152: The Ten Golden Rules of Reputation Management and Crisis Communication with Evan Nierman and Jay Berkowitz

of fact, we've been brought in a number of

times by the PR firms. We need help. We got to fix Google like

the first page of Google's a mess. I'll give you one example.

This oil and gas company I mentioned, the chief executive

got a donation from Senator, and it was a three month internship,

and they sold it at charity auction at his synagogue. And

the guy who owns Girls Gone Wild bought the donation, and he

thought it was clever, and he was going to have the girls

working in the senator's office and for the summer, and they

were going to film the whole thing. So of course, the senator

said no, and this guy had to take one for the team and say

that the senator hadn't agreed to the internship, and it was

all on him. And so literally, when you google this guy's name,

this crazy picture of the girls gone wild, guy came up all these

pictures and all these stories, and it his family was tied in

politically. So like, all over the news. This one I call start

with the low hanging fruit. So like the first thing is get some

easy wins. And one of the easiest win is run a Google ad

on your name or the term you're trying to protect. Like people

don't realize so easy, you just put a pay per click Google ad,

and the first thing they're going to see is a Google ad that

you own that goes to your page, your press release, and you can

control your name. And then the second thing we did for this

guys. We bought 10 domains. We bought his name.com, his

name.org his first name, dash, last name.com, and we created a

bunch of websites. I mean, this guy done a ton of charity work,

all kinds of stuff in the community. Worked very

extensively with the university. So each of those websites told

the story about him and his brand and his company, and we

very quickly search engine optimize those individual

websites so that they started coming up when you searched his

name. The other thing we had to do is a ton of search engine

image optimization. So you take a whole bunch of pictures, you

create a whole bunch of images, you put all those images on

those websites, and you name the image with his name, obviously

straightforward, but you gotta do a lot of it, because maybe

half of those images Google's gonna register and show in the

Image section. But we had to get this crazy Image of The Girls

Gone Wild, guy out of the picture.

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening,

whatever time this podcast finds you welcome to the 10 Golden

Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms podcast. Great guest

today, Evan Nierman. He's a crisis whisperer, a media

strategist. He's the guy you call when your reputation is on

fire, and Evan will get to you in two minutes, because today

we're going to do something really cool. We're going to do

the 10 golden rules of reputation management and crisis

communications. Evan is definitely the guy you call when

the proverbial Shi hockey stick hits the fan, and we've done a

lot of work on the back end of fixing your Google reputation.

One quick commercial. I always start with if you like this and

you make it to the end. Do me a favor, click the subscribe

button on YouTube, or if you're listening on one of the podcast

services that helps us get some amazing guests, like Evan and

click the Like button. So thank you very much, Evan. Welcome to

the 10 golden rules podcast.

Thanks, Jay. It's great to be with you today. I'm

looking forward to it.

So red Banyan is his company, they're an elite

crisis PR firm. They've been behind the scenes of some

amazing reputation management and crisis communications with

CEOs, celebrities, attorneys. We're going to talk a little bit

about that. He's authored books on crisis communications. He's a

super dad. He was the captain of his soccer team, and he toured

Europe with MCM. So Evan, tell us a little bit about your

journey.

Every day is an adventure when it comes to high

stakes and crisis PR. And for me, a question I get all the

time is, how did you end up working in this very unique

niche field? And the answer is pretty simple. I started my

career in Washington, DC. So if ever there's a place where

reputations go to die and there's constant need to manage

situations with complexity that's happening day in day out

in Washington, DC. So the first 15 years of my career were spent

in and around politics and policy in Washington, working in

advocacy and then working in high stakes crisis

communications. Then I actually made a journey to South Florida,

of all places, to work at a startup. Did the startup thing

for about a year and a half, and then ultimately decided I wanted

to create the kind of firm that I was looking for, but I

couldn't find when I was looking to get a job in high stakes

crisis communication, so I set out to create the firm that I

was always looking to be a part of, and that's what I've been

doing the last 14 years. Is building red Banyan and helping

great people and good organizations facing complex

circles. Stances.

That's amazing, because I tell exactly the same

thing. I worked at Coca Cola, McDonald's in traditional

marketing, and then sprint, we got into digital, and I moved to

e diets.com, an online diet company. We grew that company to

$60 million and when I wrote the 10 golden rules of online

marketing and I gave a presentation at the Direct

Marketing Association, bunch of people came running up to me,

and they said, We want to hire you as a consultant. And I

realized they were looking for what I was looking for at E

diets, it was 2003 we couldn't find anyone who was strategic

and had some digital chops. And I realized there's a real

opportunity in the marketplace, because I was looking for

exactly that, and that's the vision we use to create 10

golden rules. I think

it happens a lot with entrepreneurs. You go

looking for something and you find it doesn't exist, and you

kind of scratch your head and go, I can't believe this isn't

in the marketplace. Well, I guess I better go and create it.

