Protecting Your Reputation When A Partnership Goes Bad

Writing by Nick Stamoulis ShareThis

It happens all the time in the bricks and mortar business world. A partnership goes wrong and one party heads off and starts up in competition. It can be a tough situation at any time but what happens when it’s an online business?

What if it’s your wife or husband? They know the inner working of your business and, more importantly, they know the inner workings of you – how you think, how you act and you react. They are in a perfect position to publish a wide range of negative reviews about your business and, unless you can prove it is them, there is little you can do to stop the situation.

It’s an interesting situation. In the offline world, you are real people with personalities, friends and loyal customers. In the offline world, your faceless, often with no persona to speak off. So how do you defend yourself and your business?

This situation is really no different to that of a disgruntled customer or ex-employee. You need to be ranking well in search results so that bad reviews find it difficult to outrank you. My first step would be to establish Google alerts that advised me every time my business or brand were mentioned.

How would you handle this situation?