Online Reputation Management for High Net Worth Individuals: Protecting Wealth, Brand and Opportunity

James Dooley: Online reputation management for high net worth individuals. There's a lot of high net worth individuals that are looking to improve their personal branding or could be corporate brands that they're connected to. So, Scott, I want you to jump straight in and say, "Do you offer ORM services for high net worth individuals and is there anything that you do different when they come through and you know that they're a high net worth individual?"

Scott: Yeah, I would say that's one of our our biggest offerings and um as far as doing anything different um I would say, you know, our ORM strategies are pretty consistent across the board. However, we do take in the fact that being a high net worth individual um just the the weight of impact one negative article could have when you're playing at that level in this game, right? So, we have to ensure that we are all over it in a timely manner because every minute that that negative content out there is costing millions um in in a lot of cases, right? So, um we have to really be on top of everything we do in in these type of campaigns.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Tim, I want to move on to that because high net worth individuals got a lot in my opinion has got a lot more to lose. There's so many people, especially when they high when that are like a big celebrity or the high are a high net worth individual. People like knocking people off the perch. So, if they are sat there at the top, people are looking for bad press and they're looking for negative content. So, with regards to proactive, so let's say they've not got anything negative at present. With regards to the proactive reputation management how important do you think that is for online for high net worth individuals?

Tim: Well, it's uber important and we've seen a recent example right here in the United States just recently with the Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and the relationship he had with a female reporter. Supposedly, right? It's all alleged. We don't really know, but signs point to yes. I did a lot of digging on that one, but a proactive campaign could have saved a lot of that stuff. Um obviously, everyone's running with that story from the New York Post to a lot of local newspapers, etc. It went very viral. Having front-run that with positive stuff, whether they did charity work or wanted to highlight uh community work, anything like that, achievements, that could have been a little bit softened. But yeah, if you're high net worth and you've got a lot to lose, whether you're a local business owner um or someone just that's in the spotlight, that appearance can lead to either opportunities or non-opportunities. A lot of high net worth individuals have charitable organizations, foundations, and if they're trying to do a gala or raise money or have new partners and sponsors come on, but they did something perhaps in the past that was questionable or could could come out in the future that they, you know, kind of did something gray in a business deal, having that information suppressed is important. So, being proactive with that is is the best thing cuz that could lose out on I mean, look, if they're high net worth, they're high net worth for a reason, but those are the kind of people that when they're aggressive, they're sharks and they can expand that net worth five even 10-fold, but if they're losing opportunities to do that, that's impactful.

James Dooley: Yeah, it's a to Tim's point real quick, um when [snorts] someone has that content out there, right? And they have nothing else positive or to protect it from raising as high as it potentially will, um once one outlet puts that out there and others start seeing the engagement it's getting, it just creates a wildfire wildfire, right? So, as they would have been proactive in that and let's say the first of the the bunch of negative came out, didn't necessarily show up as high in Google because they have all these authoritative assets already there, then it might not have caught that same fire for all the other outlets and it could have also reduced the visibility of the the negativity, right? The the more um it's going to get online, the more engagement, the more places that are going to run the story, right?

Tim: Yeah, for sure.

James Dooley: Tim, there was a saying in one of the other episodes that we did and it was something along the lines of "No one gets a second chance of a first impression." I don't know if I've butchered that saying. You can say the exact quote of whatever it was. Can you expand on that quote of what you've said there and why it's important for high net worth individuals? Because I think it's even more important for high net worth individuals when they're looking for maybe new business partners, joint ventures, maybe new investments. Someone's looking to sell their business or partner up with their existing business and bring this high net worth individual in. They're going to be checking to see everything about what they've done previously, what scams they might have done on previous partners. One, what was the quote? And two, why do you think it's important for high net worth individuals?

Tim: So, I believe it was you don't ever get a chance second chance to make a first impression, which I just kind of butchered right there as well. But, yeah, you do not get a second chance to make a first impression. And that's so true. I mean, I can speak from experience going to conferences, ones that we've all gathered at before. And you meet someone in passing that has something you're interested in. It could be a partnership. It could be a new affiliate program, a new idea, a new space you want to invest in with them. And you meet them briefly. You get a business card. You go home and you search the person and you saw a couple shady things or things that you just didn't really agree with. And that interaction quickly changed from excitement to okay, my guard's up. Maybe this isn't the best thing to get into. Maybe I shouldn't go down this rabbit hole. Again, just having that clear reputation and a clean page one and clean page two and hopefully beyond, that can change people's due diligence on people. It really can.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Scott, I want to move on to high net worth individuals normally have got more money. I say that and a lot of them are very frugal and they don't seem to want to spend it. However, if someone comes along and let's say a standard online reputation management package might be 15 to $20,000 a month, right? And this high net worth individual comes along and says, "I've got 35,000 a month to spend with you." Could you and I know I I know there's a two-edged sword to this, but could you spending $35,000 a month increase the speed in which you suppress negative content that's online if they've got higher budgets?

