranking high on Google. Once the client gets to know about it, the fake online reputation companies remove the negative content and pretend as if they had to work hard for that result.
Selection of an Online Reputation Management Company
If you do want to employ an Online Reputation Management Company then do your research to ensure they are the real deal and not a waster of money. For any company you are considering:-
- Research the company in detail, looking for objective evidence and reviews.
- Research their team on LinkedIn or other relevant platforms to see if they have the required skillset and experience to handle the account
- Take up references I.e. contact their previous customers
- Discuss with the company a possible plan of action, and if they make unrealistic claims then avoid them
- Check any ‘awards’ quoted are genuine
If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.
