It seems like last year an online reputation management search would have turned up a bunch of college kids charging thirty bucks a month to send you information generated for free by Google News and a single AdWords ad from a guy who operates from his house. Now it seems like every other day, another search engine optimization company is launching their “ORM” sector with no idea what they are getting themselves into.
When we started offering the service under our search engine optimization company in 2006, we were running a virtual sting operation. We received confidentiality agreements from some clients that were so long that you would have thought that every Harvard Law alumnus of the last thirty years had written a page. Clients demanding to see background checks on every set of eyes that would look at their name, clauses that included “document destruction dates”, secure facility obligations, and even “armed information transport” (OK, we lost that count).
Our network of criminal defense consultants sent people from all over the world. And, we did a good job for them, we still do.
The point is that a reputation is serious business. And now, a bunch of tech-savvy security newbies are taking the reputations of individuals and businesses and treating them like any other search engine optimization account. You can not do that.
Many people and companies that need reputation management have made someone, somewhere very angry. You (as a reputation management company) get in the way of that being public. If you’re not thick-skinned and tight-lipped, your client’s enemies are going to smell your efforts and blog your client’s name. Try to clean up after that. Therefore, secrecy is the best way to advance an online reputation management or ORM campaign.
With the growing popularity of the industry, a lighter clientele is on the horizon. Local professionals with embarrassing petty crimes, family problems finding their way into the news (messy divorces, teens with DUIs, etc.), and companies with loud and angry customers are quickly constituting the majority.
However, the reputation management company (if it’s doing a good job) will get the occasional threatening phone call, a mysterious visitor asking “how do you know so-and-so?” and the funny “I know who you are” emails. Not a big deal for the people who work for us or for someone like me who spent my teenage life into adulthood working in Las Vegas casinos in the 1970s, but will the new SEO experts keep their secrets under wraps? so much pressure?
Probably not. Move along; bet your reputation on it.