So I think it's a pretty common story.

That's awesome. So you've had some incredible

brushes with celebrity. Tell us a little bit about MC Hammer and

touring Europe.

MC Hammer definitely had his heyday back

in the 90s. But one of the remarkable things is, once

you're MC Hammer, you are always MC Hammer. And even now, as he

goes around the world, people recognize him. And when we were

in London, we were getting chased by paparazzi who wanted

to catch him on camera. And I will tell you there was, I was a

very young guy at that point, pretty early in my career, and

we were sitting around a table with a bunch of business folks

working on a deal. And we were in a beautiful Hotel in London

called the connet, which is a very gorgeous, yeah, beautiful,

old school English hotel. And actually, when hammer sat down,

they asked him to take his hat off because he was wearing a

beanie. And they came and said, Me, sir, would he trouble you?

It was very English, but they asked him to take his hat off,

very proper. And so then as they came around the table, I

happened to be sitting in this horseshoe booth, and they asked

me what I wanted, and I didn't really know, so I just asked for

a beer. And then they turned to hammer, and he said something

along the lines of 1985 Dom Perignon. And I turned to the

waiter, and I said, You know what I'm going to have? What

he's having

perfect. And was he wearing the pants, the crazy

puffy pants?

Nah. He doesn't wear the Hammer pants anymore,

but he still keeps himself in pretty good shape. And I could

tell you, the guy can still dance.

Why don't we do this? Let's jump into the 10

golden rules of reputation management and crisis

communications. And for those who've listened to a few of our

recent podcasts, we're tapping our experts to compile their

expertise into 10 Rules, just for a little fun and structure

to these conversations, we're going to start out with Evans

and please include a few of the stories of these celebrity and

big company crisis communications in some of these

examples. So the first one is called, protect yourself in

advance. Why don't you talk about what people should do

before they get in trouble?

When it comes to crisis communications and

reputation management, it's one of these scenarios where an

ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And that's very,

very true when it comes to things that can threaten your

reputation or your revenue. And so I would say north of 90% of

the crises that my team at Red Banyan and I deal with have some

tie in to an online mishap. And so one of the ways that

individuals and companies can protect themselves in advance is

to think before you post online, and if you follow the rules of

share with care and post with purpose as it relates to social

media, and you teach your team, not philosophy, then before you

hit Send or post, you actually think about, am I revealing any

confidential information? Am I putting things out there that

ultimately aren't going to reflect well on either me or my

organization? And if you share with care, and if you post with

purpose, meaning, what's the point of the social media post?

Is it going to age well? Does it advance the narrative you want

about yourself, if you follow those two basic rules, you can

avoid a lot of problems down the road when it comes to self

inflicted wounds related to social media.

And a lot of the times, I find that companies

that have come to us and basically when they come to 10

golden rules, they're looking to fix the Google right? Like it's

like the first page of Google when you search the whether it's

the we've done the CEO, or we've worked with a bank, we've worked

with a university, we've worked with the university president,

getting in Google hot water. The mistake a lot of folks made is

they didn't have any kind of content strategy going forward.

I see. Say the simplest thing is just post one piece of content a

week, and every company should do it. One of our clients that

we talk a lot about in reputation management is an oil

and gas company. So they probably didn't think they

needed to produce any content, but when the CEO got in trouble,

all their big deals were at risk. And so the simplest thing

is just all you need is one article a week, one blog post,

and then we call it cascading content, like a river cascades

over a waterfall and creates little waterfalls and little

streams and tributaries and rivers. Put that initial blog

post on your website, and then post on Facebook, Twitter,

LinkedIn, Instagram and link back to your website. At least

you've got a baseline out there of good content. You've got

Facebook page with some followers, and your website's

got a teeny bit of SEO to it. So many times we're starting out

from scratch, and literally, this guy didn't have a LinkedIn,

the company didn't have any social media, so we had to

really dig them out of a hole. So the next one, obviously, when

the S H I T hits the fan. We said, take action when the S H I

T hits the fan. So, Evan, you get that emergency phone call,

what's the first things they need to do, and what's the first

things you do when they hire you?

Yeah, well, even before they contact red Banyan

or a firm like ours, is for all the listeners of this podcast,

at the first hint of a problem, that is the time when you should

be gearing yourself up and jumping into the fray. A lot of

times, what happens is people end up in analysis paralysis.

They don't know what to do, they're feeling overwhelmed.

