Does Your Company Need a Reputation Manager?

Bulldog Reporter

People and Companies Regularly Have Their Missteps Go Viral Online, But Companies Out There are Ready to Defend Your Cyber-Integrity for a Fee. In the modern digital age where seemingly everything and everyone is online, a new industry is emerging to “manage” the Internet footprint that people and businesses leave online. “Reputation managers” can clean up and shape a person’s online history — burying the damaging stuff and promoting the good — and given the numbers of famous people who arguably are in need of such a service, and the millions of others leaving an online footprint around the world every day, the potential market is enticing indeed.

Mel Gibson‘s fourth result on a Google search right now is a negative gossip story. Lindsay Lohan, currently in jail, is famed for use of her Twitter account where she frequently sends out ill-advised updates. A reputation manager could help to suppress those Tweets or even try to get them deleted. Gary Powers, who works for a company called Reputation Defender, is paid to help promote the positive, hide the negative and even have hostile internet postings removed altogether. Fees vary across the industry. For $15 a month, Reputation Defender will work with a client to clean up and monitor their Internet reputation. They can also send you an alert whenever a new reference to your child is posted anywhere online. For $30, you can subscribe to a service that will try to destroy hostile Internet content. In 2008 the firm raised $2.6 million in investment funding, the UK’s Guardian reports.

“We get people from all walks of life,” said Powers, the company’s “head writer”. People who come to the firm for assistance range from professionals, like lawyers or doctors, to those involved in the entertainment industry; anyone who is concerned that someone, somewhere, might search for them online, reports Guardian writer Paul Harris.

If you or your company are in need of online reputation management services, please contact ASG for a proposal. Info@asgroupinc.com or (561) 336-0040.