Internet Defamation: What Business Owners Need to Know
No question about it, the Internet has made it possible for any business to put their name and brand in front of millions of potential customers in a much more affordable and efficient way than ever before.
The downside, putting your good name and business brand online also leave you vulnerable to Internet defamation, which can be harmful to your business and personal life if left unchecked. Due to the increasing number of libelous comments that can be printed on the Internet about nearly any business or brand, the governments, judges, and courts are sharpening existing laws and regulations on character defamation for traditional media and extending their reach to cover the online marketplace.
So, what is defamation anyway? Well, it may be any form of slanderous and libelous comments made about you, your services or your brand by a customer or, quite often, your competitors. Comments made in newspapers, TV and traditional media outlets have a “limited” shelf life, while those made on the Internet can remain on the website where they were first added as well as on other blogs and websites and even in the cache of search engines for many more years. Translation: The damage is far reaching.
One way to combat defamation online is the utilization of positive commentary about your business and/or brand using SEO, or search engine optimization. The more positive commentary you can get up online, whether in blogs, customer reviews and testimonials or news stories the better your chances of pushing those negative comments down to the lower echelons of the major search engines and minimizing the damage.
Internet Defamation essential boils down to this: the publication of negative statements that may be proven false and made on any Internet based media including blogs, forums, websites, and even social networking websites. While many Internet users believe that they are free to say and do as they like while on the Internet, this is untrue and the same defamation laws and regulations stand for online defamation as they do in any form of media.
Under the rules governed by the Communications Decency Act, some libel cases have been successfully been tried in courts around the world and specific online defamation laws are changing every day as the number of these defamation cases continues to escalate.
That is not to say that fighting an Internet Defamation case is easy. Much of the difficulty that surrounds successfully winning an online defamation case is brought about because the plaintiff must first prove who the publisher or writer of the statement is and, secondly, that the statement is false and written with the intention of causing damage. With the Internet, it is almost impossible in many cases to do this.
It is possible to track the comments down to the computer from where the statement was published or content was first created, however, there are more and more users on public computers, which makes it even more difficult.
As has already been mentioned, one of the best ways to combat negative comments is to keep the positive content about you and or your brand and company flowing. This might mean hiring someone to do little more than write a blog about your business that is updated and posted every day on your website and social networking pages.
Get your name, or the name of your CEO or Executive Director out in front of the media. Send out press releases with story ideas and get those releases up on the web, even if they are not picked up by mainstream publications for print.
Post photos when possible of your company employees at events, fundraisers and other places that serve to promote your cause and show your community involvement.
In short: do all you can to ensure that someone is tracking “coverage” of your company online, checking the major search engines, such as Google, for negative comments and or slanderous accusations. Taking a proactive approach to defending yourself and your company from Internet Defamation is a sure fire way to remain ahead of the game and will give you more visibility in the long run, which in turn translates to more customers.
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