5 Crit­i­cal Steps For Man­ag­ing Your On­line Reputation

The in­ter­net stores in­for­ma­tion on every busi­ness, in every in­dus­try, from every country.

Whether through pub­lic reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments, re­gional data­bases, or con­sumer re­view sites, in­for­ma­tion about your com­pany is freely avail­able to any­one with an in­ter­net connecction.

Un­for­tu­nately, not all of this in­for­ma­tion is positive.

Dis­grun­tled em­ploy­ees, up­set cus­tomers, and even un­eth­i­cal com­peti­tors can slant the tone of on­line con­ver­sion and de­stroy your busi­ness’ rep­u­ta­tion. Man­ag­ing your on­line rep­u­ta­tion is no longer an op­tional tool in the mod­ern busi­ness world.

A neg­a­tive on­line rep­u­ta­tion cre­ates a down­ward spi­ral of de­clin­ing ex­pec­ta­tions and re­duced rev­enue. At its worst, a poor on­line rep­u­ta­tion leads to cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees mov­ing to your competition.

Im­prov­ing your on­line rep­u­ta­tion is not a sim­ple task. So­phis­ti­cated mar­ket­ing firms of­fer on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment ser­vices at prices start­ing at a thou­sand dol­lars per month. Small en­ter­prises with a small mar­ket­ing bud­get must of­ten con­sider in-house efforts.

Thank­fully there are five spe­cific steps that any busi­ness can take to man­ag­ing on­line reputation.

1) See What Searchers See

The first step in any on­line rep­u­ta­tion ef­fort is to an­a­lyze your ex­ist­ing in­ter­net rep­u­ta­tion. Start by search­ing for your com­pany name, vari­a­tions of your com­pany name, and com­bi­na­tions of your com­pany name and lo­ca­tion. Ad­di­tional pos­si­bil­i­ties in­clude your com­pany name plus „re­view” or your com­pany name plus any va­ri­ety of neg­a­tive words.

Con­duct­ing de­tailed searches of your com­pany name will al­low you to see what your po­ten­tial cus­tomers see. In­for­ma­tion flow freely on the in­ter­net and iden­ti­fy­ing any neg­a­tive items is the first step to­wards deal­ing with them properly.

Be sure to con­duct searches on both Bing and Google since the two ma­jor search en­gines of­ten hold dif­fer­ent re­sults. More com­­puter-savvy busi­ness own­ers will want to dis­able cook­ies and con­duct searches from an anony­mous browser with­out geo-location.

2) Se­cure Mean­ing­ful Do­main Names

The eas­i­est way to im­prove the on­line rep­u­ta­tion of your busi­ness is to con­trol the most im­por­tant do­main names rel­e­vant to your com­pany. Since both ma­jor search en­gines pro­vide op­ti­miza­tion ben­e­fits to do­main names that match the text of a search, any do­main name con­tain­ing your com­pany name be­comes more useful.

The plethora of do­main name ex­ten­sions also cre­ates ad­di­tional op­por­tu­nity. Not only is the uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized .com ex­ten­sions crit­i­cal, but other ex­ten­sions such as .org, .net, .biz, and .info may rank highly in search en­gines. If your com­pany does busi­ness in a spe­cific coun­try out­side the United States, then a coun­try code do­main ex­ten­sion will also be important.

Own­ing vari­a­tions of your com­pa­ny’s do­main name po­ten­tially al­lows you to de­velop mul­ti­ple web prop­er­ties to cap­ture a larger share of search en­gine re­sults. More im­por­tantly it pre­vents un­scrupu­lous com­pe­ti­tion from us­ing those do­mains to in­flict harm on your on­line reputation.

3) Ac­ti­vate So­cial Media

So­cial me­dia sites have be­come cru­cial to on­line con­ver­sa­tion for busi­nesses of all sizes. Col­lec­tively, so­cial me­dia sites drive dis­cus­sion on the in­ter­net and spread in­for­ma­tion around the globe. For any busi­ness con­cerned about on­line rep­u­ta­tion, so­cial me­dia can be a use­ful tool.

