Social Media & Digital Marketing in Singapore

Case Study: Watching Your Online Identity

I got a call from an organisation, the details of which I won’t go into, but because I wasn’t terribly familiar with the company, I decided to Google their name. Usually I don’t notice, but this time the suggested search terms by Google caught my attention:

When you see that the word “scam” is highly associated with an organisation, it makes you think twice about doing business with them or working for them.  (On a side note, clearly brand managers don’t know how to Google their partner organisations because this particular organisation boasts pretty big partners).

What makes this worse is that many of the content creators are ex-employees of the company. While it isn’t surprising to have disgruntled employees, when so many of them around the globe band together to share similar negative experiences, readers tend to take it a little more seriously than one random guy ranting. Also, the company doesn’t seem to think that this negative publicity is hurting them because they haven’t commented on any of the blog sites to set the record straight.

While the actual name is blanked out, don’t kid yourself into thinking this will never happen to you. Think of how the suggested keywords Google throws up for Toyota changed overnight. It can happen to you and if it does you need to own it and be present to at least get your side of the story out there.

On a side note: Just as we’re doing our research on companies, they’re doing it on us as job applicants – all the more reason to be conscious of what you put out there.

Tags: brand managers, disgruntled employees, ex-employees, Google, negative publicity, organisation, scam, Toyota