Managing Your Business’s Online Reputation
In business, your reputation is everything. It’s what brings new customers your way, and it’s what gets your current customers to stay customers. We all know that a satisfied customer tells 1 person, and a dissatisfied customer tells 10. Essentially, your reputation can make or break your business.
And, in today’s digital world, your reputation includes what people are saying about your company online as well as your social media presence.
Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation
1. Respond to negative online reviews.
According to Yahoo Small Business, 90% of consumers say that online reviews influence their buying decisions. And, every business is going to get a negative online review now and again. But, responding to those negative online reviews in a polite and apologetic manner can actually help improve your online reputation.
Also, according to Bplans, one thing to keep in mind when responding to a negative online review is to not do so right away, especially if you are upset. Step away from the computer and allow yourself some time to cool off first.
The Google My Business platform allows you to manage your Google reviews by turning them into a two-way conversation and responding to both positive and negative ones.
For more tips on responding to negative online reviews, check out our post “How To Handle Negative Online Reviews.”
2. Check search engine results.
Find out what is already being said about your business by searching for your company’s name, common misspellings, and the names of your products and services on Google and Bing to see what type of information comes up. Be sure to check the other search tabs too, especially “Images” and “News”. The “Images” tab provides search results in image formats only.
Google is great because you can also change your search results to limit them to the past year, past month, past week, past 24 hours, or a custom date range. To limit your results to a specific time frame, just follow these directions:
- Click on “Tools” under the search bar.
- Click “Any Time” in the bar that has appeared below.
- Change it to the range of your choice.
3. Set Google Alerts.
Unlike search results, this service notifies you when you are mentioned online. With Google Alerts, you can easily set up free, real-time email notifications that are sent to you anytime Google receives new results for keywords you select, like your products, services, events, or even those of your competitors. To set up Google Alerts, just head here.
You can also use TalkWalker Alerts, which also includes social media analytics technology that filters important online social media conservations about your brand as well as tweets.
4. Review your reputation on social networks.
Speaking of social media, make sure you take the time to search and review your company reputation on the major social networks, including:
In addition to TalkWalker, Social Mention is a very useful, free tool for tracking alerts through social media channels. There are hashtag tracking options as well.
5. Publish new, relevant content on a constant basis.
Google loves websites that are constantly publishing high-quality content. And, doing so can help keep your website on the first page of their search results. Additionally, creating interesting and relevant web content that highlights your products, service, and expertise makes your content link worthy, and it generally produces enough favorable links to minimize and push down any negative ones.
EmoryDay Can Manage Your Business’s Online Reputation
You can build trust and grow your business with current and prospective customers by protecting your business’s online reputation. Need help? The EmoryDay team can manage your online reviews, stay on top of your online reputation on social media, keep your company high up on the major search engine results, and work with you to create a content strategy designed to show your brand in a positive light. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our digital marketing services.
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