A good offense is really defense

It’s been a tough week and at the end of it I have a whole new view of the role of an online presence. It’s defense.

Let me explain.

A good friend of mine in the US has found himself the victim of a series of coordinated, malicious attacks by a group out to destroy his credibility.

He is a well-respected author, trainer and researcher in a specialised area. Everyone who knows him, knows he is a person of the highest integrity. He is the guy you want on your side when things go wrong. His work over the years has been nearly universally praised and acknowledged, and word-of-mouth alone was enough to build a successful business.

Of the tens of thousands of Google search results about him, there were the usual legitimate handful of negatives, but that was far, far outweighed by the positive.

Through all of this, he has been someone who never really saw the need for a personal online presence. People could buy his books, read the good reviews and learn about him through the experiences of others.

But none of that was sufficient when this group turned their sights on him.

It all began with a few negative posts on an online forum questioning his credentials – and from there it took on a life of its own. For reasons that are far from clear, it became a sustained campaign of attacks, which grew to include blog sites dedicated to repeating the manufactured lies and a negative reviews of his books on Amazon made for the sole purpose of driving down his five-star readers ratings and further propagating the misinformation.

And, because my friend had no proactive online presence of his own, because he had relied on word-of-mouth, the lies spewed out by this group started to have equal weight to the positive. The forum that was “attack central” became the number two Google ranking when you searched his name. “He said, she said” started to come into play and people who would probably have previously hired him without question, moved onto others who didn’t have a question mark over their name.

Keep in mind at this point my friend had done nothing to result in these attacks except go about his work with professionalism and passion.

So to everyone out there who, either as an individual or a business, engages in work that could bring you under the scrutiny of others, and thinks that this couldn’t happen to you, I can’t state strongly enough that a proactively managed presence isn’t offense. It is defense.

Sure, if you have an online presence you will probably also get touted benefits of awareness and new customers. But what people aren’t thinking about, and what I have come to realise over the past couple of weeks (as we work to rebuild my friend’s business), is that it is critical defense.

You have to be out there saying good things about yourself. Talking about what you have done, why and how. Backing that up with facts and examples. It is no longer enough to just let others say good things about you. You have to tell your story your way.

My friend has learnt that the very painful and costly way.

See you next week.

Michel Hogan is an independent brand adviser and advocate. Through her work with Brandology here in Australia and in the United States, she helps organisations make promises they can keep and keep the promises they make, with a strong sustainable brand as the result. She also publishes the brand thought leadership blog – Brand Alignment. You can follow Michel on Twitter @michelhogan