Fix Or Establish Your Online Reputation Today. It’s Good For Business.

What do your customers say about you online? You should know, and care. An unlimited marketing and advertising budget won’t do you any good if people are taking to social media to express their displeasure with your product or service.

Your online reputation – meaning what people are saying about you on social media – is of growing importance. It’s now being measured by Google, which uses it as part of their ranking algorithm. The search engine giant now looks for how much engagement your content generates. Reputation management is the only way to make that work to your advantage. Here’s how you can tip the scales in your favor.

Take Social Media Seriously

Not everybody’s going to like you. It’s also their prerogative to express a negative opinion if that’s the case. It’s important to remember, however, that this is only a personal opinion. Bad reviews are never fun to discover. They’re not the end of the world, and sometimes they have a silver lining.

Regardless of the eventual outcome, you must respond to a customer who uses social media to express dissatisfaction. This is especially important if they use social media to relay a bad experience.

See To Those Bad Reviews

It’s never fun to discover somebody’s trashed you on Twitter or Facebook. But it’s also not the end of the world. In fact, it just might be an opportunity to develop a new best friend.

Reach out to these people. Approach them with an open mind. Show them you have a genuine curiosity to discover what created their bad experience. Often it’s only a miscommunication. Those are easy to fix.

Most of this dialog can and should be public. The rest of that social network will be watching to see how you react. They want to see you demonstrate that you have a sincere desire to understand and if possible to explain and rectify the situation.

Acknowledge the people who say good things about you, too. It can be a tall order, but your reputation depends on it. Respond to everyone.

Your business reputation online has little to do with the traditional one-way communication strategies of marketing and advertising. Online reputation management is mostly about proactive conversations you have with individuals. Each of those conversations are out there in the open, for all to see.

You can’t grow a reputation overnight. Ours has been 35 years in the making. Much of that time was pre-social media! Even so, the basic tenets of maintaining a good name remain the same. They’re summed up in our company promise of dedication, professionalism and quality.