Business Featured on Live PD

Business Featured on Live PD

Rental Property Investor · Providence, RI · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 594 votes
They say that there is no such thing as bad publicity. I’ve been questioning the reality of that statement over the past few days. Last week, a plumber that we sub contract, who is also a friend (who regularly adds stress to my life) gets pulled over in Warwick RI. He wasn’t working at the time, but he was wearing one of our company hoodies. Immediately, my phone starts blowing up from people that I know giving me the heads up, including a number of the cops who I know that realized that it was my business that got plastered on national tv. The plumber was given a field sobriety test and released, but his passenger had an open container and was brought into custody on a minor outstanding warrant. I have built my business over the past 10 years and have always kept the fact in mind that Rhode Island being such a small state that word travels quickly. As a result, I have always done my best to put the company’s best foot forward, conduct ourselves in a professional manner, and maintain a solid, respectable reputation. I received an inquiry from our insurance agent, and over 60 random Live PD fans from around the country with some hysterical conversations and voicemails as a result. No business has developed from the exposure minus requests to purchase several of the hoodies. Will this negatively impact the reputation of my company, or is it something to just laugh at and try to capitalize on?
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  • Buy and Hold Investor · Cranston, RI · Member since 2013 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    7y

    @Brandon Ingegneri my guess is that, as painful as this may be right now, it is most likely just the story of the moment and will soon be forgotten when the next funny cat video gets posted.

    The only exception to this that I can think of is if your company name shows up in Google search results you do not want that being on the first page in two or three months from now, so if you find that is the case you might consider hiring a company that specializes in fixing that kind of thing.

    I think that if you go that route you might Google something like "online reputation management". I bookmarked a Guardian article earlier this year that discussed that kind of thing, maybe there's a helpful link or company name in there too.

    The Internet has a longer memory than people, unfortunately, but even that can fade over time. If it happens too slowly you might either need to hire a company or just go on a pro-publicity effort to overwhelm the bad stories with good ones. I honestly would be surprised if it came to that though.

    I just checked and nothing bad comes up on the first SERP (search engine results page) for me when Googling your company name, and virtually no one ever goes on to page 2. Ask a few other friends to confirm and then I'd relax, people will forget and move on.

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