In a world where Google searches matter and one negative link can ruin your reputation forever, there are PR experts willing to clean up your online presence and give you or your business a fresh start.
These online reputation specialists can work brand messaging into search results to influence the way you perceive others and how you make decisions.
Meet Nader Nadernejad, a PR and communications expert who does just that.
“I’m a public relations strategist specializing in online reputation management.”
“I spend time getting to know who you are, what makes you tick and the goals you want to achieve in your business.”
Nader Nadernejad is the director of Nadernejad Media Inc., a Canadian public relations firm specializing in online reputation management for businesses and individuals worldwide. While located in Canada, most of Nadernejad’s clients come from the U.S.
“Florida, Connecticut, New York and California. Many of our clients are from California,” says Nadernejad.
Nadernejad says his PR firm has also worked on campaigns in the United Kingdom and Australia.
“We specialize in creating an online presence that’s more like you, ranking positive media at the top of search results and reverse-engineering outcomes for you and your business.”
Nadernejad was recently interviewed by Dr. Robin Yap, a professor at George Brown College in Toronto for a feature in McGraw Hill’s upcoming textbook, “Building Your Dream, a Canadian Guide to Starting Your Own Business.”
In simple terms, Nadernejad is making a name for himself in online reputation management and PR by helping people and businesses build a stronger online presence.
“I bootstrapped my own firm and it was a grueling process. That’s why I have a differentiator that separates me in the marketplace, and I am so grateful to be where I am today.”
Nadernejad helps people fix negative online reputations by using search engine optimization to push down negative content on the web.
“I believe it’s a fundamental right for people to control the way you’re perceived online,” says Nadernejad.
So how exactly does Nadernejad do it: Ranking positive content on the web, pushing negative content down on search engines, and creating desirable outcomes for his clients.
Impression Management
Nadernejad says every online reputation management specialist needs to be versed in something called impression management.
“Impression management is the process of influencing public perceptions about a person or organization by controlling the information available to the public or information that comes up in social interaction,” says Nadernejad.
Nadernejad says it’s about more than just controlling the information that’s served to people. It’s about strategically creating content that influences people by speaking to factors that sway their subconscious and drive them to make decisions.
“For this to work in online reputation management, you must manage the impressions of all web assets, and you must ensure that the content served within those impressions works towards your primary objectives.”
Nadernejad says online reputation management specialists need to subtly weave in the narrative they want communicated for their clients instead of outright saying it.
“Typical public relations firms spend a long time on messaging, then they think about channels to distribute messaging from their own platforms. That’s just the first level of what I call conscious marketing or conscious communication,” says Nadernejad.
“You also want to weave in subconscious communication by having credible people and organizations say good things about you.”
“To do this, we write long-form, journalistic-style articles and rank them on the web as first impressions, which influences the perceptions of a client’s audience and stakeholders.”
Nadernejad says he creates a Master Communications Plan for his clients, an internal document that describes their goals and outlines an impression management strategy.
Interestingly enough, impression management can be applied to face-to-face communication, but it is now applied to computer-mediated communication.
The term was first coined by Erving Goffman in 1959 in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
Search Engine Optimization
So how does Nadernejad rank positive content for his clients at the top of search engines?
It’s all about SEO or Search Engine Optimization, which is a term many people now understand without having to be a digital marketer, according to Nadernejad.
Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing content to be more search friendly and to rank higher on search engines.
Nadernejad says his strategy is particularly effective, but simple.
“Every website is assigned a domain authority between one to one hundred,” says Nadernejad.
“We simply write long-form articles, add relevant keywords and publish on higher domain authority news outlets and blogs, which causes our content to outrank all the negative content on the web.”
“Negative news article with a domain authority of 90? That’s okay, because we’re publishing our article which is longer and contains more multimedia content on a site with a domain authority of 95,” says Nadernejad.
Nadenejad says that his strategy is particularly effective, because search engine optimization makes impression management possible, influencing the way people perceive brands on the initial encounter.
“Impression management and search engine optimization used together are a powerful tool, and you can think of search engine optimization as something that enables impression management to influence stakeholders and take hold of the decision-making process.”
Video Content and Testimonials
Another way Nadernejad Media is shaking up the online reputation management and public relations space is in their use of testimonials and video content.
“Since we can rank positive content on the top of search engines, we can rank people who hold great social or political influence at the top of search engines too and use them as testimonials for our clients,” says Nadernejad.
Nadernejad says it’s important to think carefully about the content you rank on search engines.
“You don’t want the search results to appear controlled and orchestrated. Remember that your audience is smart. Educated people with a huge amount of experience and pattern-recognition abilities will be searching for your brand online, and you want the online results to appear organic.”
That’s why Nadernejad solicits video testimonials from the most noteworthy individuals for his clients, adds them into articles, then ranks that content on the web as well.
“By having impressions on search engines come from a variety of sources, you make it appear as if media is served objectively and organically.”
Infinite Tactics and Next Steps
“There are infinite tactics in online reputation management,” says Nadernejad
Nadernejad says he spends a lot of his time thinking of new ways to implement online reputation management strategies that can help his clients. Taking an ultra-tactical approach, as he calls it, Nadernejad is influencing the way media is presented online.
He says his company is called Nadernejad Media because it operates as a media company, purchasing web domains, blogs and news sites to guarantee media placements for his clients.
“We make these platforms even more profitable by refining their operations at the digital and organizational levels, but we also use them as a vessel for communications messaging,” says Nadernejad.
Having just opened a new office with his team in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Upper Water Street, Nadernejad says his next steps are to continue expansion and to develop a new B2B-facing subsidiary.
He is currently onboarding a new client: a Chilean presidential candidate.
To learn more about PR and online reputation management from Nader Nadernejad, you can visit his firm’s website at NadernejadMedia.com.
