Today’s BIG Blog post is from Mark Macias, author of Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media.

Everyone likes to secretly Google himself, but what happens when Google turns up results you don’t like? How do you get your name removed from the search engines when the material is damaging?

An established New Jersey financial consultant, Alan Gottlob, woke up one morning to discover his reputable name was falsely accused of ethical violations. Making it worse, the writer never called Gottlob for a response. Gottlob first learned of the article three months after it was published when a client read it on the Internet and asked him about it.

These strong allegations can destroy nearly any person’s business but in an industry built on trust – like the financial industry – the article nearly destroyed Gottlob’s private practice.

Gottlob reached out to me to manage his crisis communications after he didn’t get anywhere with the web publisher, Investment News. We applied several new strategies and within weeks, Investment News and its parent company, Crain Communications Inc., were in discussions to correct the article.

If you find yourself in this situation, there are several steps you can take to get the material removed from the Internet. Contrary to the popular saying, “the Internet is written in ink,” it is possible to modify the record if you apply some proven crisis communications strategies.

Here are some of the strategies you can take if you find yourself in a similar crisis situation as Gottlob.

1) Go after the power brokers or the people who finance the publication, which includes the publisher, city editors, Executive Producers, and most important: the legal counsel for the publication. Do a quick Google to find out who owns the website or publication. Most people, like Gottlob, contact the writer when a negative article is published, but that’s like complaining to the sales clerk when the cashier gives you the wrong change. You need to complain to the people who control the money. Your letter to these power brokers needs to state why this article is inaccurate and most important, how the article has financially harmed your business. If you can’t show any financial duress from the article, you won’t succeed in the court of law or with the publisher.

2) Understand the difference between libelous, slander and opinion. If a blogger writes that you smell, you can’t take legal action to bring down the story. However, if the blogger writes a factually inaccurate article that accuses you of wrongdoing and harms your business, you do have legal recourse to get the web page pulled down. And you don’t always need an attorney for this. Sometimes a strongly worded letter that outlines the bullet points from above is enough to get the publisher’s attention.

3) Don’t wait. Go after the website’s owners immediately. The longer the website is up, the more time search engines have to index the web page. Unfortunately, it took Gottlob several weeks to get a hold of the reporter and her superiors. By the time he was able to speak to the reporter, the web page had already been indexed and was on the first page of Google.

4) Google will stop indexing the website if you can prove the website displays private personal information like social security numbers, however you need to make a case to them if it involves other matters. You can find this page on Google at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals.

5) Push the article off the first Google page with new content. There is another strategy you can take to bury the article off of the first page from Google. You can accomplish this by writing your own blog or material and making sure it is indexed with the proper search engine optimization.

6) Once the page is removed, you need to write a letter to all the search engines to make sure the page is no longer indexed.

This form of crisis communications will only grow in the future as more bloggers and news organizations post articles on the Internet. If the article is false and inaccurate, don’t be afraid to fight back. Just make sure you’re not picking a fight over someone’s opinion because luckily the First Amendment still protects us from that.

Mark Macias is a crisis communications consultant. He runs a TV production (www.MaciasTV.com) and PR company (www.MaciasPR.com) that has consulted restaurants, retailers, lounges and Congressional candidates, including one challenger who beat an incumbent. Macias also wrote the communications book, Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media. You can read excerpts at: www.BeatthePressBook.com.

Take a systematic approach to small business public relations.

PR (public/media relations) is a powerful small business-marketing tool. By PR, we mean getting positive press mentions about your firm in local, trade and national publications.

These mentions are so powerful because they are seen to come from unbiased third parties, so they are more believable. People may think ad messages are just sales hype, but when they read about how great you are in the local business journal…well, it must be true!

A lot of people think that gaining positive PR is luck. No! It’s the result of a systematic commitment to generating media coverage.

The hardest part is getting the PR machine rolling. Once you get coverage, it just keeps on coming. The more coverage you get, the more the press will keep coming back to you.
Here’s our step-by-step system for generating positive press coverage.

Step 1 – Build relationships before you ask for the order! Target your media sources, including a growing list of internet-based media and news resources. Start networking with these media targets today by requesting editorial calendars, sending industry information, commenting on stories they write, passing on surveys and data, inviting them to workshops.

Tip: Network with the advertising sales folks at the publications too, they will give you lots of good information about who does what and where in the course of trying to sell you an ad.

Step 2 – Create three or four central media themes for the year that support your core-marketing message.

Step 3 – Create a list of ten to twelve minor, but interesting, marketing related themes for ongoing PR. You need to fill in with volume while you are working on the front page feature.

Step 4 – Create a PR calendar (download one here) and assign a PR theme and goal for each month. Focus on one publication or one writer and you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish. Remember to target editorial calendars (Publications will often assign monthly themes, so match your pitch to the theme.)

Step 5 – Write a fully developed pitch, for each of your major themes—a pitch is a story idea that you can “pitch” to a member of the media. This is not a press release, but more of a sales job. Wrap your story idea around a news angle or trend and package the pitch to interest the readers of a specific publication you are pitching. You can change and repackage your pitches as needed. These are reserved for your central media themes.

Step 6 – Formulate one-page press releases (Send for the free Press Release Creator we talk about at the end of the article) with catchy headlines for each of your minor themes.

Step 7 – Once a month, target your core media list and distribute a press release or pitch for a major theme. Post all press releases on a national wire service, such as PRWeb, and send copies of your press releases to clients and prospects. Don’t forget op-eds and letters to the editor.

Step 8 – Follow-up with your core media list by telephone and offer some new piece of news or trend angle that you did not include in your pitch or press release.

Step 9 – Track media coverage in local and trade press, set-up Google Alerts for a number of key related terms and reprint for marketing purposes any media coverage received.

Step 10 – Send handwritten thank you notes to members of the media to thank them for an interview or mention.

Are you starting to get a glimpse of how combining advertising, PR and referrals can build momentum and create marketing energy? Try it and see the results.

You can get a free online press release creator that allows you to instantly create powerful, attention grabbing, perfectly formatted press releases in an instant at: www.ducttapemarketing.com/Instant-Press-Release.htm

Ken Burgin and Elizabeth Walker are the Marketing Masters (www.MarketingMasters.ca), a full-service marketing and advertising partnership that helps build busy businesses. Send your ideas on How to Thrive in Times Like These to liz@marketingmasters.ca or ken@marketingmasters.ca, or call 1-866-908-5720.

web: http://www.marketing,masters.ca
blog: http://thebuzzwithkenandliz.blogspot.com/