Use these 5 Online Reputation Strategies to Manage your Company’s Brand:
You may think that online reputation management isn’t something you ought concern yourself with. I would urge you to reconsider that thought!
According to eMarketer 83% of consumers declare that online reviews sway their opinions about a particular company, and 8 of 10 of these people added that a negative entry online is the cause of them changing their mind regarding that company. Even one negative review, justified or not, can negate all of your efforts if you haven’t thought out an online reputation strategy to manage it.
So to help with that I’d like to present five strategies your small business, and your brand, can use to monitor and manage your online reputation.
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- Monitoring your brand names – Listening what’s being said about you and your business is of vital importance. There are plenty of excellent free tools to help in this regard. Take a look at Google Alerts, Hootsuite, and Social Mention among others.
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- Claim all your relevant social properties – Unused social media sites can be used by your competition to pull you down, and spread negativity. Make sure you claim all social sites that matter for your brand.
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- Own as much of page one of Google as you can – One proactive way to make certain what people learn about you whenever they Google you is to own most if not all of Google page one for your brand names. This will make it much harder for flyby attacks to have much if any effect.
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- Ask for customer reviews – Customer reviews aren’t just going to magically appear: you must actively court them. Make a point of prompting your customers to write reviews, and do everything possible so that it’s easy for them: links to review sites, examples from other customers, etc. Of course, if you offer incentives, make it clear that you’re not attempting to bribe them or affect their review!
- Make engagement a priority – Engaging with your commenters, social media posts and tweets is a terrific strategy to stave off any negativity from the start. Refrain from getting into a shouting match though, however strong the urge.
You businesses online reputation is much more valuable than in the past. We are in a day of instant communication and you literally can be just one bad review away from turning away many of your potential customers who first go online to review your reputation and see what experiences other customers have had with you. Don’t neglect this one!
If you would like to see if you have any bad reviews online we have developed an easy to use online reputation checking tool to help you. Once you know where you stand you should consider taking a very proactive role in developing and then marketing a 5 star reputation for your business.
