When it comes to online public relations it is crucial that all businesses today realize how important it is to keep a positive image on the internet and not just the old and traditional word of mouth about a company. In today's world it is incredibly hard to keep a company honest with peer to peer review sites like yelp and a plethora of consumer affair related websites that allow them to post whatever it is they please about your company.
A lot of these sites are not credible at all because they take no liability of what the user posts and they refuse to remove anything at all costs. The biggest known cases are sites like ripoffreport.com and Consumeraffairs.com where the users can go ahead and vandalize a company completely without giving up their identity and the repercussions are slim to none because the sites owners refuse to release the data and information.
So what can a company in the 21st century do about all of this? Well the only feasible solution today seems to be that companies need to partake in online public relations campaigns that help to suppress negative information about their company online. The online pr gig is a little bit different however than the traditional public relations where a press release was mailed out to all of the writers in the country at local newspapers and if they liked a story they would publish it for the world to see in their paper.
In today's world the internet makes things a lot quicker and allows us to publish information on the fly. So internet PR today requires a strong understanding of how the search engines work and what a company can do to fight off negative events like a deadly food outbreak at one of their restaurants.
First make sure that you are social. Whether or not you are a fan of the following sites make sure your business has a profile on these sites and that they are consistently updated since the search engines strive to find new content:
- Hubpages
- WordPress/Blogspot (need to have a blog presence)
- LinkedIn (for connecting with other business people)
- Ezine or PrWeb.com Account
Launching press releases constantly and letting people know that you have a twitter or a facebook fan page that they should like is a surefire way to start a successful online public relations campaign. What you also need to be keen on is making sure that your company has a website and that you own the .net, .org, and. info.
Robert is an internet expert. He has done consulting work for the online reputation company profile defenders and speaks publicly at the Venture Capital forum in Portland on the third Wednesday of each month.
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