Reputation Armor

Internet slander is on the increase, and with it, an assortment of questions about what slander truly is, and is not.

These explanations are what we understand to be true, but if you are considering a defamation case in a court of law you are going to want to check with an attorney that specializes in this legal area. Reputation Armor offers reputation management and our objective is to be of assistance to people dealing with online slander.

Defamation: Also called Defamation of Character.

Spoken or written words (commentary) on a living person that affects his or her reputation. It can be in regard to business or have personal implications. If a blog, website, or forum publishes something harmful about you that damages your reputation, defamation has occurred. Both libel and slander are forms of defamation of character.

In most states you have to actually suffer a financial loss in order to have cause for legal action.

Slander:

Slander is when someone says something negative about you, with spoken words. Internet libel is frequently confused with internet slander, but slander primarily means the spoken word. If I say something negative about you to all of my friends that hurts your business and is 100% not true, this is slander.

Libel

Libel is the written word, as well as the recorded word. As a rule this includes radio and television broadcasts. If a reporter says something about you that is false, it is classified as libel. This also generally includes written reviews on blogs and forums, as well as review websites like RipOffReport.com, ComplaintsBoard.com and several others.

Can you Sue for Internet Slander / Libel?

Someone has posted lies and harmful articles about you online and you want to know if you can make them pay for damages. The answer is maybe (But Not Likely). Many product review websites, like RipoffReport.com, My3Cents, Yelp, Complaints Board, and the rest are all protected by a law called The Communications Decency Act ( or “CDA,” : 47 USC 230), which completely protects website owners from being held libel for content created by their website users.

Could you possible sue the actual person that generated the content? Perhaps, if you knew who they were and could prove they did it without a doubt. The problem is that website owners don’t (By Law) have to divulge this information to you, nor do they have any responsibility to log any user info like IP addresses and email addresses. Identifying who to sue can be an issue when it comes to most the review sites.

Does a person have a right to speak their opinion?

Completely, it’s a privileged right that we all have, and  it is a constitutional right. However, an opinion must remain an opinion and be stated as such. It should never include detailed facts that can later be proven fictitious.

Can a person defend defamation in court?

If you sue someone for defamation (libel or slander) and they demonstrate in court that what they said or wrote is true, you’re going to lose your case. Just because something is embarrassing or upsetting isn’t enough. If it’s true, you shouldn’t sue. You’ll only lose time and money and then in the end, your case.

Can I remove internet slander / libel from offending websites?

Almost certainly not, except if you can prove that the website owner wrote it and that it was 100% untrue. If it was user generated content (Written By A Site User or Member) they do not have to remove the content, nor reveal to you who wrote that content. It’s all sheltered by the CDA (Communications Decency Act). Rip off report and its clones have more or less all declared that they will NEVER remove user generated content.

They are 100% protected by the CDA and the user generated content is the foundation for their hideous, little business model. The online complaints on their website are what drives more traffic to their website and makes them revenue in one way or another.

They are never going to remove those reviews. But we can help. If you or your company are suffering from internet slander or online libel, please contact Reputation Armor at 888-358-2766 and let us explain how we can remove negative information from the first few page of the search engine results.

Reputation Armor  Online Reputation Management Tools

While there are many different tools one can use to manage their online reputation, there are a handful that reputation armor finds work the best. Here are two that have a great deal of clout, and can be used in almost any situation to improve an online brand.

Reputation Armor suggests WordPress

WordPress is the premiere blogging platform used in the world, with more than 200 million blogs running on the software. It is built with user interaction in mind, and features an incredibly-intuitive backend that anyone can learn to use in a short period of time. Running a blog on Wordpress is one of the best ways to be featured near the top of search results, because the very nature of blogs lends itself quite well to having a great deal of search engine relevant content. There is a good chance that you are reading these Reputation Armor tips on WordPress.

Search engines are occupied with many things, Reputation Armor finds one of the most important factors in determining relevance is the freshness of content. Because blogs encourage their users to update frequently, search engines such as Google look at them regularly to see that the content has changed. And tools like WordPress actually include built in features that let a number of different websites and services know whenever new content is posted, so that each new post is echoed around the web, offering many hooks for search engines to pick up your content. So any and all content that reputation armor adds about you or your business will not go unnoticed

Reputation Armor suggests Twitter

Because of Twitter’s very strong web presence, a Twitter username will very often show up in the first page of search results for that term. As a result, setting up a free Twitter account using a personal name or a business name can be an easy, quick, and effective way to establish a first page listing. Twitter allows information to be personalized, a custom icon to be uploaded, which may be a photograph or company logo, and the background to be customized. Reputation Armor has a Twitter account.

