Yesterday I received a phone call from a man who had been arrested and acquitted on charges against him.  He explained his situation and how he was in the wrong place and looked similar to someone the police were looking for. Regardless of his innocence in the matter, two local newspapers picked up the story and published his name, mugshot and details of the heinous crime speculating that he could be the suspect.

In an effort to clean up his name defamed reputation he contacted the newspapers and they refused to retract the story, remove his name and mugshot or help him in any way.  He contacted me for reputation management.

He had already started working on his own reputation and after 3 days he had an almost complete article on WordPress.com.  He explained how he built the site but it wasn’t showing up for his name.

It is truly a good start to DIY reputation management, but it’s far from complete.  When I take on a new client I will typically create 20+ new sites all with unique content.  For one inexperienced person to attempt that would take them a week or two.  Then comes the real work of building links to each of those properties.  Without proper link building your reputation management campaign will never get off the ground.

DIY is great for some situations, but if your name or business name is showing up on real sites like a newspaper, blog, Yelp, RipOffReport or Pissed Consumer, you’ll need a real reputation management consultant to help clean it up.