They don't pick up the phone and make that call, they don't send

that email. And that can be very problematic, because in today's

hyper connected world, if you don't take immediate action, you

can have a cascading effect going the other way. And you can

have media piling on and social media discussions happening, and

before you know it, 10 minutes turns into an hour can turn into

days of negative exposure for you or your brand. And so really

being willing to take action quickly and not overthink it is

vital. And so that's something that, unfortunately, a lot of

times companies, they hope and pray that the news cycles go

away. Yeah? And that's not a good, effective strategy. You

have to err on the side of action?

Yeah, I think when these things happen, you

have to have some kind of statement. Or the non statement

probably makes it worse, right?

Not having a statement is in itself,

communicating or a mistake that a lot of attorneys make. And

it's amazing to me that you still see this in this day and

age is they'll actually advise clients to say no comment, or

the attorneys themselves will say no comment, which in my

view, is probably worse than just not accepting the phone

call or not speaking at all with the reporter, because when you

say no comment, you're actually making A comment. And I think

that there's a misperception oftentimes among attorneys that

because there's the potential for their client to have legal

repercussions, or you're talking about a situation where there's

already litigation, there's a fear that if you say something,

it could impact negatively the outcome in the courtroom. And

that's actually there's almost always something you can say and

something that is not going to jeopardize the future of your

client. They need to prevail in court, as well as in the court

of public opinion. So I would just advise any and all

attorneys to open your mind a little bit to the possibility

that you can always pretty much say something for your client

doesn't mean you have to answer whatever pointed question may

come in from the reporter or you may not be commenting on the

specifics of the case, but you could at least say something

nice about the company or the individual. You could drive your

messaging in some way. And what that does is it means when the

story is written, it's not all about the negatives, or they're

not citing a police report or the charges and then just having

a footnote reach by phone, they declined comment. Instead, you

could say something, and then you're actually taking up real

estate in that piece, so that you're giving people a more

balanced view, and you're actually saying something rather

than nothing.

Yeah, that's a great point. Like the lawyer

version is no comment, but the consumer take on no comment or

plead. The fifth is that person's guilty, they're so

guilty. So you're right, it gets worse. So guilt, that's true.

The next golden rule, I like this one. You said, press the

truth. What does that mean? From a crisis management standpoint,

press

the truth is a philosophy that I articulated in

my first book, Crisis averted. And we advise our clients that

when they're facing a. Circumstance, it is not enough

to simply tell the truth. Telling the truth used to work,

but that was a different world, and it didn't come fast and

furious, and there wasn't interconnectedness between

social media and mainstream media. And so when I talk about

the concept of press the truth, what I'm saying is you can't be

reactive and slow. You can't abide the idea that, well, we'll

eventually get our day in court and we'll prevail. Because what

happens a lot of times is by the time the trial gets scheduled

and it happens and the case either settles or you do prevail

in court, by then, you've eroded so much brand value that it's

really a Pyrrhic victory. When you choose to press the truth,

it means that you're making a decision to fight, to defend

your reputation and to advance your interests. And so it's

active, it's proactive, and it means being willing to engage

and no comment or declining to take the call. I would put that

in the reactive negative bucket. Whereas, if you're going to

press the truth, it means you have a strategy in place for how

you're going to advance a narrative that puts you your

client, in the right light.

Yeah, if the stock price is already down to

80% you got a big problem. All right, the next one we said,

start with the low hanging fruit. I'm going to parlay this

one. I'm going to jump in here, because we often get the call,

okay? As a matter of fact, we've been brought in a number of

times by the PR firms. We need help. We gotta fix Google like

the first page of Google's a mess. I'll give you one example.

