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On Line Reputation Management
By Reputation Management
On Line Reputation Management, four words that you as a business owner should be very very aware of, why? Because these four words can ruin your reputation and can directly influence whether a consumer does business with you or your company.
I’ll share a story with you about a friend of mine who has recently decided to upgrade their current home by building their own, and over the weekend ,visited a number of display homes of several well known national building companies. The sales people were very polite and helpful, the display homes beautifully displayed and as a result of this first experience, they were very excited about the prospect of building their own home.
When they got home, just to check out the credentials of both of these very well known builders, they typed into Google, “complaints about (I’ve removed the names for privacy reasons) company” and what was displayed was pages and pages of consumer complaints about the companies services, or should I say lack of service, once the contracts had been signed.
My friends have now decided not to use either of these companies because of the range of complaints against them.
One thing that stood out to me, was that neither of these builders had attempted to try and rectify or even respond to these complaints, yet this simple search has just lost them approx $500,000 in business, that was the cost of building the home.
Word of mouth has changed due to the influence of social media and where once a consumer who’d had a negative experience with a company, could only influence their circle of friends at a Sunday get together, today are able to publish their comments to hundreds of thousands of consumers via forum sites and blogs. So word of mouth brand building has changed forever, if you’re not aware of the impact of this then now’s the time to learn and quickly!
There are numerous forum sites active on the Internet, not just Google, that carry complaints from consumers about all sorts of businesses, in fact any company that has a transactional business, deals face to face with the public or advertises on the web is vulnerable.
When planning my last holiday, tripadvisor.com became my best friend, and I changed my airline or hotel choice after reading what other consumers had to say about complaints or comments about their experience with the companies.
It’s estimated that over 40% of consumers who see a negative search engine result, will not use that company, and I cannot imagine how much business has been lost to companies that feature on these forum sites, and more importantly, these businesses are probably not even aware they’re losing business on the web.
So it’s time for you to set up an On Line Reputation Management strategy for your business today, you need to Monitor, Manage and Repair.
Setting up Google Alerts is a great start, include keywords that you want to monitor, and once a day Google will send you an email giving you all the information if your name or business is mentioned on the web. Sites such as trackur.com, serph.com etc will all help you monitor your online reputation.
My advice to you is start monitoring your brand online today, you just never know who might be searching you or your business right now.
If you would like more information on how to protect your brand on line, please let me know via this blog and I’ll be happy to assist you in setting up an effective strategy to monitor your on line reputation.
Mike Andrew On Line Real Estate Technology Coach http://www.mikeandrewrealestate.com
On-line Reputation Management
By Reputation Management
On-line reputation management has become the most important aspect of on-line marketing. You should incorporate this into your Internet marketing strategy today by doing the things that I will suggest in this article. If you are already doing these things, let this serve as a gentle reminder.
The fact is, anyone can go online and post anything about you or your company on any forum, blog, or user-generated website. They can even do this anonymously and you’ll never know who is trying to ruin your reputation. The statements these anonymous posters make about you or your small business do not even need to be true. A lot of times, one comment can do more damage than you could ever do yourself through lousy customer service.
Let these businesses serve as your example:
- A private physician gave advice that a patient didn’t like; the patient, a blogger, posted some negative things about the physician on her blog. Since the physician did not have a website or blog of her own, the only results for that doctor when a potential patient conducted an on-line search were the blogger’s negative comments.
- A construction contractor fired an employee and in retaliation the former employee posted some comments on a popular forum online. Even though the company had a website, they had not done a lot of Internet marketing and the negative comments outranked the construction company’s own website.
- A small business owner who also performs charity work through a separate organization was attacked through an anonymous blog on a free blog host by a former customer who began posting negative comments about the charitable organization as well as the business owner.
These types of attacks online are becoming more and more prevalent. The Internet gives the illusion that there are no consequences for comments that are not true. Off line, such comments would be considered slander, but online they can be made anonymously and influence potential customers to stay away from your small business based on nothing but hearsay. Once the damage is done, it is extremely hard to reverse.
The good news is you can manage your on-line reputation through an on-line marketing strategy that involves proven techniques that are not expensive or do not take up too much time. You can do it yourself or hire an Internet marketing consultant to do it for you. Either way, on-line reputation management is an absolute must for every small business owner, even if you do not have a website or do any business online. Here are the essential tools for your on-line reputation management strategy:
- A domain name with your personal and/or company name in it
- Your own small business website
- Article marketing
- A blog that you post to every day
- Social networking and social bookmarking on a regular basis
- Forum posting and blog comments on blogs related to your business
- On-line press releases
- Building in-bound links to your website from quality, highly respected websites within your industry
On-line reputation management is all about marketing your business online in a positive way without tearing others down. You don’t have to make others look bad in order to make yourself look good. On-line marketing strategies are an extension of, and should be approached as an addition to, traditional marketing approaches. The first step to your on-line reputation management strategy should be to sign up for Google Alerts using your personal name, your company name, and your website URL as keywords. That way you can see when people are talking about you online and head off any repercussions from erroneous or negative comments before they get too entrenched in the search engine databases.
The essence of all on-line reputation management is ensuring that more positive reflections of your business appear in as many places online as possible, as often as possible, and to keep fresh content alive about you and your business that creates a positive impression. By maintaining a consistent approach to on-line marketing, you can ensure that your reputation online is unmarred by negativity and reputation-killing talk. For more information about on-line reputation management, consult an Internet marketing consultant with a background in managing reputations today.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Entrepreneur and outdoor photography adventurer Caroline Melberg is President and CEO of Small Business Mavericks, a division of Melberg Marketing. She has over 20 years of experience creating marketing communications materials and writing copy for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. Her small business columns are syndicated online, and she publishes the popular e-Zine “Maverick Internet Marketing Secrets.” Learn insider Maverick Marketing secrets you can use immediately to find new customers and increase your sales.
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