With the increasing
numbers of citizen journalists, online videos are becoming more and more
common. This escalates the chances of videos being published that harm your
online reputation. These largely positive social technologies can have sinister
downsides for companies that choose not to monitor such digital information.
From large scale
anti-advertisements, to a simple picture slideshow. A clip from a bloggingsite, or an endorsed campaign. Negative videos can come from anywhere and
anyone. The larger your company grows the larger the risk grows of negative
media and videos, which could seriously and permanently damage your reputation.
Attacks on reputation are
becoming far more sophisticated and targeted then they were in the past. One
contributing factor is that the attackers have the ability to extensively
research their target. They can do this by pulling information published on the
victims own site and social networks.
A popular blogger might
spend hours researching the names, titles, and job descriptions of your
corporate employees. This is public information found on your company website,
seemingly innocent. But, this true information could give credibility to a
false accusation. A viewer of the video may reason that all other facts
presented in the video about the company in question are correct, so the false
accusation must be true as well.
It is not uncommon that
negative attacks are fueled by public knowledge, you can become a vulnerable
target by your the public information you yourself supplied to online sources.
Of course, you could protect yourself by keeping your head in the sand, not
participating in social media, but you would also be missing the benefits of
these services.
Unfortunately, burying
your head in the sand cannot turn back the clock on damage already done and the
negative videos already appearing in search results. Videos are likely to show
up in the first three pages of search results. Once they are published and
searched, these videos can be shared, sent, and uploaded via email, Facebook,
and other social networking sites.