Celebrity Reputation Management Services and Strategies

It’s never easy to repair a damaged online reputation. And for someone who’s constantly in the spotlight, this challenge becomes even larger. That’s why celebrity reputation management is critical for A-List stars, well-known entertainers, directors, producers, politicians and professional athletes.

Celebrities aren’t just people, they’re also global personal brands. Unfortunately, this also means that celebrities are vulnerable to the same reputation issues that affect major brands. As a result, they require a level of upkeep similar to that of a corporation.

Whether you need recover your reputation after a viral negative news cycle, suppress unwanted images or prepare for an imminent crisis, we’re more than capable of handling it.

We’ve tackled this challenge for CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies and other highly visible leaders and entertainers.

How we manage celebrity reputations

Celebrity crises tend to unfold over short sprints of four to six weeks. During this time the media focuses heavily on the breaking story before moving on. However, those 30-40 days can produce hundreds of negative news articles that stay in your search results long after the incident has ended.

Our celebrity reputation management services extend far beyond the damaging news cycle to protect your image against past, current and future threats.

Here’s an overview of our process:

Topic analysis

We carefully analyze and categorize hundreds of search results and images to gauge personal brand sentiment and topic density.

SEO analysis

Next, we put each article (positive or negative) under the SEO microscope to determine what’s causing it to rank. We analyze information such as domain authority, content authorship, backlink profiles, social shares, keyword density, meta data and much more.

Identify and secure controlled assets

Viral news stories spiral out of control during a crisis. We look to secure all of the digital assets that you own to shore up your search results and hold back negative press.

This may include web properties that you previously ignored, like certain social media profiles, websites, blogs, and other content. The more branded domains you control, the easier it is to control negative news cycles.

Depending upon your scenario, we may need to register, purchase, resurrect or launch additional websites.

Establish your ally network

We often find that celebrities are too busy to promote all of their positive initiatives, so the vast majority go completely unnoticed.

To build a more positive narrative around your name, we map out your network of allies. This includes all of your positive connections and contributions to society.

We look for ties to charities, foundations, companies, products, philanthropy, career achievements and sponsorships.

Develop your strategy (PR + ORM + SEO)

We’ll map out a unique strategy to remove unwanted search results from Google and replace it with positive content.

Our strategies frequently include targeted editorial publication, press release distribution, social media recommendations and backlink creation. Unique to our celebrity reputation management clients, we may also recommend certain public statements, photos and videos.

Execute the plan

Once we begin work, we’ll use our extensive knowledge about search engine optimization to push positive press to the first page of your search results. Continuous online reputation monitoring of news and social media sites ensures that we aren’t caught off guard.

After we mitigate negative publicity, we continue to fortify your online presence and keep it rooted in well-built, positive content.

Unique challenges of celebrity reputation management

The viral nature of bad press

Needless to say, famous people are more likely to attract bad press when things go wrong. But it’s not just cheesy tabloid magazines spreading false gossip. Respected news sites will also pick up your negative stories.

Make no mistake about it, these websites are incredibly hard to dislodge from your search results. In fact, other reputation management companies claim it’s impossible to remove them. The good news is we’re not the average celebrity reputation management agency.

Celebrity search results are also incredibly volatile because of a constant influx of fresh content. Whether sipping a latte, hitting a club or making a racist comment on Twitter, someone will probably write about it online.

As we’ve written before, businesses in crisis management mode need to monitor their search engine results and social media websites round-the-clock to keep their public image in check. Similarly, celebrity brand management requires crisis-level vigilance because of the sheer volume of content generated each day.

If a negative article is especially controversial or newsworthy, it could become entrenched in a celebrity’s search results. When this happens, the only way to push it down is with a powerful SEO reputation management strategy. You’ll need a team of professionals working to write, publish and promote positive content that overpowers the negative Google, Bing and Yahoo results.

Celebrity social media monitoring

We carefully monitor social media sites. As you can imagine, this is no small undertaking. Although it may not be possible to look at every Tweet, Facebook post or Instagram picture, we can sift through them to determine public sentiment.

• Is it positive or negative?
• Do any of the posts seem to be staged attacks or defamation?
• How real is the threat, and what’s the appropriate response?
• Is there an underground channel of positive content we can leverage to flush out the negative information?

We’ll take all of this into account as we configure the most effective strategy for your unique situation.

Celebrity online reputation management is a click-through rate game

The first five search results amass the bulk of clicks within Google and Bing. Therefore, it’s essential to secure these key positions to influence your online reputation as well as public perception. We’ll create and deliver strategic recommendations to push down negative search results on Google.

The situation varies based on celebrity type

There’s a level of customization to the process when dealing with a celebrity client. For instance, we wouldn’t approach an athlete’s case in exactly the same way we’d approach that of an actor or actress. Let’s take the athlete, for example. There’s a great level of disparity in personal opinions and beliefs among sports fans. If an athlete weighs in on a controversial issue, the outrage among offended fans could trigger a slew of negative mentions. While you can’t satisfy everyone, you can take steps to mitigate reputational damage.

Celebrity social media blunders are more probable

Most celebrities are at least moderately active on social media, and rightly so. It’s a great way to connect with fans and reinforce your brand. However, a momentary lapse of judgement could create a viral explosion of negative news that pollutes your search landscape. In fact, most celebrity online reputation management issues these days are self-created on social media.

Why you need celebrity ORM

The internet never forgets

In our cyber-driven world, it only takes one person to screenshot a social media post to make it last forever on the internet. People are drawn to social media missteps that are funny, outrageous or scandalous. Within minutes of posting, an ill-advised post has likely been saved by thousands of people who will gladly share their copy if you delete the original. News cycles will move forward and your name may fade from the media, but your mistake will live on on the internet.

The inherent nature of search engines

Google’s algorithm was specifically built (and is frequently updated) to maintain neutrality and relevance. The algorithm examines trillions of articles, images and videos in an effort to suss out how they all relate to each other.

When Google recognizes that various topics are repeatedly mentioned together, it concludes that there must be a correlation between the two. The more frequently these topics co-occur within your entire body of indexed content, the stronger this correlation. This is called search density, and Google uses it to suggest related search results.

This is also the basis of our content recommendations for a celebrity reputation management plan.

There are plenty of unique challenges that come with maintaining a celebrity’s brand, but there’s nothing too big for us to handle. Contact our team to see what we can do for you.