To find out more about Reputation Armor, visit our Site: reputationarmor.com

ReputationArmor.com observes it all the time…you do a search (searching for your own name in Google or Yahoo), or maybe you were just doing some SEO homework to see how your website was ranking. Either way, you stumbled upon some negative information on a forum or service review website.

One that made you steaming mad…

Negative an false information about our clients infuriates us at Reputation Armor.

It happens, and when it does you have a right to be angry. You also have the right to defend your good name, jump into the ring swinging to defend your company reputation.

But don’t do it.

Reputation Armor advises not to react to those reviews like this because it’s going to harm you more than it’s going to help you. Let reputation armor explain to you how most of the search engine algorithms work. You see, they like to see action on a website. So when you attach new content to a forum, blog or review site, you are actually adding fuel to the fire. Google and the rest see the site as a hot news item, being updated frequently, so they rank it better in the search results.

That’s right, your retort makes their complaint rank higher in the search results. Reputation Armor has also found that it makes it harder for us to move when we get hired to clean up the mess. If you’ll consider action rather than reaction, you’ll make our job easier and the overall cleanup less expensive and faster overall.

I know it’s tempting to defend your good name. But reputationarmor.com asks that you to leave this to us.  We’re WILL fix the problem and we’re going to defend your name for you with positive content creation. But you have to let Reputation Armor do its job

Not that we can’t clean things up if you’ve already responded out of passion. It’s just easier to do if you haven’t added content to the offending site or sites.

An irate review can hurt you. A hurried response to an angry review can wound you even more. Instead of reacting, please contact Reputation Armor @ reputationarmor.com and let us launch a plan of action to remedy the problem.

Reputation Armor is now on Twitter! Follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on company news and reputation management tips.

Click: Twitter.com/reputationarmor

LinkedIn For Reputation Management: Set up a LinkedIn.com profile and make it publicly available. Add background info like education, employment history, awards or certification (or anything else about you!). Add links to your other sites/pages/blogs.

If you haven’t yet, bookmark these sites which can be a big help in maintaining your reputation positively online.

1. Digg: Check out Digg regularly to see if anyone has submitted stories about your or your business.
2. Reddit: Similar to Digg, this site will allow you to see how much interest there is you on the Web.
3. delicious: This social bookmarking site is a good place to see if your webpage or information about you or your business is being passed around by others.
4. Flickr: Think there may be some less-than-impressive photos of you out there? Trying searching this photo site to see if you come up.
5. Facebook: Facebook can be a great place to network, just make sure you keep your profile free from things you wouldn’t want spread about you.
6. MySpace: With millions of visitors, this popular social networking site can be a great place to get your and your business’ name out there.
7. LinkedIn: Here you can create a professional profile that will allow you to interact with others in your profession in a safe and positive manner.
8. Google: There’s no easier way to find out what your online reputation is than to do a simple Google search.
9. Rollyo: If you want a more customized option for searching, try out this great search engine that you can tailor to your online reputation finding needs.
10. Furl: Another social bookmarking site, here you can track who’s interested in your sites.
11. Twitter: Whether you want to communicate with others or track the buzz about you on the net, Twitter is an essential tool.
12. Wordpress: If you’re going to start a blog to be the face of you or your company, this site makes it easy to do so.

Trackur.com is a “Online Reputation Monitoring & Buzz Tracking Tool” created by Marketing Pilgrim and reputation guru Andy Beal, Trackur was initially aimed at companies worried about what consumers and competitors might be saying about them online. Trackur is a paid service but there’s a free 14-day trial which might be enough time to discover things that other tools couldn’t find.

This is a good site and is ran by Andy Beal one of the pioneers of online reputation management.

everyzing - this multimedia search engine lets you find mentions in audio podcasts or video clips and their description texts. I love the way the multimedia results let you jump to the exact moment where your keywords are said. Like any self-respecting Web2.0 tool, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the search results too.

RapLeaf.com is a website that scours the Internet to find information about a given person based on their email address. Sign up for free and tell Rapleaf about any email addresses you use. Within a few hours, RapLeaf will have results to show you. No longer as impressive as it used to be, the results about me were minimal after weeks of searching.

Online press releases are a great way to spice up your online presence in a positive way. If you use places like prweb.com and reputationarmor.com to help with your online press release campaigns you will see a lot of positive results.

Here are a few good pree release distribution sites:

pressbox.com

seenation.com

newsalbum.com

mediasyndicate.com

ukprwire.com

presszoom.com

pressportal.co.za

promotionworld.com

PageRelease.com

free-press-release-center.info