In reputation management, like sports, the best defense is often a good offense. Two proactive moves to make now are buying domain names associated with your company’s name, products, and services, and then build websites or mini-sites associated to the new domains.

With information travelling around the internet at the speed of light a negative review, commentary, or article can be put in front of hundreds or thousands of viewers before you even know it exists. For that reason alone, using online reputation monitoring to stay current with what is being said on blogs, forums, and social media sites is absolutely crucial for the purpose of brand management and to stay on top of the public perception of your company, products, and/or services. The good news is that there are numerous ways to keep up with and the chatter and participate when necessary.

The end result of a reputation management campaign doesn’t necessarily need to stop with just pushing negative content off of the front pages of the search engines. While reaching that objective can be considered a victory, an aggressive campaign executed for optimal results can fortify the branding effort, act as an online resume, or serve other marketing purposes. At issue is whether the content aimed at replacing the articles, posts, etc. is being used simply as a placeholder on the front pages of the search engines or to advance the cause of the individual or company for whom the work is being done.

In part 1 of this two part article, we wrote of the vital importance of generating meaningful content as opposed to creating “fluff” to act as placeholders while engaged in a reputation management campaign. To review, a placeholder-based campaign is typically run as a quasi do-it-yourself project with a reputation management company setting up a variety of domains, such as numerous blogs, and then leaving it to the client to populate them with content.

There seemingly are as many outlets for consumer generated media as there are consumers. The ability for anyone to post an opinion, comment, or grievance and get it seen by hundreds or thousands of people gives every day consumers a power and a voice not seen before the advent of the internet. In many ways, the unfiltered information can provide valuable, first-hand information on products, companies, and services. While positive reviews are common, many of the product and company related content seen on the web is generated in terms of negative reviews, complaints, and grievances. Much of this negative sentiment is seen regularly on two sites; Complaintsboard.com and Ripoffreport.com.

As hard as you work to build your brand and your company’s image, it can all come tumbling down in a heartbeat through an accidental mishap, an accident waiting to happen, or a rumor that gets out of hand thanks to ease of getting consumer generated content on the internet. While it’s impossible to control many of the variables, there are still measures your online reputation management company can take to afford as much protection as possible. Follow these reputation management rules and you’ll go a long way toward protecting your company’s reputation.

While the types of negative content attacks can vary widely and require a response tailored to meet the specifics of the situation, there are several actions an online reputation management company can take which can be applied to minimize the damage in most cases.