This oil and gas company I mentioned, the chief executive

got a donation from Senator, and it was a three month internship,

and they sold it at charity auction at his synagogue, and

the guy who owns Girls Gone Wild bought the donation, and he

thought it was clever, and he was going to have the girls

working in the senator's office and for the summer, and they

were going to film the whole thing. So of course, the senator

said no, and this guy had to take one for the team and say

that the senator hadn't agreed to the internship and it was all

on him. And so literally, when you google this guy's name, this

crazy picture of the Girl's Gone Wild, guy came up all these

pictures and all these stories, and it his family was tied in

politically. So like, all over the news. This one I call start

with the low hanging fruit. So like, the first thing is get

some easy wins. And one of the easiest win is run a Google ad

on your name or the term you're trying to protect, like people

don't realize. So easy, you just put a pay per click Google ad,

and the first thing they're going to see is a Google ad that

you own that goes to your page, your press release, and you can

control your name. And then the second thing we did for this

guys, we bought 10 domains. We bought his name.com, his

name.org, his first name, dash, last name.com, and we created a

bunch of websites. I mean, this guy done a ton of charity work,

all kinds of stuff in the community. Worked very

extensively with the university. So each of those websites told a

story about him and his brand and his company, and we very

quickly search engine optimize those individual websites so

that they started coming up when you searched his name. The other

thing we had to do is a ton of search engine image

optimization. So you take a whole bunch of pictures, you

create a whole bunch of images, you put all those images on

those websites, and you name the image with his name, obviously

straightforward, but you gotta do a lot of it, because maybe

half of those images Google's going to register and show in

the Image section. But we had to get this crazy Image of The

Girls Gone Wild guy out of the picture. We search engine

optimized his website like he didn't even have a bio page on

his website. So they had an existing business website, but

he wasn't prominent featured on there. And Basic Search Engine

Optimization create a page named with his name at the top of the

name, like each page is website.com/and then you put his

name. And so your search engine optimizing in the you have a

picture of him with his name, and you have a bio of him with

his name, simple, basic stuff that they didn't have in place.

We're basically trying to control that first impression on

Google. And relatively quickly, within three to four months, we

were able to get nine of the first positions on Google and

really repair the Google image search where five of the six

images that showed up in that strip of images. When you did

the search, we had five of the six images. So it's all managed,

reputation management. You can't make some stuff go away, but you

can. We'll talk about how you do that. But for the most part,

it's just pushing the bad stuff down Google by bringing more

optimized, more current stuff to the top of them. Age you want to

add in what you guys do on your site?

Yeah, that's great. And I think those are

some really good strategies. And I think that speaks to what we

were talking about before, about pressing the truth you rather

than allowing your client to be defined by negative media

coverage, instead, you're driving a narrative and painting

a picture of who this person is, in a fuller sense, by creating

those websites and optimizing them. So I think it's smart and

it's effective, and it also is a good reminder in that case,

you're you're in a situation where the person didn't have

some of those basic things that they should really be investing

in beforehand. Because if you've already got a website, you've

already got a strong bio, and you've got a blog, for instance,

then you have content that's out there. I think one thing that

surprises individuals is those who try to fly below the radar,

and they don't invest any time and effort in creating content

at all, and they have no presence online, it actually,

ironically leaves them more susceptible. So when something

negative inevitably happens, then all the people see is the

negative, and they're not inoculated by having the

positive

1,000% All right. Well, the next golden rule is to

own the important real estate. So you want to own every square

inch of your name. I talked about that a minute ago, that we

did it reactively, but you want to do it proactively. One of the

things a lot of companies don't realize. We own 10 Golden

rules.com but we also own one zero, like the number 10 Golden

rules.com and we also own the.org the dot info, the.co

you've got to protect your brand. You've got to own all

those variants. You can set up basic little websites, or you

can just use those domain names and point them to your main

domain name. And then you've got to have, like, social media

profiles, a few press releases. Like you should do a press

release every quarter, every company has at least something

they did of value or a big, big case they want big settlement.

Some firm highlights. Evan, what do you guys do to help firms own

the real estate?

Yeah, again, everything you're saying is

accurate, and the way to own the real estate is to have a modern,

up to date website, since really, that's the first place

that people are going to look for basic information about you.

And I'm always amazed at the number of attorneys or firms

that haven't felt the need to update the website, because

especially a lot of times referrals, the revenue streams

involve referrals from other attorneys, which is great, but

at the same time, when that referral is made, where does

someone go in order to check out the attorney who they're

thinking about hiring? They look at them up on their website, and

it's actually pretty easy. It's easier than it's ever been

before to have a professional looking website where it's

modern, it's clean, it shows up well on mobile, which is really

important, because most people are checking you out on their

phone or their tablet, as opposed to sitting down at a

desktop. Do you

know what the guideline is to when you need to

update your website.

I'm waiting for it. This is unique.

So five years, four to five years, you should

check out when you built your website, because enough changes

with Google and enough changes with design styles. If you look

at a four year old, a four or five year old website today,

it's probably got a blacked out image, and the text is white

because we didn't know how to make beautiful images and text

work together back then. And it's sort of a design stuff, and

the consumer just finds your website looks dated, so four or

five years. And by the way, if you think, oh yeah, we just

redid our website, go check the date and the day you paid that

guy to do your website. It's probably five years ago. All

right, next up, Golden Rule number six for crisis management

reputation is monitor and measure. People don't realize

this. It's free to set up a Google alert on your name, your

CEO's name, and your company name, and that's like a basic

must for everybody. And then you can set it up to get the email

every day or once a week, and Google Alerts sends you an email

every time your name comes up. Now, if you have the same name

as Aaron Rodgers, who was in the media yesterday, NFL

quarterback, obviously it's going to be a little bit of

clutter if there's a famous celebrity with your name, but

it's basic stuff that you should do. And then there's more

advanced tools like sentiment tracking that can tell you about

tone across social media platforms, and you can even set

up alerts and chat GPT for your firm name, Evan. What are some

of the things you guys do to monitor and measure and

remember? By the way, this is proactive and reactive.

