One of the greatest things about the computer age is that it has become easy for individuals to instantly share their thoughts and opinions with others online. This can mean great exposure for businesses when happy customers leave positive reviews with friends and family on social media. While positive comments can be great for a company, negative ones can be quite dangerous. Online reputation management helps businesses monitor what others are saying online in order to build and track their company’s online reputation.

Your brand is only as good as its reputation. As a small business, it’s crucial that you protect that reputation. It’s how your customers see you, talk about you, and think of you. You don’t have to look very hard to find examples of how bad online reviews and negative social media have affected a company. So keeping a close eye on your online reputation management is absolutely crucial to your company’s success.

Why online reputation is important

Your online reputation is very important; it is your image on the Internet. Online reputation management is about improving or restoring your name or your brand’s good standing. This is by countering, weakening or eliminating the negative comment found in the Internet replacing it with more positive comment to improving your credibility and customers’ trust in you.

Online reputation management is necessary because anyone can say anything online anonymously, posing as an expert or as someone else.
Creating your own online image with information that accurately profiles your career, business and other relevant endeavors is the best strategy for counteracting and possibly replacing inaccurate online information. LinkedIn and Google+ profiles are among the essential online reputation management tools to build such an image. Blogs, Tumblr sites and Instagram are also useful tools if your content is of high quality. If not, they won’t be an asset to your image, online or off.
Why is Online Reputation Management Important to your Business?

Potential customers change purchase decisions when they see bad reviews, negative blog posts and comments which can spread in various channels such as in search engine results and in social media networks. These can gravely affect your brand and your business. That’s why it’s important to have your online reputation monitored and have these negativities mitigated at the same time while proactively building positive reputation.

What can hurt your online reputation?

Responding Unprofessionally to Complaints

When somebody directs a hateful or condescending message toward your business, it can be very tempting to respond in kind. However, stooping to that level won’t resolve the issue. At best, you’ll only fan the flames and generate more problems and complaints. At worst, your business will end up looking foolish and amateurish.

When dealing with negative comments, posts, or reviews about your business, it’s important to determine what’s at stake. If the person making the comments is simply trolling for a response, you can probably just ignore it. However, if there is an actual problem or issue at the root of the complaint, your best option is to take the high road and handle the problem professionally and courteously.

Why act quickly to respond to your “negative press”

The “I will show you!” Approach will work against you. Let’s say a customer leaves an angry complaint on your company’s Facebook page or Twitter feed. You feel the complaint is unjustified or, for whatever reason, it makes you angry and you can’t help but respond with an angry or defensive comment. Your response will only serve to exacerbate an already negative situation. Remember that the complaining customer is not the only person who will be privy to this exchange.

Building a good online reputation is much easier than recovering from a bad one, so think carefully about how you go about presenting your brand values and engaging your customers. Make sure you have a plan in place to respond to negative feedback, and never react in the heat of the moment. With a little effort beforehand, you can avoid many of the pitfalls that might otherwise damage your business’s online reputation.

The first step in online reputation management is awareness.

If you don’t know what is being said about you and your company, its products and services online, you cannot respond. That’s why it’s useful to have a service that will warn you when something is said about you.

The Business opportunity

This is a business opportunity for alert marketers. Every business in the world is at risk of having its reputation damaged by negative online comments. The person who can alert them (quickly) when this happens will be seen as a “savior” of the business. The business will want to never lose this ability to discover threats to their livelihood.

Tomorrow, Walt Bayliss is announcing a new “franchised” business opportunity. With his “done for you” system, you can become that savior of businesses in your community and around the world. Bayliss has created the software to discover negative comments on the Internet and warn the client about the problem. He is offering you a chance to set up your own reputation management business, using his software.

We will report on the opportunity in more detail tomorrow, September 3, 2015.

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