Before jumping onto the social media marketing bandwagon and joining the conversation online you will need to conduct an online audit of your business reputation and see what people are already saying about you. This process is usually called the “listening process” as it requires you to listen to the online conversation. Did you know that these conversations are happening online even without your presence? Once you have made this assessment you can start managing your risk.
Popular social media channels are ranking very high on Google because they are considered as valuable sources of information. Negative comments on these channels are likely to rank very high on Google and this is why it is important to monitor what is currently being said online about your business. When you are actively part of the online conversation you can minimize the damage.
Every business should at least monitor the following online: their name, brand name, company name, company executives, product names and of course their competition. With any luck, most of the content online is positive but there’s likely a chance of getting some negative mentions. Track the source of these negative mentions or comments and see how you can reduce the damage.
Promoting positive content
It is very unlikely that you will be able to remove all the negative comments and mentions from the original source. This means that the negative comment will always be part of the Google search results. This may seem like the end of the world to many, but by being proactive and publishing interesting and positive content on a regular basis, you can diminish the negative mentions and comments to the lower end of Google search. By posting positive comments on a regular basis you can overtake the negative comments and mentions on the search engine rankings.
If you have pushed down any negative comments from the search engines you must remember that anyone can post a negative comment in a couple of seconds that could ruin your reputation. It is important for everyone to understand that it is not always possible to control the message and they cannot stop anyone from posting these comments online. It is very important to monitor and negate. If you are not part of the conversation happening online you will have no idea about the damaging content.
In most social media crises, the majority of them occurred because businesses failed to adequately deal with the customers grievances or failed to respond to the negative comment and feedback online. This is just a reminder to always give first-rate customer service. Turn your monitoring and responding to comments online into success stories, if you don’t, your competitors will.
Online Reputation Management and social media works hand in hand.
I like that you emphasized posting positive content. So often people freak out about negative search results but aren’t bothered by blah results… Why miss out on the opportunity to emphasize what is great about your brand?
True. One of the best ORM strategies is to promote positive content. Not only can you push down negative rankings on the search engines with positive content, you can also turn the outcome of the negative comment to a positive one.