Obviously, it's something we do immediately when we take on a

reputation management project.

Yeah, as you said, Google Alerts are cheap in that

they cost absolutely nothing, and it's easy. Our firm uses we

pay a lot of money to have social more advanced social

media monitoring tools, and for us, we need to. Do that, because

when we're dealing with a client who has faced some sort of media

exposure that's negative, it's really important for us to be

able to see are the efforts that we're taking on behalf of the

client working or not, not just qualitatively, but also

quantitatively. And so now there are tools that are out there

that agencies, marketing agencies, or crisis management

firms have access to, which can enable you to track, monitor,

measure, and it's even as sophisticated as looking at the

crawling the overall web and seeing is overall sentiment

towards this brand or this person negative, neutral or

positive. And it's really important to be able to look to

data to tell you whether or not the efforts that you're engaging

in are being effective or not. Do more of what works and move

on if something isn't really working.

Awesome. Well, next, time, by the way, I

feel really bad. There's got to be some other Jay

Berkowitz out there who wants to own some real estate on Google.

But because you invest so much time and effort and you have the

expertise, anyone who looks for that poor Jake Berkowitz is only

going to find you and 10 golden rules. So my condolences to the

other Jay Berkowitz.

No, you're right, and there's two very important

Jay Berkowitz is there's a Professor Jay Berkowitz and a

Doctor Jay Berkowitz. And I'm sure they're a lot more

important for society, but unfortunately for them, you're

right. I remember, I was at Google in 2004 when they

launched Gmail, and I got Jay berkowitz@gmail.com and every

time like Twitter came along, and whatever it is clubhouse, I

get the Jay Berkowitz idea and all the social media because

they probably don't hear about it for three years. Matter of

fact, they get a bunch of emails to Dr Jay Berkowitz, and I

always have to forward them to the person that you know. Jay

berkowitz@gmail.com All right, so next up is a similar thought

pattern. You want to manage Google and social media reviews

so proactively, we recommend, like everyone was saying

earlier, you've got to build your fort, right? So you've got

to have some Google reviews. And that's very, very important for

your SEO, and for if you're running local service ads and

local SEO to come up with the Google Maps. So you've got to

have a strategy to get happy clients to send you reviews. The

simplest thing is just send them the link, like in your Google

business profile, your GBP, which is what companies own on

the back end of the Google Maps, right? You own your Google

business profile. There's a link in there. You can send people,

it's super easy, and then they can go directly and do the

review. But you should have a proactive program where after

you you finish a case for a client, particularly like a pi,

the paralegal should request those Google reviews. We have a

whole program where we send out gift boxes 30 days after so the

paralegals get an incentive, $50 gift certificate if they get a

five star review. And then we send out these kits. You could

use tools like bird eye makes it easier to get Google reviews,

but you definitely want to have a proactive program where you're

looking at your Google reviews and all of the other social

media so you know, if you have a junior person who's your social

media person, sometimes we call it a twin turn, like a Twitter

intern. And should have we said earlier, at the very least, have

someone writing a blog every week and posting all those

things on social media, you should make it part of that

person's job to monitor all the social media and respond to

things on Facebook, and maybe you'll catch someone getting

upset before it could blow up, and if you like, if you respond

on social media and dealt with an issue before they write a

blog post or do a video that goes viral. So talk about what

you all do to manage Google reviews and social media reviews

and Google reviews really matter, because not just

Google reviews, but all of these review websites, and we know

from statistics that 85% of consumers say that reviews

impact their buying decision. So for an attorney, that would mean

they're looking at the reviews and looking at the online

chatter related to an attorney or the firm before they perhaps

pick up the phone and make the appointment, etc they want to

see and I also think part of it is just human nature. If you go

and you look at an attorney and they've got 27 five star

reviews, and they've got two one star reviews, you naturally are

like, ooh, the outlier is the one stars. I'm gonna check those

out. One thing I hear from attorneys a lot is they're

hesitant and reluctant to respond to negative reviews

because they're concerned that they could get into trouble with

the bar, and I would encourage you to consider that through a

slightly different lens, and that is people are going to look

at your reviews, good, bad and indifferent, and without

revealing any specifics related to the case, and thereby

violating attorney client privilege. You. Could say

something positive. This is the same mindset that I was talking

about, about not just saying no comment. So if you get a

negative review, you don't have to go into debating the client

about what happened in their case. You could just reaffirm

how you as a firm always try to get the best possible result for

your client. It's better to say something than nothing. And the

other thing to think about when it comes to reviews is you

shouldn't write a response to a negative review to try to win

over the person who's already panned you online there, it's a

lost cause. But what you're doing is you're providing a

response just so that when someone comes along, they don't

just take what that person is saying as the gospel truth, and

instead, you respond in a way that makes you look professional

and courteous and be the bigger person. And again, you can do

this without raising the ire of the bar. So don't be hesitant to

press the truth about all of the aspects of your firm and how you

try to get the result for your client and how you have great

integrity. It bears repeating again and again, so don't lose

that opportunity by ceding the battlefield to the haters. Yeah,

exactly what Evan said. You should definitely

respond to every review, particularly negative reviews.

