SERM strategy: case study of a person's online reputation management

One of the difficult tasks that businesses often face is to change a negative image to a positive one. After all, a personal or commercial brand can lose customers and partners only after a few articles or unsatisfactory feedback. Our client faced such a problem.

The essence of the task

Our client faced a negative reputation in Google search results. All mentions of the client for the key query produced articles with a negative character. The same trend was observed in social networks.

Dealing with the problem, we developed a work mechanism that consists of four stages:

analysis of negative information drives in Google search results and social networks;
development of a strategy for returning a positive image with the help of content, a mass of links and social networks;
writing additional materials;
regular analysis of the release of negative articles about the brand and prompt response to them.

All these points are related to SERM – managing the reputation of a person, company or brand on the Internet.

To assess the scale of the negative campaign, we created a table with data from text materials.

The red color on the diagram highlights the negativity of the client’s requests, and blue – neutral web pages (for example, a person’s biography). We are talking about only neutral ones, since there were no positive pages in the issue.

Before creating a strategy, we worked out the connections “welcome request (client’s name) + Instagram” and “welcome request (client’s name) + Instagram”.

According to these connections, the issue contained materials in which the client’s Instagram was not indicated. The reason for this was the lack of a personal name in the account.

What did we do?

We made recommendations for creating an Instagram account

The main need was to design a profile header with the client’s name and create relevant content on the page.

All steps were completed within a day, and after a week the first result was obtained: according to the above request, the client’s Instagram account became the leader of search results. At the same time, interesting and positive publications increased the number of subscribers. The negative was pushed back in the first stage of one of our SERM cases.

The semantic core was collected

We analyzed Google and social media traffic using tools like Serpstat and Google Keyword Planner.

According to the existing requests, information was entered in the table, having studied the provisions from the position of SERM.

As the table shows, only a few neutral mentions appeared on the request, which practically do not affect the situation.

The SERM strategy: how it works

To eliminate the negative, there was a need for positive information drives. Based on this, we developed a step-by-step strategy:

Support positions of positive pages and text materials.
Creation of new positive information drives.
Building a link strategy to promote new and old positive materials.
Monthly data collection and analysis.
Automatic control of output of articles.

Having drawn up an action plan, we immediately began its implementation (in September). The first step was to strengthen the crowd-marketing position of the web pages with positive articles. For this, we used resources with high trust (trust level). You can check this indicator using the Ahrefs tool.

However, it is not only the existing articles that need to be improved, given that 80% of them are neutral in nature.

This is where new positive information drives come into play. We pumped fresh materials with crowd marketing and eternal links. After a month, the position in search results has improved significantly.

The client’s actions to resuscitate the image

At our request, the client started writing new articles with a positive emphasis, which were more than enough. The client held charity events, including the opening of a sports field with a football and basketball complex in Kyiv and the development of sports and gaming infrastructure.

Also, together with the Kyiv City Council, a public square was built in the Dnipro district of the capital. All these actions could have gone unnoticed without proper publicity in the network.

It is worth noting that eternal article links not only played a role in building a mass of links to positive SERM articles, but also acted as such themselves. As a result, a double positive was created. Links were purchased on the PR-news and Collaborator exchanges.

Image in social networks

We have restored our reputation in social networks and forums thanks to reviews left by real people.

The difficulty at this stage was that competitors continued to post negativity. It had to be responded to during the day. Quick response prevented Google from indexing negative articles.

Who needs SERM technologies?

It is not enough to create a positive search result. It must be held in position. The YouScan service helps to automate this process.

The complex of our actions made it possible to completely rid the client of a negative reputation already in May. And we continue to support this successful result.

The cooperation with the client does not stop, as SERM and image management are an important part of the activities of famous individuals and companies.