Managing Your Online Reputation

Your brand reputation is a very large part of your business’s success. If other people don’t recognize and are not award of your brand, you won’t have anywhere to go. It is critical that you have a stragegy and a business plan from the beginning. 

Your approach to boosting your brand’s reputation

There are many possible challenges that your brand can experience. It is very important that you are able to identify what those challenges are and that you overcome them as soon and as effectively as possible.

No history: If you have experienced an issue, you need to have some written history that will prove to the person who has the issue with your business that you have taken steps to resolve it. There is a great likeliho0d that the first place one of your customers will go if he or she has some issue with your business is online.

Once that step has been taken by the customer, they will probably expect in-person interaction (or, at the very least, a telephone conversation). It is also a good idea to have a form available that your customers can fill out.  That will give you the initial written history but you should also have a paper trail for what comes next. You should be able to show a history of the issue from beginning to end (inception to resolution).

Negative publicity: The second challenge that needs to be overcome is negative publicity. If you are experiencing issues with your business from customers, it is not doing your business’s reputation any good.

Negative feedback and issues that become visible often have a large impact and the memory of the negativity often remains with people for a long time (more than positive feedback does). You may see that negativity comes out of the woodwork once people have a forum to vent and to offer their opinions, especially if they are able to remain anonymous.

The effect of negativity on SEO: Negative online feedback can have a really detrimental effect on search engine optimization. SEO means that your business’s goal is to rank as high as possible in the search engines.

Negative feedback will rank you and your brand lower and the more negative feedback your company receives, the lower your rankings will be. Before you know it, people won’t be able to find you at all. That is the last thing that you want or need. It is essential that you remember that negative feedback will last forever. The only way that you have of counteracting that effect is to build positivity on top of that as much as possible.

The sad thing is that, sometimes, it only takes one negative comment to begin crumbling your reputation but it usually takes a much greater effort to build it back up again. If you happen to be experiencing an issue with your business’s reputation, there are some steps that you can take to improve the situation.

Using a consumer review site

Many consumer review sites are actually managed by some sort of reputation management service. In other words, if you are not signed up to use the reputation management services,  you won’t even be able to deal with the negative feedback. If you can’t deal with it, you can’t fix it. Unfortunately, that means that you will have to invest some money to do so. The costs vary but you need to find the one that is best suited for your business.

Combine customer service with your online marketing strategy

This is an excellent idea because you are allowing the customer service portion of your business to respond to the feedback. By doing so, you are keeping the channels of communication open between your business and your customers. If regular discussions are going on, what could have become significant negative issues will not be allowed to turn into something so destructive. There is a great deal to be said for nipping it in the bud.

Search for yourself online

It is a good idea to do a Google search for your name. In fact, it is also a good idea for you to set up an alert with y our name so that you can monitor what is being said about you and by whom. You can set it up so that the alerts come to you at the frequency that you wish.

Conclusion

Your business’s online reputation is a huge part of your business’s success. It is critical that you manage it properly and make sure that you move forward with your customers and give them what they want and need. They will thank you for it and you, in turn, will prosper and become a tremendous success. Nowadays, everyone is concerned about online reputation. You need to make sure that yours is above reproach.

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