The other thing you can do is try and take it offline. If the

review is made by our Sanchez and you can find the file. And

you know who are Sanchez is. We should reach out to him. I think

I heard John Morgan, the CEO of Morgan. He invites people to his

office in Orlando. He'll send a car for them to try and make

good and get that review taken down. And you want to deal with

it that level of importance. And then the other thing is, if you

can't find our Sanchez in your files. Your post can be, hey,

our Sanchez. I'm really sorry to hear you had a bad experience

with our firm. We can't find in our Sanchez anywhere in our

files, so please reach out to us, and we'd be happy to make

good on anything that we try and resolve the issue. So you're

showing that, hey, this was a competitor. This is a fake and

particularly if our Sanchez the only Google review she or he

ever did is that one negative review for you, that's

true, and in some cases, you can actually get if

you can prove or show that the person wasn't actually a client,

it violates the terms of service. And therefore you can,

many times, actually get that review taken down.

So next up is advanced strategies. And that's

a good point. People always ask me, How can we get this removed?

And so there you can get Google reviews removed if there's only

like three or four reasons why Google will do it, but if you

violate Google's Terms of Service, so any swearing, foul

language, if they do defaming, I forget the term for that, but

there's like three or four things you can just google,

google terms, Google review, Terms of Service or rules,

regulations, and you'll find, if there's any of those exact

criteria, you can submit a request to Google and they will

take that review down. But nine times out of 10 you can't get

that review removed. The person has a right to say what they

want to say in the world of Google, we have been able to get

entire websites redacted, and Google will show the web.

They'll still show it in the search results at the very

bottom of the first page, and they'll say this website was

redacted. But we've been able to get Google to actually remove

websites again. You've got to take a legal action. You've

gotta find a purpose. And this is very we had a guy who's doing

is very, very expensive, but we're able to do it successfully

a couple times. What other types of advanced strategies have you

guys taken Evan,

yeah, I think there are more opportunities to

get that stuff taken down than than many people realize. And

that include, it can include things from fake reviews from

competitors or from people who are not your customer to people

who are trying to extort you. It happens all the time. And even

there is a cottage industry, actually, of trolls who are out

there who will go and they will find they'll scrape the websites

to look for people who are arrested, and they'll put their

mug shots up. And then if you approach them, they'll actually

take down the mug shots. They'll basically hold it hostage. And

look, it's a double edged sword. We've had mixed experiences

dealing with some of these individuals and these mug shot

websites, on the one hand, many times you can spend a couple 100

bucks and they actually will take down the person's photo,

which can make a big difference if you're Googling someone, and

they haven't invested with Jay in actually getting good photos

out there. And one of the photos that shows up in the Google

search returns is a mug shot. Obviously, that doesn't help you

in your professional life. A lot of these websites will actually

take them down if you pay. But at the same time, I've also seen

it go the other way, where you have to be careful about how you

do it, because it's not uncommon for them to take it down from

one website, and then all of a sudden, magically, just days

later, it pops up on another website. So then you end up

paying. Again and again and again,

horrible. Yeah, and there's some subtleties.

Like, one of the things we've worked on is Google Search

suggests. So a lot of times, if you type in the name, like, I'm

sure we'd never find anything bad, but you type in Evan

nearman, so then you're going to see, like, Evan nearman reviews.

And maybe sometimes you do nothing wrong, but somebody else

with your name does something wrong. So you find Evan nearman,

arrest. Evan nearman, mug

shot, but true. And I would challenge you to

google me, because you will not find anything about me, because

I have never been arrested. I haven't

restate that as John Smith, right? No, no. I

want you to

name. Search my name, because then it will, as

you know, it'll help me SEO wise, and you'll click on good

content that it puts me in the correct light.

The example I was sharing is you can actually

manipulate Google Search suggest, so we've been able to

get good terms. So what I'm talking about is, when you type

in a name and then Google shows five or six other variations.

