Blog Backlash

These days, blogging is no longer just for lonely housewives and teens to narrate every dull detail of their daily lives: the voices of serious bloggers are certainly heard on a much larger scale. I was recently browsing the Bernstein Crisis Management website when I stumbled across an article that I found to be ironic as well as relevant. Blog Storm discusses how one individual who is unsatisfied with a company can cause major issues due to this age of technology. Most people who keep blogs do so because they want to make their opinions heard, therefore their experiences provide information for any other person who is researching the topic being blogged about. If one Google's your company's name and the second item on the list is XYZCorporationSucks.com . . . that person might form an opinion based on the publicized opinions of others. Even more detrimental are those that rank highly on the blogosphere, making them a highly trusted source of information whether or not the information provided is fact.

Beyond the obvious immediate effect of bloggers and web domain administrators who have nothing but bad things to say, any item posted to the internet has potential to become part of your history. Years later, people might still be reading the negative comments written by an angry consumer.

Aside from maintaining a perfect reputation, there is not really much that can be done to stop bloggers from bashing your business. The Blog Storm article offers some tips on how to deal with a sticky situation like this. Posting a well-thought comment on the blog or starting a new blog that depicts your company in a positive light may be possible solutions, but we must come up with a more comprehensive list of ways to deal. Blogging is becoming a serious issue because we all know that word of mouth from fellow consumers is far more trusted and bears much more weight than anything a CEO or the media can ever say in a business' defense.