Scott: Um the more budget, the more deliverables, but you know, the way Google works, just because you um get a bunch of featured publications all in one month doesn't necessarily mean it's going to impact the speed of the campaign. Um so, we do oftentimes have people wanting to throw as much money as possible at us to make things go away fast and we really sit down with them and go over like what's realistic, um get them on the best possible plan for them financially, um just cuz they want to throw 35K at a campaign that may only, you know, take 10K. Um we want to tell them, "Hey, this is only going to take 10K. Um this is why it's going to take this amount of time. Don't waste money where it's not needed. We can be just as effective with this budget as we can that." And really make sure that we're setting them up for success. We're transparent on how long it's going to take and just being able to do that, I mean, I I know I've talked people out of spending money in a in a lot of cases, but they respect that and they end up referring their friends or colleagues who may have issues down the road. And you know, that money always comes back to you by doing the right thing. So, um just because they are more credible or they have more money, doesn't mean that they need to spend that money on a ORM campaign. We really personalize the exact nature of their campaign versus the situation. Um you know, if they have ongoing negative press, it's going to cost more, right? Um if it's something that's the damage is already done, there's only a few pieces out there, it may be way cheaper than the numbers you even mentioned. So.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And Tim, expand on that then with regards to higher budgets. Um now I'm talking from um an SEO standpoint. If someone did say, "Well, I've got more budget and I want it done faster." And you're saying, "Well, do you know what? Like, we can't push we can only push Google so far." There's obviously certain things with regards to SEO like tiered link building and virality and more campaigns and stuff like that. Can you expand without giving the whole game away? Can you expand a little bit more just on the the core basics of SEO and getting the right content on out there, getting some backlinks to it, maybe even tiered backlinks, maybe some engagement, some virality, some some bits of information that I I what sets apart from a good online reputation management company to a great online reputation management company versus we've just done an article we've just done a video about PR. Check out the link in the description. PR versus online reputation management. Can you expand on the difference of what makes a great online reputation management company?

Tim: I think beyond deliverables and everything everything you just mentioned there from tiered backlinking to, you know, using sites that Google trusts, I think communication and setting expectations. I think that is the biggest thing that separates us. We're very honest with people. We say, you know, if you don't have the patience to last 6 months, it might not be a fit for you. There are situations where we solve the problems earlier, and that's why we do a month-to-month contract with a 30 written 30-day written clause to get out. If you're satisfied after 3 months cuz you had a minor issue and we absolutely smashed it, you're free to disengage. However, the expectations are there because something we touched on in another episode again is the Google algorithm update. If they're showing a negative result for the last 3 or 4 years of something that happened a long time ago, and it continues to get engagement, it doesn't matter how many new articles we put out in month one. Like, for your example with someone with a huge budget, we could go out and take out all these articles, but until the algorithm kind of rolls out a new update, that one's probably going to be lingering around. Now, we might do some quick fixes and suppress it, but it's not going to go to page 10 in in, you know, 1 month just because someone said, "I have $40,000. Get me in Forbes. Get me in Entrepreneur. Get me in Time magazine." I mean, even if those were all possible, it's just not how it works. So, I think creating expectations and explaining, "This is how it works." I mean, we're on the SEO game. If things were overnight, we wouldn't be on this chat. We would own an island and all be there privately and hunker down and have every toy in the world, but we all know it doesn't happen overnight. If it did, our lives would be very different.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And And, Scott, I want to round up on this where if a high net worth individual's watching this and they're looking for online reputation management services, what's the best way of reaching out either to yourself or Reputation Pros, or is it to Tim, or is it to Corey? What's the best way of this high net worth individual reaching out for an ORM service?

Scott: Yeah, we're all available. Um you can visit our website reputationpros.com. Um you can reach out to myself, Tim, or Corey directly um via any social channels. Um email mine@[email protected]. But, we are very accessible and here to help any way we can.

James Dooley: Great stuff, Tim. Scott, it's been an absolute pleasure and hope you like the episode on online reputation management for high net worth individuals.