Similarly, they have the people also ask section. So we have

been able to successfully manipulate Google Search

suggest. And I put that in the advanced strategies. Here's

another advanced strategy. It's hard these days to create a

Wikipedia page. There's another site called ever every PDF, e,

v, E, R, i, p, d, and it will rank in Google. The reason it's

hard to create a Wikipedia page is because you need a lot of

notability to have a Wikipedia page. But in the cases of some

of the university president and the CEO of the oil and gas

company, they did have some Notability. And then we got them

a whole bunch of media appearances and stuff, and then

we were able to create a Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia

page is going to rank top three for your name on Google

immediately. We talked about buying websites. So those are

some of the advanced strategies we use in these situations. All

right, I just looked down the every PDF

because I actually hadn't heard of that one before. So thank

you. I learned something important on this.

All right. Next up is proactive strategies to

prevent future damage. I'm gonna take that one

Sure. I mean, this is, to me, at the crux of what

it means to press the truth. And it means you're doing things on

an ongoing basis in order to promote your personal brand or

your firm. And this is, again, this is how you inoculate

yourself down the road. The best defense is many times a good

offense. And it's also a way to stay top of mind for your

prospective referral partners or clients. And this is putting out

press releases. As you pointed out, there is always something

to talk about in terms of a company milestone or something

to highlight, there is definitely content creation,

which is easier than ever before. You can utilize tools

like generative AI. You're obviously going to want to not

just put something into chat, GPT or one of the others and

post it as is, you're going to want to edit it and create use

it as a it's great at generating a first draft, a second draft or

a third draft, but there's no excuse now for people not to be

creating content and then publishing that content, even if

it's on properties that they control, such as their social

media site or their website. But again, when you position

yourself how you want to be seen, and you speak at

conferences or you go on a podcast, for instance, this is a

perfect example. And so putting some real world parameters

around this, I'm going to appear on this podcast with you, and

then you're going to, eventually you're going to publish the

podcast, and when you do, you're going to promote the podcast,

and you're going to drive links back to your podcast, and I'm

going to want people to also check out the podcast, so I'm

going to be talking about it on social media. I'll probably post

today, thanking Berkowitz for having me on and then when the

podcast actually is posted, I'm going to promote it, I'm going

to talk about it. So there's just no excuse in this day and

age not to be active, even if it's just working on your

website and picking one or two social platforms like a

LinkedIn.

It's actually a great strategy. And if you're a

CEO or a partner in a law firm, you should have your twin turn

or your PR company reach out and get you on podcast, because

Evan's going to be amazed. And you all when you do Google his

name, and if it's two or three weeks after we publish this, I'd

say there's an extremely high likelihood that this podcast is

going to rank for his name, because almost everybody who we

featured, but I think part of this because our YouTube channel

is absolutely blown up. We have over a million YouTube views.

Google owns YouTube, so those algorithms are linked, and so

this podcast has been incredibly effective at doing proactive SEO

for brands, proactively. Evan said it right speaking events,

media. Here's a great tip. I'm sure Evan knows this. It's a

service called SOS put up by. By Peter Shankman. It was formerly

called Harrow. Peter founded Harrow. He sold it, and then it

crumbled, and then he publishes SOS. SOS, he sends out an email

three times a day with journalists looking for experts

to speak on topics. So it's a great way to get listed doing

proactive media, proactive, PR, proactive, we said, cascading,

publishing an article, cascading it speaking in advance, getting

those social media handles. Those are all great ways to sort

of write the history that Google is going to talk about you in

advance. All right, we made it number 10. Get back to brand

building so once we've settled the waters here, Crisis averted,

we've done a lot of work. Three, four months, we've got our first

page of Google under control. What are some of the things that

you do to get back to brand building? Yep,

well, that is ultimately the goal with both if

you find yourself needing rapid response or crisis

communications, or you're engaging in online reputation

repair. Once you've settled it, what you're looking to do moving

forward is to have an effective strategy for building your

brand, and this means turning the page on whatever controversy

existed, and taking steps on an ongoing, consistent basis, in

order to promote your firm, your unique value proposition to

clients or to customers, and you have to be an advocate for

yourself. And so it includes a lot of tactics, both promoting

yourself online and doing some of the things that Jay and his

team do in terms of digital marketing and showing up with

pay per click digital campaigns so that you're at the top of the

search results, investing in SEO, so that you're showing up

on the first page of Google, and then down the road, you're

coming up as a suggested expert in your field. When people are

using AI in order to treat those as a search engine. These are

all things that people have the opportunity to utilize, and to

your point, before Jay Speaking to reporters, going on podcasts,

dropping press releases, creating content, applying and

securing awards. These are all ways that you can build your

brand, and you can tell the story about you and your firm

and attract the kinds of clients that you ultimately want. And I

would say one thing that people don't think about is you want to

specifically go after where your prospective clients are get are

getting information. So if you're you work in a unique area

of the law. You shouldn't just be thinking about yourself as an

attorney in broad, general terms, niche down. Think about

where the folks are who could potentially become your clients,

and try to go after appearances and mentions and be a content

creator on the sites where those individuals go hunt, where the

animals are, fish, where the fish are.

