Online PR is the practice of monitoring and responding to the opinions of others expressed about your organisation on blogs or online forums. The comments that others make online can have a startling net affect on creating online business success or failure.

If the post is an opinion about your business – say, for example, someone claims your product is poor, or your customer service is non-existent – there’s not much you can do, even if it’s untrue. The law allows anyone that has interacted with a business to make comment on their experiences without recourse. If, however, the online claim is totally bogus – claiming, for example, that your organisation’s product is dangerous or service causes excessive greenhouse gases – then you have a legal right to have it removed.

Finally, if someone makes a false and defaming allegation about you personally and you are not famous, then you have a right to claim damages. The unfortunate thing is that your feelings of personal hurt are irrelevant to the size of the claim; it’s the effect it has on other peoples’ opinions of you that is taken into account. In any case, the courts are more willing to award larger damages if the comment is about you personally, rather than about your business.

The recourse in all cases above must start by making contact with the editor of the online forum and ask for the comment to be removed. If that fails, then a solicitor’s letter is next followed by legal action. In most cases influential forums act responsibly and will remove highly controversial comments quickly.