Since reg­is­ter­ing on so­cial me­dia sites is free, there is no ex­cuse for your busi­ness not to be reg­is­tered on every so­cial me­dia prop­erty. The two most im­por­tant sites are Face­book and Twit­ter. With the largest num­ber of ac­tive users, these two prop­er­ties are most likely to have cus­tomers and po­ten­tial cus­tomers for your busi­ness. Reg­is­ter­ing your busi­ness with these sites al­lows you to be­gin a con­ver­sa­tion with your cus­tomers and grad­u­ally shape the na­ture of your on­line interaction.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion on so­cial me­dia also pro­vides the op­por­tu­nity for these pages to rank highly on search en­gines. As­sum­ing your busi­ness is ef­fec­tive with so­cial me­dia, this can re­place po­ten­tially neg­a­tive men­tions with far more pos­i­tive items from your so­cial me­dia accounts.

4) Con­tent, Con­tent, Content

Once you have started the process of man­ag­ing the on­line rep­u­ta­tion of your busi­ness, you should con­sider in­vest­ing in a ded­i­cated con­tent strat­egy. The in­ter­net thrives on new con­tent and if there is no pos­i­tive con­tent on your busi­ness, neg­a­tive con­tent will likely fill the vaccum.

Con­tent is most use­ful on your base busi­ness web­site, but it is also use­ful in many other ways. Ac­cord­ing to Raj Verma, man­ager at Hawaii-based on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment firm Ar­gon Mar­ket­ing:

„Fresh con­tent is im­por­tant for your busi­ness. Con­tent can be used for on a com­pany blog, so­cial me­dia sites, or lo­cal news out­let. With­out good con­tent, searchers will not find any in­for­ma­tion about your business.”

Cre­ation of con­tent does not nec­es­sar­ily need to be a large-scale ef­fort. Even a sin­gle, weekly blog post can help your busi­ness’ rep­u­ta­tion by show­ing cus­tomers a con­sis­tent pres­ence and dis­pelling myths about a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Fre­quency and qual­ity of con­tent is im­por­tant and every busi­ness should at least show a mod­icum of ef­fort to­wards gen­er­at­ing new content.

5) Mon­i­tor Your On­line Reputation

Af­ter com­plet­ing some ba­sic steps to­ward im­prov­ing your on­line rep­u­ta­tion, you should set up a mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem to track re­sults. Two ma­jor op­tions are a search en­gine rank mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice and a news alert service.

Search en­gine rank­ing ser­vices are gen­er­ally paid ser­vices that track the spe­cific rank­ing of your key­word term over time. By view­ing the grad­ual pro­gres­sion of your search ranks you can iden­tify suc­cesses and fail­ures in your on­line rep­u­ta­tion efforts.

Com­pa­nies with smaller bud­gets can repli­cate the rank­ing ser­vice in-house by sim­ply con­duct­ing spe­cific searches at pre-de­ter­mined intervals.

A news alert ser­vice sends au­to­mated emails every time a spe­cific key phrase is trig­gered by news or me­dia re­ports. The most pop­u­lar ser­vice, Google Alerts, is com­pletely free. You can set an alert for your com­pany name and see every new web­site or news item re­lated to your com­pany. Busi­ness own­ers with larger am­bi­tions can set alerts for in­dus­try phrases or the names of their competitors.

By track­ing news men­tions about your com­pany you can mon­i­tor the progress of your on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment campaign.

Why On­line Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment is Important

Your po­ten­tial cus­tomers are search­ing for your busi­ness right now. What do they see?

Your on­line rep­u­ta­tion de­ter­mines whether these cus­tomers will shop at your busi­ness or your com­pe­ti­tion. Even more im­por­tantly, your busi­ness’ on­line rep­u­ta­tion af­fects the man­ner in which your sup­pli­ers, part­ners, and em­ploy­ees in­ter­act with your com­pany. A pos­i­tive on­line rep­u­ta­tion can im­prove the qual­ity of your pro­fes­sional re­la­tion­ships and strengthen your of­fline results.

At its best, on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment cre­ates a pos­i­tive feed­back loop where happy cus­tomers tell their friends lead­ing to more happy cus­tomers at your busi­ness. Sub­stan­tial in­creases in rev­enue are avail­able for every busi­ness with a pos­i­tive on­line reputation.

By Nolan Kido

This ar­ti­cle has been writ­ten by Nolan Kido. Nolan works in the tech­nol­ogy in­dus­try in Hon­olulu, Hawaii.