You mentioned a great one, and that's win

awards. And people always ask me, like, how do you win awards?

And I say, Well, it's pretty simple. Apply for the awards

nominations, because I've run a couple award shows and I've

judged like the webbies and things like that. There's so few

entries that the easiest way to win is just enter that's a great

one awards. They get listed all the time. Couple things I would

suggest, and number 10, get back to brand building, is maybe do a

new launch. If you've had a product in development, triple

down and make it a huge product launch, press releases, media

events, and get a new news out there, because Google will

always favor the newest news. But if you can really hire a PR

firm, do a bunch of social media, spend money on marketing,

advertising this thing, even if it wasn't the biggest

initiative, and you didn't have plans to spend money on it, now

you got a chance to rewrite the narrative. Get the new news out

there. Maybe by same token, you can do a community initiative.

If every year you sponsor the 5k run in your community, obviously

they'll look a little fake if you just, you know, all of a

sudden, you're doing a bunch of community stuff, but if there's

something like that that you authentically believe in and

support, now you can come out and sponsor it, and maybe you

could even pay for the press release that the 5k does, but

feature all the sponsors and stuff like that. So let me

quickly review the 10 golden rules of reputation management

and crisis communications, and then we're going to give Evan

the five quick snappers. Number one, protect yourself in

advance. Evan said, share with care and post with purpose.

Number two, take action when the S, H, I T, hits the fan. So you

immediately want to get an expert like Evan involved, and

then probably hire someone like us to fix the Google issues.

Number three, press the truth. I really like that. You said you

could own the facts. You've got to push the truth because you

can't just state the truth. You got to push it out there. So

number four, start with the low hanging fruit. So I said things

like Google ads, getting your Google business profile fixed

up, getting your website search engine optimized, buying your

own name on websites. Own the important real estate. So same

thing. Not only should you own your own name and your firm's

name, but all the.orgs.net dot reviews. Number six, monitor and

measure, set up your Google Alerts. Number seven, manage

Google and social media reviews. So you should be proactively

getting Google reviews and proactively be monitoring what

people are saying about you and asking questions in social

media. Number eight, we had some advanced strategies. Evan had a

great one about getting awards. I never thought of that one in

this context. And how do you get awards? You enter the awards

competition. We talked about ways you can actually remove

Google reviews. And we have a way to manipulate the Google

Search suggest what Google says in addition to your name in the

drop down on the Google Search. Number nine, proactive

strategies to prevent future damage. And Evan had a bunch of

great tips there about getting in the media. And you should

subscribe to SOS, which is, we'll put a link in the show

notes to Peter Shankman SOS service, where the journalists

are looking for experts. You should do that right now,

immediately. That's a great way to monitor when someone's

looking for your expertise. And number 10, get back to brand

building. Do all the basic things, all the things we talked

about here in a reactionary mode, should be part of your

proactive positioning to protect your brand. And some things you

can do are like new launches and community initiatives. Evan, we

did it. That was awesome. I always ask a couple questions at

the end of the podcast, what's an app or technique you use for

personal productivity?

I have something called the oak journal, which is

a physical book. I write in it as the very first thing I do

every morning where I express gratitude three things I'm

grateful for, and then I highlight the two or three most

vital things that I need to get done that day. And what I like

about the oak journal is it goes on a weekly cadence, and at the

end of it, each week, you're able to evaluate how you did.

And for me, it's a really important tool to just keep me

focused on what matters most.

I love that my mastermind used to we all used

to post in our group at the end of the week any wins or losses,

and somehow that petered out. I wish we were still doing it.

Best business books.

Best business books, anything by Jim Collins is worth

reading, for sure, and huge fan of anything and everything that

he writes. I also think one of the best business books is

actually more of a psychology book, and it's called The Big

Leap by gay Hendrix, and it's really talking about how to

operate in your zone of genius. And of course, two must read

business books. One would be the cancel culture curse, which is

my book about cancel culture, and then my other book called

Crisis averted, about high stakes and crisis

communications, and it gives you PR strategies to protect your

reputation and the bottom line. So gotta, gotta check out those

two. Of course,

awesome. And last one, where can people get in

touch with you?

Easy. You can find me at Red banyan.com you can

follow me on x at Evan nearman. You can connect with me on

LinkedIn. You can find me on all the social media channels,

YouTube, Instagram, etc, and you can always send me an email also

at Evan, at Red banyan.com

This was awesome. This was lots of fun. Thanks so

much for doing it.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Jay. This was great.