Growing ‘Big Business’ Without Attracting Unwanted Attention

The objectives of any business at any stage will always include growth; what business owner doesn’t want to make more profit, gain more customers, and see their brand expanding? However, there can be a hidden cost to this growth, which is that people love to hate big business.

A 2012 Harris poll found that less than a fifth of all consumers say they have trust in large companies in the health insurance, pharmaceutical and banking sectors. Across other industries there is still a level of mistrust once a business reaches a certain size and sphere of influence. Therefore, the bigger the business gets, the more likely it is to attract unwanted attention.

We work with businesses as they grow to help protect them from unwanted negative attention and maintain a trusted brand.

The Spread of Information

In today’s connected world, any information published online has the potential to spread like wildfire, even if this information is false or misleading. Once an article or blog post is out there, it may be shared multiple times and reach a far wider audience than the original intended demographic.

Negative stories about big businesses have a high likelihood of being shared, repeated and amplified, creating a snowball effect. When social media influencers and bloggers jump on the bandwagon of even a minor issue or complaint, it can quickly become the story people will see about that business whenever they search for it online.

The more well-known the business, the more potentially lucrative a story about it will be for the writer, as more people are likely to be interested in reading it.

Constant Content Creation

One of the best ways to prevent negative stories from gaining traction is to proactively create a raft of positive or factually neutral content about your business and ensure that is the main narrative people will experience online.

A business that already dominates the search results with content that reflects its brand image and promotes the business and its core values will have more luck suppressing negative attention as and when it appears.

Having a large bank of positive content that is updated and expanded on regularly helps prevent negative articles from appearing high enough in the search results for a large audience to read them.

Effective Feedback

Having an effective system in place for dealing with negative feedback or complaints is vital. When customers who have a complaint feel like it has been dealt with by the business quickly and effectively, reaching an outcome they are happy with, the original negative experience is much less likely to reach the public.

The same goes for keeping employees happy; disgruntled employees may feel the urge to publish negative articles about the business when they leave, while happy employees will not.

Alerts

Dealing with negative content or feedback quickly and effectively relies on the business being aware that the negative information is out there in the first place. Having a system such as Google Alerts in place, which will notify the business of any mention online of the brand name or other selected keywords, can help immensely in creating a positive response to feedback and complaints.