On­line Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment - Be­cause Im­age Matters

Word of mouth has al­ways counted for a great deal in the world of busi­ness and this is no dif­fer­ent when it comes to the web.

On­line busi­nesses ex­ist by the mil­lion and when it comes to get­ting ahead, there’s re­ally noth­ing more pow­er­ful and im­por­tant than the words and views of real-life customers.

The prob­lem most of the smaller busi­nesses of the web face is that they are tread­ing some­thing of a knife’s edge all the time when it comes to rep­u­ta­tion. As is the way of the world, it takes no more than about 15-min­utes for a scold­ing com­plaint to go vi­ral and spread the word on the busi­ness in the worst pos­si­ble way.

Things un­for­tu­nately don’t work the same way when it comes to com­pli­ments as con­sumers are far less likely to gos­sip about the pos­i­tives in life – it’s just the way the world work!

So, what this means there­fore is that in or­der to get by, on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment is es­sen­tial. This is the name for the process whereby a busi­ness doesn’t just sit idly by and see what hap­pens – it takes the bull by the horns and en­sures its good rep­u­ta­tion shines through.

This should form an in­te­gral part of the busi­ness plan for any on­line busi­ness look­ing to get ahead, which means the in­volve­ment of a pro­fes­sional ser­vice provider able to cover all bases confidently.

Re­views

Re­views can make or break a busi­ness – it’s a sim­ple as that. A sin­gle glow­ing re­view counts for more than all the show­ing-off a busi­ness owner can ever do. At the same time how­ever, a sin­gle neg­a­tive re­view can have more power than a hun­dred out­stand­ingly pos­i­tive reviews.

In all cases though, re­views are 100% es­sen­tial and must never be left out.

The key to on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment is there­fore to en­cour­age and source real re­views from cus­tomers as more of­ten than not it can take a lit­tle per­sua­sion for them to act.

For those just get­ting started, there are also ser­vices that can cre­ate fair, bal­anced and hon­est ru­mors based on the busi­ness and the ser­vice it of­fers, just to get things off the ground.

And as far as neg­a­tive re­views are con­cerned, it’s all about the way they’re han­dled. A bad re­view can be pure gold for a busi­ness if there is clear ev­i­dence that the prob­lem has been acted upon, re­solved and the per­son af­fected com­pen­sated and won over.

It’s not about get­ting things right 100% of the time, but prov­ing that when you do get it wrong, you take it se­ri­ously and respond.

So­cial Networks

Of course, the power of the so­cial net­work is sim­ply im­mea­sur­able these days and can do won­ders for the rep­u­ta­tion of any business.

If your brand or your mes­sage is be­ing dis­cussed in a pos­i­tive light on Face­book for ex­am­ple, the re­sult­ing ex­po­sure can be enor­mous. The same also goes for Twit­ter, YouTube and so many others.

The list goes on, but in all in­stances the se­cret to pos­i­tive on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment is proac­tiv­ity. Rather than just wait­ing to see what the out­come is or tack­ling prob­lems when they present them­selves, those at the top al­ways take their fu­tures into their own hands.

About The Author

Rocky John Taya­ban works as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of iSo­lu­tions Me­dia, a search en­gine mar­ket­ing com­pany based in the Philip­pines. For more than 8 years, Rocky has helped hun­dreds of small and medium en­ter­prises across the globe with their on­line rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ef­fec­tive so­cial me­dia strate­gies cou­pled with search en­gine marketing.