Recently, I spoke with someone who wanted a Facebook like button on their company page. While there’s no technical issue there, there is a bit of a conceptual gap. Her business was a very narrow, technical firm which is likely to handle less than 20 clients a month. What relationship are they hoping to have with their customers through Facebook?

It’s not meant to pick on her specifically, but rather to ask a legitimate question: are you using social media as a tool, or fighting what it represents?
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Web-Op has dealt with countless companies – large and small – that have found themselves on the receiving end of negative press. It only takes a few comments on pissedconsumer.com or ripoffreport.com to have a negative effect on your business’s online reputation. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to push this negative press off the first page of Google.

(1)   Create profiles for your company on websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. Remember that it is important to show activity on these websites to get them to rank. Just creating them isn’t enough. Post something regularly, build a few links to them, and watch each profile page rise in the search engines. Below are a number of websites you can create profiles on. Each one of these rank extremely well.

1. Twitter.com
2. Linkedin.com
3. Facebook.com
4. Digg.com
5. WordPress.com
6. Google.com/profiles
7. Quora.com
8. About.me
9. Formspring.me

(2)  Buy other domains such as websitenamereviews.com, websitenametestimonials.com, and websitenamecomplaints.com. We recommend looking at Google suggestions to start. These days keyword rich domains rank extremely well. Your $8 purchase will be well worth it.

Remember that negative comments added to powerful domains like pissedconsumer.com can rank for your business name extremely fast. Being proactive about your online reputation can minimize the impact of one unhappy client’s comment.