Do you know what people are saying about you or your business online? Did you know that there is a chance people will talk about you online without your participation? Have you noticed any negative discussions taking place about your brand on popular social media channels? Did you know that your reputation can be broken or made in 140 characters (Twitter) or less? Do you know what online reputation management is?
There’s no need to use a phone book anymore because the world-wide web made it easy for anyone to find answers to questions within seconds. The internet not only helps us find what we are looking for, but it can also give us immediate recommendations and referrals from other people who have used the services or products from suppliers in the search results.
Even though this all sounds well and fine, this has opened up a whole new can of worms. With all the information available to us online, and because it is so easy for anyone to post and share anything with the world, it has become important to proactively manage your online reputation. Never make the mistake of thinking that if you haven’t listed your information on public websites or if you simply don’t have your own website that you are safe. There might be a chance that you are listed on some type of directory, and the information on there might not be accurate.
Your online reputation should be taken seriously and is not something you are going to do once and then forget about it. You need a process to actively monitor and take care of your online reputation. Here’s a couple of tips that can help you with starting a simple online reputation management process.
Online reputation management process
Google: Search for your business name and some variations people will use to find you on Google. You can also search for key employee names and see what is ranking on the first page of the search results.
Google Alerts: Setup Google Alerts for your company name, key employees, services, products, brand, etc. Create the alerts to notify you immediately via email for reputation management.
Online profiles: Check all the online profiles that you are active on such as your social media profiles and check if the data on your profile is correct. Update your profiles regularly and complete missing data. Also check for any incorrect information about your company on directories and business listing websites.
Monitoring: As soon as you are alerted that your name has been mentioned online, research where this has taken place and respond as soon as possible where necessary. Demonstrate that you are listening to your customers needs and that you care about what they have to say.
Local promoting: Search Google for businesses in your area to see which review websites and social media channels are having their comments pulled into the search results of Google. This can help you check for areas where you can list your business to get active reviews on.
Online reputation management is not a do it once and be done with it process. Manage your online identity proactively to ensure you don’t get blasted by negative feedback without your participation online.
Well said. I’ve been using google alerts for a while now and noticed that its not that accurate.
Thanks Hayley. Indeed. It will never be accurate because Google has to discover the name (mention) you have setup before it can alert you.
Yes we just can’t show off the brand name in excess. we just mention where required,that will be good enough i think.
But if we have lot of negative reviews and we want to remove these from the listing which are showing at the first page of Google for a main keywords then in that case what should we do to remove these texts.