Celebrities always seem to be fair game for the general public. They get rocks and criticism thrown at them all the time. Don't some folks love it when they fall from grace and show us just how human they really are? While it's not something that we'd like to happen for brands and companies, it's still pretty interesting for most people when companies goof up.

Unflattering and denigrating remarks about you online can be particularly damaging when there are about 2 billion people who can instantly access and read those materials. Business brands are particularly vulnerable. In fact, the more notable the brand, the more its prone to getting attacked online. Because, well, you really cant please everyone no matter how hard you try. Keep in mind, however, that this applies to any brandnot just the famous ones.

With fierce competition for product visibility online, its not uncommon for unscrupulous competitors to resort to defamation of character through black propaganda. There are online product reviewers who can be paid to say nothing good about your product in the guise of a product review. Forums, blog sites and social networking sites have made defamation slander even easier for unsatisfied customers and disgruntled employees hiding in anonymity to post nasty things that can really bring your online reputation down.

Bear in mind that while it takes years of hard work and confidence to build up a reputation, and it only takes a few malicious product reviews or posts to chip away at it and eventually destroy it. That can happen at lot easier and earlier online. Two scenarios are possible. You can simply take the damage and let the brand name slide into oblivion without bothering about it. Or the damage can be so thorough that the brand name actually becomes rather notorious over time. Either way, you lose market share to the point that your only solution would be to start fresh.

Don't let that happen as starting fresh can be a lot more expensive than doing brand protection early in the game before it gets to the point of no return. While some negativity and criticism is healthy online, which you can safely ignore, you also have to remain vigilant and make sure they don't cross the line into slander and libel. You have to have a more assertive reputation management plan in order deal with the situation.

Getting aggressive can be a matter of filing a lawsuit against the persons responsible for the content. But you can never be sure of winning the case. You can be sure, however, of spending a lot of time and money in the process. Theres a much better way to be both proactive and aggressive. You will need to harness some tools in online reputation management to ensure sustained brand protection.

One of the tools for manage online reputation is SEO which, apart from bringing up your page rank, can push down offending sites to pages way down search results where they cant do further damage to you or anyone. Its a subtle technique that often leaves offending sites wondering whatever happened to their page ranking.

While it's a good idea to learn how to do this yourself, this method requires advanced tools and strategies that would take while to master. And in the battle to win back your reputation, time is of the essence. So do your brand a favor by getting a SEO professional trained in defamation slander repair services to do the job right away.