It has taken a while but finally businesses are realizing just how powerful a positive online reputation can be. A friend of mine works for a rep management company and he has told me in the last 2 years alone they are seeing more clients than ever before, across a range of different industries. Indeed if you loo at their reputation management consultant reviews, you can see that they have clients from all types of businesses who have used their services to improve the online reputation of their company. Whether you use one of these services or not the fact of the matter is that you have to pay close attention to what your online reputation is, as it has a huge bearing on the success and growth of your company.
It is important that you understand how and were those reputations are created, or destroyed, in order to ensure that your company’s reputation is a positive one.
Social Media
Social media is really a gift and a curse when it comes to your online reputation, and this is the most common place where reputations are gained and destroyed. To give you an insight, Facebook has over 1 billion active profiles around the world and 50% of those users sign in each and every day. That is a lot of people sharing and talking, and you can see just how quickly word spreads on these sites. Use social media well and you can really boost your online reputation on the whole, get famous for something negative and within minutes your business’ reputation could be turned to dust.
Organic Search
If you type your company name into Google what do the search results give you, is it positive information about your company and what it does? Or is it negativity about your business and its dealings? If that content is neutral then you haven’t done enough to boost your rep, if it is negative then that is just what the consumer will see when they search for your company name. When someone hears about your business and wants to know more about it, the first they do is go to the search engine, so what will your potential customers learn about your business when they do so?
Review Sites
Review websites are so crucial to improving and maintaining your online reputation and you must monitor them carefully to see what your customers are saying about you. If a potential customer is looking for an Italian restaurant in their area and there are two to choose from, yours being one of them, they will go straight to the reviews, and this is where they will make their decision. If they see a whole host of negative reviews about your place, especially if you haven’t answered the reviews with explanations or offers of compensation, then there is no way that they will even think twice about going to the other restaurant, and this will happen time and time again.
