Think your online reputation doesn’t matter? Think again! Based on a study by Erik Qualman of Socialnomics.com, nearly three-quarters of respondents say they trust the info provided by total strangers online. Further, some 80 percent of consumers have changed their minds about purchasing a product after reading a negative review online, and over 84 percent say they find online product reviews as being a trustworthy source of information.
You must take negative reviews seriously and take steps to counter the effects to your online reputation!
Here are five strategies to do just that:
5 Potent Online Reputation Management Strategies
- Look at your search results monthly – Monitor your company’s name in Google at the very least once per month. Use Google Alerts or mention.net to notify you if there is any activity involving your company name or important keywords. Also, look beyond page one of the search results; negative entries can gain traction and wind up on the first page tomorrow.
- Deal with negative content ASAP – Do your best to contact the individual that posted the content in question as soon as possible, especially if they are an unsatisfied buyer. Do your best to address their concerns in a positive manner. Don’t jump into a public tussle with them! You won’t like the results.
- Use your company’s name in your page optimization – Make sure your pages and other content are using your company’s name in keywords, tags, URLS, and titles. The more pages you own that bear your company’s name, the better the possibility Google will view your site as the authority for this keyword (your company name) and give you higher rankings. Also, most negative content will more than likely not have done any SEO.
- Create more content channels – WordPress.com, Blogger.com or even subdomains of your own site are good for this, along with your social channels such as YouTube, Facebook, and Google . Post fresh content to these channels as well, so they retain their search positions.
- Ask your customers for reviews – The most obvious and by far the most useful tool for effective online reputation management is to ask your satisfied customers for a review. Encourage and even reward reviews. This is also your best source of social proof!
