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Proactively Manage Your Online Reputation

By Steve Mehr, CEO of WebShark360

Once upon a time my mother cautioned me not to hang out with people of ill repute.  This advice still rings true today as consumers do not want to be associated with businesses that have a bad reputation.  The problem is that sometimes, good businesses can also take a hit in their reputation, from which they may not know how to recover.

reputation management

When it comes to your reputation, it can take a lifetime to build and only seconds to destroy.  In today’s increasingly wired world, it’s become easier than ever to destroy your business’ reputation with errors in judgment online or worse. Instead of suffering as your reputation takes a hit, proactively take steps to build and monitor your business’ reputation online.

Handle It- Manage Your Reputation Online

Reputation management gurus have begun popping up across the internet in response to worried business owners.  When a bad review has cast a negative light on the business in which you’ve invested your heart and soul, it can feel as if there is no hope.  However, the good news is that your business can recover from dings in your reputation online.  And you can come back stronger than ever to dominate your marketplace.  Instead of waiting until after you’ve suffered a crisis of reputation, take steps to establish a strong and valued reputation online.  Using the following tools, your business can proactively manage its reputation online:

  • Review sites. Review sites can feel like a double edged sword for business owners.  When your business is new and shiny, it behooves you to reach out to your happy customers and ask them to leave you a review.  This can help to alert others to your presence in the community and establish you as a trusted business.  Before someone wanders online to express dissatisfaction with your business, you should reach out to happy customers for a review.  That way, if you do eventually incur a negative review, you’ll hopefully have a stack of positive reviews that have already established your business as trusted and valuable.
  • Social media. There’s nothing better for your online reputation than creating a thriving positive online community around your business or brand.  Reach out to your customers, fans, and followers and engage them online.  Share the positives about your business, highlight your products or services, and recognize the people who made your business as strong as it is today. Ask your customers and fans to share the content they love, to tag your business in its pictures, and to engage engage engage.
  • SEO. Your business can use search engine optimization (SEO) to strongly associate your brand with certain keywords.  Do you want to be known as dependable, reliable, best, top, trustworthy?  Using SEO you can associate your business with these keywords as well as your business’ products and services.  By proactively establishing your business as a trusted retailer or dependable widget maker, you can curtail any negatives about your business.  By changing the conversation to be more positive, you can  proactively establish an excellent online reputation.
  • Public relations. What better way to tell the world about your wonderful business than to publicize its good works? If you’ve won an award, launched a new product, or gained new business, public relations can help you to position your business favorably in the minds of consumers.  Using the power of the press, your business can establish a great reputation and spread the word to potentially millions of consumers.
  • Guest posts and articles.  When consumers search for your business’ name, you want them to find massive amounts of quality content online.  When you are featured on multiple sites for your insightful and witty articles, this helps to position your business as an industry leader. By proactively positioning yourself as a leader in your industry, you can help to counteract any potential negatives with evidence to the contrary.

When it comes to managing your reputation online, it’s best to establish a good reputation upfront and from the start.  By waiting until after someone has slammed you online, you do your business a disservice.  Don’t ignore your business’ brand.  Boost your brand and highlight your business’ value to establish a quality reputation.

Written By

Steve Mehr is CEO of WebShark360, a world class internet and attorney marketing firm.  Operating out of Irvine, CA, WebShark360 provides premiere internet and attorney marketing services to its professional clients.  This includes website production, social media, content marketing, SEO, public relations, and advertising.  For help with your internet and attorney marketing, call or visit WebShark360 today at http://webshark360.com or (800) 939-4850.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Stanley

    March 11, 2013 at 7:45 am

    Great write-up, I am a big believer in commenting on blogs to inform the blog writers know that they’ve added something worthwhile to the world wide web!

  2. Daniel

    March 11, 2013 at 9:39 am

    Managing your online reputation and keeping it consistently improving is the way to go for bloggers. They should be soft spoken, possess the ability to convince or reply to a reader with kind words and also socialize on the net correctly. Too harsh and mean bloggers would not work in this online world of blogging.

    • Steven Mehr

      March 13, 2013 at 3:04 pm

      I’m not so sure I agree with you. While it’s best to present your best face to the world, a blogger can always get featured online.

      The article focuses on businesses because they have products and services to sell, which will benefit the most from the tools discussed.

      Thanks for the feedback.

  3. Alex

    March 11, 2013 at 9:42 am

    Having a positive online personality is important for a company or an individual to get attention from the targeted audience. At the same time it is utterly necessary to detect negativity showing up on search engine, so that any required corrections will be made to counter the ill effects. Nice read! Thanks for sharing!

  4. ChrisGreene

    March 13, 2013 at 5:35 am

    I agree with your article. Your online reputation can be known to the world in just a click and so it is very important that we watch ourselves online – what we say and the people we used deal with.

  5. Pingback: Top 25 Inbound Marketing Articles of the Week: March 16, 2013 – UpCity

  6. MammothK

    April 1, 2013 at 8:56 am

    Hi,
    Agree with the article, but have one question. What if I want to manage not blog’s, but my company’s e-reputation, what is the best way to do it?

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