Question: Can you control what people say about you online?
Answer: Can You Control What People Say About You Online? You can prevent it in the first place with reputation management services to protect your business and the image that you’ve worked so hard to build.
Generally speaking, without training, no, you can’t control what people say about you online. The average person doesn’t know how search engines work and answering or responding to reviews is a dangerous, bad idea.
It can backfire and will often inspire more problems and unleash additional negative retorts, responses and a massive online attack.
You should hire a firm experienced in reputation management, reputation repair, reputation protection, you can begin to affect what appears about you at the top of the search engines.
The Marketing Square has worked in reputation control and reputation management since 2010. Clients have had success in changing what’s found and what’s said about them, their business, their personal and professional status online.
Question: Should you respond to negative ratings and horrible reviews?
Answer: No. Never. You should not respond to negative ratings and horrible reviews. Yes, your reputation can be controlled, but no, generally, you personally cannot and should NEVER respond to negative online information.
If you get a bad rating or a nasty review by an anonymous person who you think you can identify based on what they say, stay out of it and call an expert to get help with your reputation management.
Try to get a hold of your emotions and anger before you respond with something equally as nasty to any comment or review or rating online.
Take a deep breath, count to 10, ignore it and don’t respond no matter how tempted you are. Call The Marketing Square and please, don’t wait to see what happens. It can and does get worse the longer you wait for things to get better.
Question: Can you permanently remove things from the Internet?
Answer: No, unless the elements meet Google specifications for removal. Once information is online, it stays on the Internet. No, Google is not going to remove it unless it meets Google Removal Criteria. Google doesn’t have any control over social media or ratings or reviews websites.
Even if you post it and immediately delete it, there’s a digital footprint of the offending information and the chance that someone found it, downloaded it, duplicated it, or shared it is likely.
Most things posted online are there, buried somewhere online, forever. If someone tells you they can remove it permanently, they’re not telling you the truth. The company that tells you that they can get everything taken down is lying to you. Beware of those companies as they’ll prey upon your vulnerability and The Marketing Square is telling you here. Call and ask them, get an estimate. Then, work with us
Question: Can you stop viral videos or pictures?
Answer: Everyone knows the word, “viral,” and should understand by now that if you accidentally put a picture on social media, or video, on YouTube about you, it’s there probably for good. It’s off and running to places where people click, share, copy and download.
You may ask a publication, a social media, a violating person or website master to remove something, but you can’t get it down with some magic eraser.
Sure, there are hackers and deep web resources. But when you go over to the dark side and pay a stranger to do something online, it’s at your risk. Can they remove it and come back and post it again to shake you down for money? Of course they can and you’ll have made the situation worse.
Don’t go deep webs and expect honest, good, kind, friendly and helpful resources. You don’t know what you’re getting into or whether what they do is illegal and can be traced back to you.
