Your company has fallen from grace. Maybe your CEO was arrested for fraud. Maybe E. coli was found in your food and made your restaurant customers sick. Or maybe you’ve just made some ill-advised business decisions over time, and it’s finally caught up with you.

A reputation crisis can be a difficult thing to overcome, but it is possible to repair your reputation. Although a damaged corporate reputation may seem impossible to reverse, the journey to rebuild it can be summarized in a few key steps: take control of your brand's online presence, know and monitor what is said about you online, and, most importantly, apologize for any missteps. The following roadmap offers a place to begin your journey to rebuild your online reputation. There will be ups and downs, but with a solid game plan and a lot of hard work, your reputation can be saved. The question is, are you in for the long haul? 

Steps to rebuild a damaged corporate reputation:

1. Analyze the damage
2. Regain control 
3. Create a recovery roadmap

Today, it’s easier than ever before to spark misinformation, watch it spread, and then witness it take down corporations, crush reputations, and topple political figures.

Exaggeration this is not. A brief glance at the news tells you all you need to know. Fake news is powerful enough to shake technology juggernauts, crush world-famous personalities, and wipe entire businesses off the map.

Your brand reputation is the single most crucial factor in the success of your company. An excellent reputation increases your customer loyalty, lead generation, and your competitive advantage. A bad one lowers your sales and makes people look at your business in a negative light.

Here’s the deal. The media thinks your CEO screwed up. According to rumors, she siphoned the company’s quarterly earnings into a private yacht spending spree.

The truth? Your CEO is innocent.

But what does the media care about truth? They’re hanging onto the rumors like a toddler clutching a Snickers bar. The Internet’s news minions are intent on vilifying a corporate leader, weaving tales of oversized yachts funded with ill-gotten gain.

How many times have you said "You suck, Google". Sometimes Google says the same thing about you. Despite all of your time and money invested on ads, fast-talking copywriters, and brand consultants, Google just keeps telling you, and all of your prospective customers, that you suck. 

In sales there is a method called "predictable revenue". It's an outbound method of marketing and sales that enables a business to predict what their revenues will be. But is there a way to do that with content marketing?

How do you predict whether a content campaign will be worth it? It’s a constant battle: executive leadership and check-signers won’t approve a marketing budget unless they can be assured of a Return on Investment (ROI) of X%. Marketing departments continue to push to develop new marketing strategies, but without budget approval, their hands are often tied.

Can you imagine how it felt to be the Chief Marketing Officer at Oxfam after their deputy CEO, Penny Lawrence, resigned because of a sex crimes scandal? If the first word that enters your mind is “stressed,” that’d be an understatement. A serious CEO scandal can mean the ruin of the reputation of an entire company, not just those at the top.

Many businesses focus on SEO, social media and content to build their online presence. One way to accelerate your online growth is to focus on growing your brand through citations and mentions. Both Google and Bing have indicated that they can track brand mentions and that they matter for search engine rankings. Duane Forrester, a former senior product manager at Bing, stated that unlinked mentions can be just as strong a signal as links for measuring a site’s authority.

The best reputation management companies use some degree of influencer outreach to promote a positive online image for their clients. They're working to change the narrative about a person or brand, so third-party affirmation and amplification is important to reinforce brand messaging. Here are a few methods to find influencers online.

Remember when Donald Trump said "America should never have given Canada its independence"? Well, that was fake. Fake news has a long and storied history. Ben Franklin spread propaganda stories by creating a fake issue of the Boston Independent Chronicle. Today celebrities, politicians and everyday people are affected by it. Tomi Lahren of Fox News was recently quoted as saying "If you die in a mass shooting, it's not the fun's fault, or even the gunman's fault. It's your fault for not believing in God enough". She didn't say that either.