What to Do if Your Reputation is Attacked on the Internet
An unhappy parent posts the following note about your family child care provider on the Internet, "Do not use the Sally's Home Child Care! She's incompetent and a scam. It was one of the biggest mistakes I have made. "You discover this information after Goggling your business name.
What can you do about this?
There are a number of Internet sites that contain parent reviews of child care providers: Yellow Pages; Yelp; About.com; and Insiderpages. So far, such sites have very few parent reviews of child care programs. (About.com has only 84 child care reviews nationwide, although this is likely to grow over time.) Facebook is another place where you may see negative comments from parents.
Unfortunately we live in the age of the Internet where information can be widely shared and remain visible forever. It’s painful to be the target of information that is false, hurtful and perhaps even illegal. This is a problem that is not going to go away.
The Internet, particularly social media sites, is a place where people are encouraged to share their opinions and ideas. Freedom of expression is good in general, but negative opinions and false statements can create real damage to your program.
What can you do?
Here are some steps to take when negative comments are posted about your program.
Talk to your licensor: Whenever you hear or read that a past parent is saying negative things about you, contact your licensor. Explain what is happening and what the facts are. You want to protect yourself against a parent who later decides to make a complaint about your program.
Respond online: When you see a negative review of your program online, ask other parents in your program to write a positive review on the same site: “Despite what someone has said, Sally’s Home Child Care is very good. My kids love her!” Read the terms and conditions of these websites to see if the parent is violating them. If so, report it to the site. I have heard from child care providers who have been successful in having harmful parent comments removed.
Sue the parent?: It’s difficult to successfully sue someone for defamation (spreading of false statements that damage your reputation) because it can be hard to prove. It can also take time and money to hire a lawyer to represent you. Over the years I’ve talked with a number of child care providers who have had parents bad mouth their program to other parents in their community. Sometimes the complaints are serious, involving false accusations of child neglect (clearly slander).In every case, however, the parent stops making negative comments after a few weeks and the matter dies down. When negative comments are posted on the Internet, however, they remain there forever. Because of this, it’s difficult to ignore. In general, I don’t recommend filing a lawsuit unless the parent comments are so serious that they threaten the existence of your program.
Monitor your online reputation: You want to know about negative comments about your program as soon as possible. Use Google Alert to track your name and your business name. You will get a weekly report every time they appear on the Internet. It’s free. Periodically scan the rating sites identified earlier in this article to see if someone is posting about your program. Ask parents enrolled in your program to tell you if they read anything about you on the Internet.
There are also services that provide assistance for a fee: Reputation.com; and Socialmetrix.com (also in Spanish).
I’d like your feedback!
If you have had experience with a parent who has make negative comments about you on the Internet, what did you do?
Tom Copeland – www.tomcopelandblog.comImage credit: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/loyalty-sign.html
