Online Reputation Management - An Intro For Businesses

One of the great things about the internet is freedom of expression, but this can have a downside for your business when disgruntled customers or ex-employees decide to publish their grievances online.

Online reputation management has become an important issue for many businesses since the rise of social media websites.

There are a number of steps you can take to manage your companys online reputation and ensure that any information about you online is accurate and fair.

Tracking mentions of your company name online

When you want to keep up-to-date on what people are saying about your business online, you can use the following techniques;

Create custom RSS feeds
Set up Google and Yahoo email alerts for chosen keywords
Use online tools such as keotag.com to track tags used in blog posts

There are a number of different free tools available which can help you track online content which mentions your business, services or products and you should use these regularly to help protect your brand.

Industry forums

There are online consumer forums for just about every industry you can think of, and if youre worried about your online reputation being damaged, you need to keep track of these too.

Heres a quick 5 step guide to monitoring online forum activity surrounding your company;

1.Establish what forums you want to monitor using forumfind or BoardReader
2.Register your company on the forums
3.Have someone monitor the forums daily and give your side of the story in any discussions or complaints about your business
4.Offer a swift and personal resolution to any consumer complaints as this will show other forum members you take these issues seriously
5.If something written by a forum member is completely untrue, you should ask the forum administrator for that post to be removed immediately before it causes any harm to your online reputation

Summary

Your companys good reputation may have taken years to build up, but it can all be undone very quickly online if youre not proactive about monitoring the various blogs and forums where your business is being mentioned.

Online reputation management can take a lot of time and dedication depending on the size and public profile of your business, but employing someone to look after it properly will help you stay in control of your brand and ensure you dont lose out on sales because of peoples opinions, grudges or complaints.

Some people who complain about companies on forums only do so because they have had no satisfaction when approaching the business directly with their complaint.

You can reduce some of the need for online reputation management and negative impact by dealing with problems quickly and effectively before consumers feel the need to go online and vent their frustrations.