Reputation management is important for a company’s public relations, and it is a well known fact that even a little bit of bad publicity can significantly affect a business’s sales. There are providers in existence who will keep an eye on and work to improve a company’s reputation on the net, but the good news is, business owners can also conduct some reputation management of their very own.
Create a Large Online Presence
While establishing a page on the web is helpful in quite a few ways, reputation management is just about the most vital things a business can do. When a potential customer is searching for a local business by name or industry, you do not want them to see websites with bad reviews. This could be minimized by putting together pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo Local. Since less than 10 percent of Google users progress to the second page of results, having a number of relevant corners of the web assists in bumping negative sites to the dark recesses of Page 2.
Monitor the Company Name and Products
One of the biggest factors of reputation management is what folks are finding online. Thankfully, a business owner can sometimes track this as fast as people are finding it. By simply heading over to Google and doing a search on the company name or its branded product, a company owner can see what exactly others are seeing regarding their company. Additionally, it is easy to set up Google Alerts which notifies you of new mentions with certain keywords, such as the company name. If anything negative appears, corrective actions can be started.
Be Transparent on Social Media
A number of companies make the blunder of eliminating negative mentions from their social media pages. In reality, they should be contacting the angry customerin full view of the public. When others notice a company striving to right a wrong they know that the company actually cares about its customers.
Marketing can only do so much once a company’s reputation is tainted. Reputation management, however, is capable of turning your business in the best direction.