Martin will be speaking about “Online Reputation Management” at Searchfest 2009 which will be held March 10th in Portland, Oregon. Get your tickets now.
1) Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.
Martin Bowling has worked in the Internet Marketing & Development space since 1999. The first part of his career was helping small West Virginia based business increase their visibility on the internet. Applying his talents in this area eventually landed him contracts with Toyota, Bayer Crop Science, The Air National Guard, West Virginia Department of Health & Human Services, West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office & Marie Calendar Foods.
Martin is the CTO of a small boutique Internet Marketing firm Vec3 based in Charleston, WV. With his primary focus on organic seo, social media & online reputation management. Martin believes that utilizing a multi discpline strategy is the only way to go in today’s every changing world, he never locks his clients into a one track strategy.
https://vecthree.com <- work https://martinbowling.com <- blog
2) What the best way to react if your brand is being trashed online?
The best way to react to be genuine, honest and transparent. Try and move the conversation to somewhere that you control. Make a post informing people of the situation and how you are going to rectify.
Leave comments open, this will ensure that as much of the conversation as possible will stay on one of your properties. Do not try and censor people or delete comments, this will only enrage people and they will start making content about you else, and will only hurt you further.
Your best weapon in diffusing a potential reputation management nightmare is to listen and try and proactively work towards a solution that will make all parties whole again.
3) How can social media be effectively utilized in an online reputation management crisis situation?
I think social media is a very important part of any reputation mangement situation because it allows you a platform to get your message out. You can create social media profiles that will act as the official channels and use that to push out your content. Additional you can leverage the trust and authority of these domains to try and out rank any potential negative items that might be showing in google.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.