I happened to watch a rerun of Shark Tank this week and was intrigued by Patrick Ambron, co-founder of BrandYourself, an online reputation management service. I find it very interesting since I’ve been in the position of counseling small business clients on the problems they’ve encountered, such as having negative reviews on Yelp. Worse yet, those Yelp reviews show up on a Google search results pages, often with the negative review snippet showing front and center.
Ambron says BrandYourself isn’t so much about removing the negative as helping you create a [positive] presence online. I agree with that philosophy and also wonder if their Do It Yourself tools can really work. In my own experience, I find clients want to spend as little time and money as possible. They typically don’t understand my philosophy of:
Great online reputation management is actually great online marketing, which most every company should be doing.
