Online Reputation Management

By Author: Steven Norris
Total Articles: 3698
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The first thing to ask is what exactly is online reputation management? Online reputation management comes down to your company managing their reputation. In essence, this means you have to manage the image of your company online. This means dealing with any negative comments that people are saying about you or your company.

To explain this a bit more, I am going to make use of an easy example. As I have recently moved into my new flat, I was shopping around looking for a couch. Something comfortable where I could de-stress after a hard day's work. I found a shop with the perfect couch, but with an over-inflated price that I was not keen on playing.

Arriving home that evening, I wondered if it was worth buying the couch as it would set me back considerably. I decided to browse the Internet to see what people are saying about the shop where I wanted to buy the couch. If there were any complaints about the service and of course, any complaints about the quality of the products they sold in this shop.

I opened my favourite search engine and simply typed in the name of the company [let's call it ‘XYZ']. ...
... As soon as I pressed enter, I found the company website at the top and beneath that numerous websites which had information or rather comments about XYZ, their service, quality and more.

The first website opened was a blog where people wrote comments and stories regarding all manner of things. The first post I saw on this blog was about XYZ and it said: There's no reason to GIVE good service. They've received your deposit, so it's unlikely you'll back out, and the furniture is not sitting in the showroom, so it's somebody else's problem.

After opening and reading more and more websites and blogs I realized that people were complaining about the same things. People posted information about things they liked about XYZ and things they did not like. But mostly, there were complaints about XYZ and its service regarding the quality of its products.

Needless to say, I immediately decided that XYZ was not the right place for me to buy the couch. I did not want what happened to the other customers to happen to me! Like one person commented on the blog I want to order some couches from XYZ, but after reading all the above, I am scared stiff.

The above example shows how a company's reputation can be scarred online when customers complain about anything related to the company. Whether or not it's the truth, when people read negative commentary about a company, it will influence their perception of the company and will most probably cost the business money as they will loose a potential sale.

Online Reputation Management is about managing the reputation of your company online. This means that if a company like XYZ managed their reputation proficiently on the Internet, they might not loose as many potential customers, or have so many upset customers.
So now the question is, how do you manage your online reputation? There are numerous techniques and applications you can use to manage your online reputation. Firstly, you need to know what exactly to look out for.

To manage the reputation of your company you need to track all information related to your company. That means your company name and of course product names. You can even check out names of your employees. When people complain about your company and specifically your service levels, they will mention the names of your employees. It's best to know who is associated with your company name.

You can make use of online tools that are offered free online to monitor if people are talking about your company. Tools such as:

Technorati.com - Who's saying what, right now! Stay in the loop with Technorati. They track blogs (112.8 million of them) and social media.

Google News - You can stay up to date with news that interests you. Stick to news related to your industry and you will know exactly when your company gets mentioned.

Monitor This - choose a keyword, like your company's name, and Monitor This will monitor that keyword via 22 different search engine feeds. You will know instantaneously if someone's talking about your company.

Yahoo Alerts or Google Alerts - You can sign up for email alerts. Google and Yahoo will send you alerts on any topics that interests you.

It is impossible to list all the various tools that you can use to monitor your online reputation. In correlation with the above, you can also track message boards and / or forums like BoardReader.com and ForumFind.com, where you can track groups like Yahoo, AOL , MSN and Google.

I have merely touched the surface of Online Reputation Management, but it is evident that any company who takes pride in their business should know how to keep their image clean. More and more people now have access to the Internet and it only takes a quick search to find out what people are saying about any company online- any negative commentary can negatively influence your business! So be sure to know what is being said about your company and try and resolve as many complaints as possible and start managing your reputation today!