Every business has some sort of presence online. Whether it’s your own site, social media, local listings or a combination of them all, everyone can be found on the Internet. If you’ve had a web presence for a little while at this point, you’ve probably dealt with some attacks on your business. You can’t please everyone, but the unfortunate reality is that everyone will complain but seemingly no one will compliment. People will go out of their way to complain about your business too if they are particular unhappy with the services or products. They will go to sites such as Pissed Consumer where they can do so anonymously. Other attacks can come in the form of false reviews on local listings, embarrassing edits to a Wikipedia page or even as far as creating a blog trash talking the company.

You may feel completely discouraged with this newfound knowledge. After all, there isn’t much you can do to eliminate any bad reviews from making their way online. And as you know already, the Internet is extremely fast paced. After a new episode of your favorite show airs within 10 minutes the entire plot is laid out in detail on every social platform thus ruining the episode for those who have yet to watch it. Damage to a brand’s reputation is gradually growing in importance among owners because of the potential for widespread damage. Of course, you aren’t left completely helpless. There are steps you can do to diminish its harsh effect and calm down the attacker.

First, you’ll want to determine whether or not the attacker is a real threat to your company’s business. If the review was done by a child or even an adult who doesn’t know basic grammar, it’s safe to say that it won’t do any major harm. Sometimes people just don’t have much to say at all. Check out this review regarding a Target location in Las Vegas.

Clearly that did nothing to Target’s overall brand. If it was a credible person that actually wrote this review, said person certainly didn’t cause anyone to stop using this particular store location as it isn’t anything too horrible. The only bad reviews that are going to have a negative effect are ones that have an impact on the people reading them. Sometimes people have such an overwhelmingly horrible experience that they lay out every detail that caused their unhappiness. It’s those people that could have a real effect on your business.
Next, you’ll want take into consideration if the attack is at risk of starting a flood of others and going viral online. This can happen if the person who wrote it has a substantial following online. It’s important to note that generally there is a statute of limitations on these kinds of things. A post is only going to become viral within a few days of initially being posted. After that, it becomes irrelevant. This means you need to be proactive and address these concerns right away. It can be a bit of a tricky situation trying to maintain your reputation on such a vast, uncontrollable outlet, but it must be done to keep the success of your business.

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