Your business' reputation is one of its most important assets. If it is good, people will want to do business with you. If it is bad, they will not just avoid you, but go to your competitors for their needs, instead.
But protecting your business' reputation can be difficult when people are defaming it online.
How you go about protecting your business' reputation in this situation can, itself, harm that hard-won reputation. The internet defamation lawyers at the Katz Law Group have guided numerous clients through this tricky process and helped them protect their brand. Here are four things to keep in mind.
1. Focus on the Audience, Not the Speaker
The most important thing to do is to keep your focus not on the person who is defaming your business online, but on the people who may be hearing or reading that defamatory conduct. The person defaming your business will probably never change their mind. It is the people that they may persuade that should be your concern.
According to internet defamation attorney David S. Katz, “Lots of business owners see negative misinformation about their business online but fail to see that it has no reach or audience. This often leads to a situation where the act of countering the defamatory statements gives them far more publicity than they ever could have gotten. Each situation is different and each one can evolve over time, but the response should always be appropriate for the problem.”
2. It Matters Who the Defaming Party Is
Another important piece of information is who is doing the defaming and how they are going about it. Employee defamation, where an (often) former employee is bad mouthing your company, carries a completely different threat to your business' reputation than defamatory social media posts and requires a completely different approach.
3. Think Long Term
One of the most common mistakes that business owners make is to react impulsively and in an overly aggressive way. A good business reputation takes a long time to build and a very short time to ruin. The last thing that you want is to look back on this event from five years in the future and regret what you did.
4. Remember That Your Response Can Harm Your Reputation
Relatedly, how you react to the defamatory conduct can, itself, harm your business' reputation. If you do not respond, then it can make it seem like you are not taking the person seriously, or that you do not care about the negative feedback, or even that you do not think it worth engaging with them. If you do respond to it, then failing to strike an appropriate intensity can give people serious concerns about dealing with your business in the future.
Massachusetts Internet Defamation Lawyers at the Katz Law Group
Responding appropriately to internet defamation is essential for protecting your business' good reputation. Unfortunately, knowing what is appropriate often takes years of experience that most business owners do not have.
Call the Massachusetts internet defamation lawyers at the Katz Law Group at (508) 480-8202 or contact them online to tap into their extensive experience in this field of the law.
