Reputation Management – It Is Important That You and Your Brand Are Seen Positively on the Internet

Reputation management is a term that has been used widely around the internet within business, marketing and SEO circles for a long time. Unfortunately, it seems to have developed a bit of a reputation as just more jargon and online scare mongering. This couldn’t be further from the truth!

Your online reputation is vital to the success of your business, the effectiveness of your marketing and your SEO strategy, and most importantly, it effects how everything connected to your brand is perceived. If you don’t have the right reputation then it really doesn’t matter how much money you spend on SEO or marketing, it will have little effect. The old media cliché – no publicity is bad publicity – in this case, is not true. You really don’t want to develop a reputation that is anything but trusted, professional and 100{be17667924e0676001cfaaf1886d6ef17d700bff9b5272e3e9de385367daa030} legitimate. There are far too many cowboys, scammers and crooks online already, don’t risk being labelled as one of them.

So first this week, we decided to start with a cautionary tale. Names are not necessary, just trust us, this is true;

We recently had a client who came to us for help, having been through two previous SEO companies, they were still struggling to boost rankings and record any kind of growth in online sales. We spent some time researching what the company would need, in order to make a set of recommendations. The first thing we discovered was how many bad reviews, and negatives pieces of publicity within blogs and social media there was for this company. We were literally shocked.

We went back to the client as suggested an aggressive and expedient programme of reputation management tactics to clean things up and get things moving in the right direction. This wouldn’t be easy, we told the client, and it takes time to fix a mess we warned. To begin with, our client didn’t believe us, but after a simple Google search for themselves, they discovered what was out there.

When did you last search on Google for your own company,or did some research on your brand? It is the only way to check, just to see what, if anything, people are saying.

Reputation management is not just for the naughty politicians caught with their trousers down! It is for anyone who has a brand or personality online that they want to develop, nurture, and protect.

Relationship management can be split into two categories – good news and bad news. The good news should be shared, talked about and made as visible as possible. The bad news should be dealt with, professionally, quickly and with damage limitation at the forefront of any chosen tactics.

The best place to start, if you want to manage your brand and business reputation online, is to NOT wait until there is bad news out there! Be proactive and protect your reputation while it is good, but monitor things so that if anything negative appears, you can deal with it swiftly and professionally.

Set up some Google alerts with certain keywords and phrases that pertain to your brand and reputation. Also it is worth setting up some Google alerts for your area of business in general so you can be aware of developments within the industry that may have a direct or indirect effect on your business.

Also look at the many tools, paid and unpaid available to help you keep track of keywords and take any necessary action as required. Social Mention or Viral Heat is free options that will monitor daily mentions for you. Viral Heat also lets you respond in real time which can be extremely useful when you are dealing with large numbers of people online.

It is also worth keeping an eye on what is being said about your competitors. Being as aware as possible of what is going on around you, how your sector of industry is doing and what is being said online is vital to being ready to act if and when necessary.

Make sure you are monitoring things about your brand and business online.

Make sure how your brand is spoken about by you and your own team follows a specific brand identity and that communication rules are followed.

Stay professional in all your communications, on and offline. It may sound obvious, but this is not a game, just think about all the politicians and celebrities that have mixed business with ‘pleasure’ and regretted it. Don’t. Business is business, so keep it that way. Even offline communications can end up online.

Make sure everything that is monitored is properly analysed and reported.

Make sure everything that needs it, is acted upon, don’t leave anything to chance or fate. Trouble can appear and grow very quickly online.

If you are proactive and monitor things while you work hard to maintain your good brand reputation, you’ll be doing all you need to keep things running well, and you’ll spot any trouble before it hits.

Check out the relevant video resource at http://youtu.be/oIBGFcJqr_I