Conversational Media Marketing

There seem to be two schools of thought evolving, one that extols the virtues of "transparency" and "authenticity" and one that simply says, "We'll drive the negative mentions down...just get rid of the bad stuff."

The latter has the potential to result in the use of  "blackhat" techniques. For instance, the BW article mentions one company, Internet Reputation Management, that recruits bloggers to write nice things about their clients on third-party sites in order to drive up positive results, all without necessarily disclosing the fact the bloggers are being paid.

Sounds a little sleazy to me. Even if not, it seems those tactics comprise only a band-aid solution.

A reputation management company located just down the road from me, ReputationHawk, says businesses tend to fall into one of three categories:

# 1 - I or my company has received negative publicity. At one time these accusations were true or partially true but now the issues have been addressed and corrected.

# 2 - I or my company has received negative publicity based on false rumors that have had no validity at any time in the past or present.

# 3 - I or my company has received valid negative publicity.

In the event of the latter category they suggest the tact to take is to fix what's broken. In other words, remedy the problems that caused the negative publicity in the first place.

In the former cases, their approach is to generate "positive" publicity, then build the "authority" of that publicity so that it drives the negative off the front page.

While that may work for a time, I can't see it being a long-term fix and certainly not a replacement for the willingness of a company to deal forthrightly with claims made against it and act with integrity in all its business practices.

Honesty, transparency and ethics. Those are the mainstays for managing any business reputation.