It is not only important to create an online presence for your company, but you must also manage its Online Reputation.
Do you know what people are saying about your business on the world wide web? If you do not, you might be surprised.
Why Is Your Online Reputation Important
Maybe your customer service isn’t up to par. Perhaps your prices are perceived as too high. This could be turning away potential customers, particularly if there are others spreading bad publicity throughout forums and on social media sites. Obviously this could be quite detrimental to your future sales.
Of course, if you are finding positive comments, that’s great. But you can’t capitalise on it if you don’t know about it. Take a look at these tips for eavesdropping on internet users and how they talk about you and your e-commerce concerns.
Google Alerts
The first thing you should do is set up Google alerts. This is a very easy to use service that only requires an account with Google. You can add as many alerts as you want to be sent to your email inbox. Create one for your company name, one for your name (as long as it isn’t too common), and one for your website URL.
What this will do is inform you any time there is a posting on the internet with any of these words picked up by Google. The alerts are sent very quickly, making this a very effective way to learn right away when someone else is talking about you or your company.
Social Networking/Micro Blog Sites
Is your company being discussed at social media sites? All of them have some form of searching for topics that are being talked about. At Twitter, it’s a hash tag in front of the word or phrase of “trending topics”; at Facebook, it involves doing a search among all posts, people, pages, groups, etc. Spend a bit of time, at least once weekly, searching for your company name on sites where you maintain a membership.
How to Refute False Allegations
It’s hard to say why, but some internet users feel compelled to post negative comments about other people and companies just to damage their Online Reputation, even if the information they post is untrue. If you run across negative falsehoods about your business, there are steps you can to take to rectify the situation.
For one thing, consider going public with your statement. Refrain from linking to the original posting, as this only feeds the fire, but do paraphrase the text of it and refute it in a calm and professional manner.
Be proactive. Write posts that showcase positive feedback and customer testimonials you’ve received. If the positive outweighs the negative, it is more likely to eclipse bad publicity. Plus, this provides you with new blog content, always good for achieving higher ranking and good SEO. Capitalising on positive comments also helps create greater awareness of your company’s brand.
Your Online Reputation is an important part of your company’s success. It requires management just like any other task in your online business plan. Be sure to keep in touch with what people are saying, and be prepared to do damage control if necessary.
See you at the top of Google!
Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
AussieSEO.com © 2007 - 2010
Hi Sean,
Great post as per usual.
Would you be able to explain a little further on why you would actually want to know when somebody has posted something about you or your business?
Apart from wanting to know negative stuff I guess, I cannot really identify why you would want G00gle to send you alerts?
.-= Cemil´s last blog ..Health Geek Online =-.
Hi Cemil,
Google alerts are a great way to find out whenever anything you are interested in gets published online…including positive and negative comments about you and your business. I personally like to find out when there are comments about me or my business posted online, so I can respond to them if need be.
Of course, you do not have to use the alerts solely for this, for example, if you want to keep in touch with any topic online, all you need to do is put that topic into google alerts and you will be notified immediately whenever that topic is mentioned online. It’s a great way to keep in touch with your interests without having to search for them.
Regards – Sean
Hi Sean,
I understand that your online reputation is important. I just think that despite your best efforts, it’s inevitable that things will go wrong. No-one can get it right 100% of the time, especially when you’re relying on someone else to deliver your products.
When this happens, I think it’s important to apologise and be open and honest about what went wrong. I think you need to do your best to make it right with the customer. But, I think no matter what you do some people will still be unhappy. Hopefully though, these customers will be in the minority.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn – It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint =-.
Just wondering if you put your name in google alerts will it alert you everytime you write your name yourself or is there a way to stop this? I have recently been reading a forum mentioning a high profile person and his business and was shocked to hear what people were saying about him so it must be very hard mentally on people who are trying to help others and they get slandered by a few no gooders.
.-= Jackie Stenhouse´s last blog ..Anxiety Separation in Children =-.