Are Their Ways to Recover Your Reputation if you Find Yourself on a Complaint Site? 

See Related Article: “25 Free Online Reputation Management Tips and Tools“

Scam.com and related sites are an easy way for disgruntled consumers or clients to lodge a complaint. 

Unfortunately, its also an easy opportunity for competitors to ruin a good online reputation.  For sites like scam.com  and others such as Complaintsboard.com, Ripoffreport.com, users signup and post anonymously.

Here are six tips or solutions to repair your online reputation:

Don’t Panic; Stay Calm

First, stay calm.  Second, don’t take it personally.  There might be initial shock and anger that someone wrote negative things about you. It could be someone you know, someone you worked with or someone that worked with you. 

If it’s someone you don’t know, you may start to wonder what you did wrong.  What ever the issue situation, try to remain calm and don’t do anything–yet.  It may seem like a great idea to send off a response immediately, but pause and think first, since this could only make things much worse.

Review the Negative Problem’s Cause

Let it sit for a day or two but not too long because it could get worse.  Then look honestly at the root of the problem.  Is there something you did to cause it?  Did you do everything right but communicated poorly? 

What lessons can be learned from the experience?  Finally, you may have done everything right but you can’t please everybody all the time.

Strategize Your Next Steps

Think about the overall approach and solution.  Remember: the goal is to repair your online reputation, not get even. 

It’s important to work towards the best next step for your business, because a negative post could easily show up on the first page of Google search results immediately or over the next few days, weeks or months.

What Are My Options?

One option is do nothing and see if it will blow over. Another might be to address the person offline and explore in a non confrontational way how it can be resolved.  Finally, you may feel the need to recover your online reputation either on your own or with the help of professionals.

Try Getting it Removed From Scam.com

Often, there are options for some complaint sites to remove the posting.  Carefully review the website for FAQ or links that might help and politely contact the owner or webmaster and explain the situation. 

Sometimes there might be other ways to remove the post, especially if it contains personal information such as your social security number or your bank account information.  Note that it’s nearly impossible to win a legal case against the poster—even if you know who they are—or the web site.

Add Content to Fix Your Online Reputation

Explore ways to repair and recover your online reputation.  One way is to construct good content about you.  This helps push the negative post down and off the first page.  Write a blog with frequent updates, optimize or sign up for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, and be active on social media.  You may fine the need to hire a professional to help repair your online reputation from complaint sites.

See Related Article: Each Negative Link or Review Loses Thirty Customers or $30,000