Never Stop Monitoring: Managing Your Online Reputation
After such strong comments on my post about corporate digital footprints, I got a REAL expert to weigh in on monitoring your online reputation. Here are Kevin Kaiser’s thoughts – Kevin is the founder of Startup Biz Blog an up and coming small business blog with some really smart advice. Stay tuned as I kick off my new series on writing an actionable social media plan next Monday.
After all of the energy you’ve put into creating your company, don’t let it get lost in the giant tangle of the world wide web. Managing your online reputation so that people get the correct picture of your company right off the bat is more important now than ever.
Be Visible
Being easy to find is one of the most important parts of your company’s online presence. One way to do this is by buying a variety of domain names – not just .com, but .org, .net and whatever others you can as well. Also, keywords are just as they sound – key to your visibility. If you want your ad to show up as much as possible, broad match keywords will help you do so. If you don’t want to be associated with certain searches, negative match key words can help prevent this. Managing domain names and keywords can help you be sure that your company is as visible online as you want it to be, but also visible in the way you want it to be. And a great way to prevent other people from bad mouthing your company is through buying domains such as brandnamesucks.com and similar names.
Be Social
Social networking sites are great, easy places to get your company’s name out there. Blogging, tweeting, having Facebook pages are all simple ways to reach lots of people. You might want to try a program like HootSuite, which allows businesses to monitor, get statistics on, and update their Twitter (and now Ping.com and WordPress too) accounts from one interface. CoTweet is another similar option as well. Also, don’t forget that social networking is a two-way street: while it helps you reach customers, it also helps customers reach you. Facebook pages and blog comments allow people to share with you their thoughts, and you should actively listen to their requests and comments. Use social networking as a way to gauge what you’re doing well and on what you need to improve, and being responsive and proactive can really make a difference in your customers’ satisfaction.
Be Watchful
Ever heard of Google Alerts? Well, if you haven’t, now is the time to look into it. Google Alerts allows you to monitor your brand online simply by having email updates sent to you. By setting up a Google Alerts account specifically for your company, you can get up-to-date emails as often as you like about your search results, your competitors, you name it. For example, I help monitor online comments about SuretyBonds.com. By setting up a Google alert with the domain name, I can get real time results when the site is mentioned anywhere on the web. TweetBeep is a similar program, but it is just for Twitter. This sort of wariness will help you be more conscientious of your SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) ratings. That way, you can know how accessible and visible your company is on the web, and if your ratings aren’t as high as you’d like, you can be more active to boost your ratings. You can also use these programs to monitor what people are saying about you so that, again, you can listen and respond more quickly.
Use these resources to make sure that your company’s online reputation is what you want it to be. Under your watch, there’s no reason for it to be any different.
Kevin Kaiser is the author of Startup Biz Blog, where he writes his thoughts on startups, marketing and entrepreneurship. When not working, you can find him running cross country or swimming laps. If you enjoyed this post, you might consider subscribing to his blog.
Tags: Branding, online marketing, Public Relations, SEO, Small Business, small business marketing, small business promotion, social media, twitter
July 20th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
well. another good post here. Consider this, many companies are hiring Community Managers who do this for a living. They manage online reputations and find out to resolve customer complaints online. Since the internet is not face to face, customers feel free to vent their displeasure of the experience with a product or service. So we must monitor that daily! Constructive feedback is great. It can actually help your business grow!
July 26th, 2010 at 12:44 am
Very well Post,
I think you are right!we have to manage our online reputation on regular basis, because it’s very much important for any company reputation.
Thanks!
July 27th, 2010 at 1:35 am
I do agree that people in online businesses should be very careful with their online reputation. One reason is that they don’t meet their customers personally. The feed backs can be sometimes destructive which can really have a very bad effect to their sites and the business. With regards to the visibility of the site, I think using seo techniques and strategies can boost the page rank of a certain website and can actually drive traffic.
September 3rd, 2010 at 5:51 am
Hello,
I am agree that for maintaining online reputation we have to careful towards our business. Thanks for sharing all the information with me.