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Online reputation is when things go wrong.

Moderator: Sam Michelson, Five Blocks

Speakers: Shira Abel, Hunter & Bard, Nichola Stott, theMediaFlow, Jon Sumroy, National Positions.

Shira Abel is the first to go on the panel, talking about the 10 actions big companies did to damage their social activity using agencies, like: Godady, Chrome (banned from google), Ocean Marketing vs. Penny Arcade and more.

Number 1 is Weinergate, “The Dong Goodbye”, Anthony Weiner scandal still appears on the first results. Another example is the red cross mis-tweet that got saved easily with a nice following tweet.

Lessons learned: Fix your mistakes, admit, always have  sense of humor and hire a reputation management service if needed.

Shira Abel ORM presentation

Next up is John Adam Sumroy:

Presenting video of company apologies from 2011 (BP, Netflix, Groupon, EuroStar, JetBlue and more).

According to Sumroy, who started working in marketing twenty years ago, we’ve progressed so fast that the Warren Buffet quote “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it” is no long relevant. Today, ruining a reputation can be much quicker.

Most online reputation fixes are hidden by clients, still, Sumroy reveals a couple of examples:

The Kenya office of tourism approached Sumroy and asked him to clean up Google from all the negative results following a kidnap and murder case of British tourists. He said that there was no point of trying to clean up everything but suggested adding interesting articles about Kenya tourism addressing the fact it can be dangerous but also provides tips on how to be cautious.

The Second case was of a con man, a Playboy adventurer, who wanted John to clean up hi online reputation. Instead of cleaning it, they gave him pride of his past, telling how he had changed his life, talking in prisons and telling the world he can help others and about the man he is today. Sumroy shows a snippet of the story, explains the price paid by the ex con-man and the regret. In many cases you cannot push down the negative results below the fold, but you can tell the truth.

The answer to online negative reputation, which is often supported by Google suggestions, is good content. If Google suggests to add “fraud” to your company, don’t try to push it, float the web with lots of content. Keep the complaints and answer them.

Next up is Nichola Stott from theMediaFlow, who became aware of ORM after discovering her namesakes. She speak about Owning the Message – the SEOPR toolkit.

Reputation is subjective. Bad reputation can lead to lots of “bad” Links, for example, Ryanair, whose bad attitude leads to tons of negative links and rumors. She talks about the good things that can happen from a bad situation, for example, Weinergate and the compromising Twitter account.

Working with good professional PR people is important: every message could be spinned to be positive by those “spin doctors”. Recommended PR services online: PR newswire and mynewsdesk.

See: Nichola Stott Presentation

Sam Michelson is up next:

Reputation management went from getting rid of bad results (reputation.com expertise) to getting a different message out.

What reputation.com does is getting rid of bad reviews, scandals and other shit from the top 10 results, and often replacing them with lots of “Joe Shmo” profiles. But this is wrong. We want people to find the truth and own relevant results in the top 10. Rather than hiding the past Michelson prefers helping them to use the internet to tell their stories. No need to create lots of content, use current assets (including Wikipeida content which is highly preferred by Google results) to tell the story, usually have a long term outlook.