Your online reputation is quite possibly your most valuable intangible asset. It helps you earn trust among consumers, increase the value of your company’s brand, and can even serve to attract and keep more capable and talented employees. And just as you need to market your products and services to raise awareness and increase market share and sales, you also need to market your reputation. Not unsurprisingly, your reputation, once developed and marketed, needs to be continuously monitored and protected.
The marketing aspect of building your online reputation and the protective aspect of maintaining the integrity of your reputation are often referred to together as “reputation PR.” Properly performed, reputation PR will allow you to take control of the narrative around your identity, help to shape people’s perceptions of you and your company’s brand, and protect your image in the crucible of the media and in the court of public opinion.
Reputation PR can also be defined from an operational perspective as proactively using public relations tools, tactics, and strategies in order to protect or improve your online reputation. This can be differentiated somewhat from traditional PR in that it focuses exclusively on building and keeping a good reputation, and not just getting your name mentioned in mainstream and digital media to achieve recognition.
Reputation PR very often includes removing negative online information and articles about your brand, creating and publishing fresh positive content to drive negative press and information further down in search engine results, responding to online customer reviews, or using influencer marketing to build positive brand buzz, just by way of example. Like corporate brand management, reputation PR requires constant vigilance, ongoing creativity, and aggressive communication. A well-crafted reputation PR campaign generally will have your company playing a positive role, but may require, at times, that you assume a defensive role when your image is under attack. NXP is expert at developing, promulgating, and defending your brand’s identity and integrity.
The bigger you become, the easier a target you we be for your opposition. It is common practice among adversaries, whatever their position or motivation, to take to the media to hurt the reputation of a business enterprise or an individual perceived as a rival. Dissatisfied customers, former employees and former clients quite often find some release in maligning a former employer or contractor. They may post negative information online or may take to the courts for judicial relief. Courtroom battles often find their way into mainstream and alternative media, and their ultimate outcomes can even be substantially influenced by media bias treatment. When your brand, corporate or personal, is under attack, NXP will enact appropriate countermeasures to help you regain control of the narrative and give you a better, more positive search engine and public appearance. That is the very essence of reputation management PR.
In controlling the narrative, powerful responses to adversarial assaults in the media are posted in your behalf to indicate your responsiveness to negative commentary, as well as to effectively and persuasively present your side of the story. A failure, on your part, to be responsive to your critics is either tantamount to an admission of wrongdoing or fault, or will be perceived negatively as indifference. Either prospect is untenable, and negatives must always be counterbalanced and minimized by positives.
While negative information, in the form of poor reviews or courtroom news, cannot generally be made to disappear completely from search engine results, an overwhelming preponderance of positive reviews and favorable information can often very effectively dilute their potency. High-ranking positive search engine results in great numbers tend to “push down” negative information. NXP assists its reputation management PR clients in stacking search engine results in their favor, and in giving each of those clients a better general media profile.