5 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

Managing the online reputation of your company is an integral part of running your business and ensuring its success. Keeping track of what the public is saying about your business is not as much of an overwhelming process that you may imagine and can actually be as simple as a few quick mouse clicks that you can easily work into your schedule on a regular basis. Here are a few easy steps you can take to protect your online reputation.

• Use Social Networking to Your Advantage:  Social networking sites can be great for your business in many ways, and having Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts is practically a business imperative. And by maintaining an active social network presence, you’ll be more aware of any negative chatter about your company as well as first to hear any praise or positive feedback.
• Search Yourself Regularly:  Use several search engines to search your business name on a regular basis to check for any negative content that may appear when customers search your name. Chances are, you won’t be able to remove the information, but you’ll at least be prepared if customers express concern over the comments and, if the feedback is valid, you’ll have a chance to make changes to your business to prevent further poor performance.
• Collect Testimonials from Satisfied Customers:  The best possible publicity for your company is the positive feedback of satisfied customers. Actively collect this feedback from your clients and either publish it on your company’s website or set up your own feedback site where customers can publish their own reviews. Each good review your company collects will cement customer loyalty and can bolster new client confidence. VA Mortgage Center Reviews, for instance, is a sister site to showcase testimonials and receive vamortgagecenter.com complaints, which gives the site better control over its online image.
• Keep Up With Your Blog:  Keeping your blog current, active, and full of useful information can help improve your online reputation. Posting frequently on your blog shows customers that you’re invested in your business and are genuinely interested in customer satisfaction and knowledge. If you use keywords and SEO, there’s a good chance that your blog and webpage will come up first in a search which certainly contributes to a good online presence.
• Take Preventative Measures:  Many businesses invest in several domain names and extensions for their company’s website, partly to increase traffic flow but partly to manage their online reputation. Purchasing different extensions and sites (even yourbusinesssucks.com) allows you to reduce the odds that someone with bad intentions gets there first. Consider at least purchasing .net and .org sites that correspond with your business’s website.

While you can’t prevent disgruntled employees or angry customers from publishing negative feedback about you on the web 100% of the time, you can certainly invest a bit of your time each week to keeping the damage to a minimum. Above all, however, be willing to occasionally admit that you’ve made a mistake. Customers are more likely to forgive a reasonable company who attempts to reconcile any bad business dealings than one who goes on the defensive all the time. Rationality is the name of the game.

Author: Robert Stretch