Public relations are nothing new and many people have been using these services for many years in order to manage the way in which the public views them through the media. In the digital age however PR companies have changed somewhat and now focus, as you can imagine, most of their efforts online. A negative online reputation is not difficult to attain but it is very difficult to get rid of once it is there. In fact we live in a world whereby a single piece of negative content can go viral and quickly destroy careers, businesses and people’s lives. This is why reputation management firms exist, they carefully monitor and manage online reputations and seek to improve the reputations of their clients online. The question that I am often asked with regards to reputation management companies is who would use them? To answer that, here are just some examples of the type of people who could benefit from their services.
Businesses
Businesses live and die by their online reputations and whether they are operating online or otherwise, they must maintain a positive reputation online. A bad review, a scathing write up or a backhanded comment on social media could be enough to cause damage to a business which can easily put a dent in sales and damage the brand that the business is trying to create. Businesses make up the largest percentage of clients which rep management firms have.
Celebrities
Much like businesses celebs live off their reputation and as we have seen in recent years, celebrities who we believe to be bad can be easily thrown to one side. Celebrities in the public sphere are very disposable so in order to stay relevant they must do all that they can to keep as much positivity about them that they can. In the main celebs will use this service to dispel rumors which have been conjured up, or fake news stories which have been written about them.
CEOs and Public Figures
There are many reasons why a CEO may look to clean up their reputation online. In some cases the individual may have done something that they shouldn’t which they of course don’t want to be seen online. In other cases that I have seen, a namesake of the CEO has committed some heinous crime and the CEO, not wanting to be confused as being the culprit, will pay for a rep management company to promote the real person online, rather than having everyone believe that thy committed the act. CEOs and public figures invest heavily in their reputation because that is what they pride themselves on and if there is anything out there online that threatens that, they will use a rep management company to clean it up and keep things positive.
These are just some examples of what kind of clients rep management companies have, but the truth is that all manner of people rely on the service that they provide.
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