So you’ve brought your business online. Congratulations!
And now, the whole world is listening. This can be a double edged sword. One one hand, people could love you and you can share things online with people. On the other hand, people could find fault with you or your business. Which means, now—more than ever—you need to figure out how you can manage your reputation on the Internet.
Does that seem like a terrifying prospect?
It shouldn’t be.
Well, it’s true that managing your online reputations can require learning a whole new skill set like these:
- Monitoring online conversations
- Engaging customers and audiences
- Promoting the right information
- Managing positive and negative customer opinions
But, the upside to being online is that you have the potential to really grow your business faster and more efficiently, especially when you can build a reputation that customers can trust. Here’s my guide on how you can do it:
Claim
On the Internet, there are many ways that you can claim your identity to minimize possible opportunities that scammers or even affiliate sites (insert glossary link) can mess with a perfectly good image. But there are ways to make sure that you prevent this.
Start by claiming your vanity URLs for your websites and social network sites. Vanity URLs are used for the sole purpose of expressing your site’s individuality.
So instead of your Facebook site link reading like this:
http://www.facebook.com/profile/view?id=84756289&local=enUStrk=tyah
Your Facebook page should look like this:
http://www.facebook.com/yourbrandname
Do this before someone else can claim it, which is likely to happen if you don’t act fast.
Tune In
Next, you have to start listening to what people are saying about you on the Internet. There are a number of ways that you can do this. For example:
- A simple Google search on your name or brand can get you started. You can take this a step further by setting up a Google Alert for your company name or product name so that you are automatically informed if your name is mentioned online.
- Explore local search sites such as Yelp, Yahoo! Local or TripAdvisor or any other forum you have locally designed for customer feedback.
The goal is to see your business through the eyes of your customers so that you can manage what they’re saying about you. Which then brings us to the next phase—
Manage
Now that you know what people are saying about you, you have to learn how to manage how you react to it. Because while you can do so in such a way that it can build your credibility online, you can also easily damage your reputation.
Reviews, for instance, are crucial to building a good reputation online. Great reviews are welcome and encouraged, but don’t be too quick to delete negative reviews either. Negative reviews actually lend some level of credibility for your overall reputation.
Not to say that you should also just leave it there either. I would strongly encourage you to reply to as many reviews as you can. If it’s good, thank them for taking the time to review, if it’s bad, reply to apologize and follow through by sending them a private message and let them know that you’re there to help.
Brands like Jetblue Airways is a great example–they use social networking sites like Twitter to represent their brand and use it a customer service platform, replying regularly and attending to their customers concerns.
Take note that these simple steps do more than to protect your name on the Internet. In fact, they are good ways to determine your overall approach to marketing and can complement other strategies you may have on understanding your customers.
If you want to learn more, you check out our blog and review other topics that we’ve discussed…but in the meantime, here’s your Seriously Simple Marketing HACK:
- Go to www.google.com/alerts.
- Type in your brand or product name.
- Set the details you need to create the alert for your brand.
It’s that simple—and now you can receive automatic updates for your brand or product whenever it is mentioned on blogs, reviews or any other website.
– Mercer
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