Negative PR can have huge consequences for your business, and often times, it’s not necessarily accurate. The internet provides a platform to everyone, and sometimes people who wish to do harm to your company can use this against you.
If this does happen, it can be demoralizing, but you can use your online presence to fight back. With the right use of your digital marketing, you can move on from this setback and ensure that positive PR wins out.
Search Engine Optimization
A nightmare scenario for businesses is when someone Googles their brand name and a bad review comes up. Obviously, this is terrible for business, and action has to be taken.
The good news is, it’s very difficult for external websites to rank for someone else’s brand name. If you’re doing your SEO right, then it shouldn’t take too much effort to push the bad review down the rankings and eventually banish it to page two (where virtually nobody looks).
Factory, an SEO company Manchester, will be able to help you with this and make sure you control the rankings for your brand name.
Social Media
Social media is a platform where ideas spread like wildfire. Unfortunately, not all of these ideas are based in truth, which can present challenges for companies.
If someone with a big following decides to post something negative, then there’s not much you can do to stop it from spreading. However, what you are in control of is your response to the situation, and your own social media presence.
You should be growing your social media presence, whether you have PR problems or not, but when you do find yourself with negative PR, you can use your social media to showcase all the positive things you do.
Ideas can spread quickly on social media, but they can be forgotten just as quickly, and with the right social media strategy, you can change the message and move on from the bad PR.
Pay Per Click
If you want to make an immediate change to the way your brand is portrayed in the search engines, then pay per click advertising is the perfect platform. It may seem counterintuitive to bid on your brand name, but if you don’t like what’s in the top organic results, this can be very beneficial.
It’s not that easy to distinguish between what is a paid result and what’s organic on Google these days, so whatever you put in your advert is going to carry plenty of weight. This is your opportunity to put a positive message in people’s minds when they first come into contact with your brand, and this is very powerful.
PPC is a great way to skip straight to the top of the search engine results pages, allowing you to control the message and start the process of building positive PR. It may cost you a little extra money, but the results can be well worth it.
