Reputation

4 Dangers Of Failing To Monitor Your Online Reputation

monitor your online reputation

Monitoring your online reputation can be time consuming for any business owner, leave alone trying to respond to each and every comment or review. Despite this, reputation management is something you must commit yourself to as it leaves a lasting impression on how people view your business.

Ignoring or not paying enough attention to monitoring your reputation may not only jeopardize your brand, but could also get your business into a hole that might be very difficult to get out of. Here are four reasons why ignoring your online reputation is a huge mistake:

  1. You won’t know what bad stuff is being said about you

It’s inevitable that someone will say something negative online about your business. It’s not just important to know about it – you also need to deal with it quickly so it doesn’t escalate.

You want to suppress negative mentions as much as you legally can, or at least decrease their online visibility. If you don’t know about them, you won’t be able to deal with them, which only worsens the situation.

  1. You won’t know what good stuff is being said about you

It can be quite insulting when someone compliments your business and get no acknowledgement. With so many competitors out there, you could easily lose customers just for that.

A simple note of thanks for positive reviews will help you build your customer relationships, while encouraging would-be customers to do business with you. Additionally, you can take advantage of positive reviews by using them to boost your ongoing marketing efforts.

  1. You will not be able to respond to questions

Discussion forums are choke-full of unanswered questions directed to companies from their own customers. This is simply irresponsible from a customer-care perspective, and suggests that you could care less about your customers concerns.

Monitoring such forums for mentions of your company give you the opportunity to address customer issues. This will go a long way in solidifying existing customer relationships and even boosting sales.

  1. You will miss out on brand ambassadors

Thanks to social media, you can now engage your unofficial brand ambassadors. These are the ones who will mention you on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, showing off the products they bought from you and doing some serious marketing on your behalf for free.

These are the loyal customers that will keep coming back for more purchases and will introduce your business to their friends. I cannot overemphasize the need to acknowledge them and nurture these relationships.

Helpful tip: There are various free tools that allow you to monitor your online reputation without eating into your budget. They include Google Alerts, Social Mention and Topsy and many others.

Reputation management is today an industry in itself, so if you feel overwhelmed, there are professionals out there who are experts at monitoring online reputations. Get them on board and avoid the risk of a few negative reviews destroying your image.

 

5 Tips On How To Build Your Online Reputation

build your online reputation
Your online reputation is so important for getting more business.

As a businessperson competing in today’s market, you need to accept the fact that what Google says about you is now more important than what you say about yourself. If you’re just starting to build your business, your reputation is particularly fragile, so you need to pay a lot of attention to the conversations going on about you, if any.

The biggest challenge for businesses in building their reputation is the fact that you are not in a position to control online conversations, which tend to be quite volatile. With user-generated content driving online activity, conversations about your company will definitely impact your success to a great extent.
Here are five useful tips on how to build your online reputation for business success:

1. Pay attention
It’s advisable to constantly monitor your brand mentions online. Run a search of your brand mentions, then analyze and interpret those results to measure what kind of reputation you have – good or bad. Reputation monitoring tools are particularly useful as they notify you whenever someone mentions your company online.

2. Ensure your personal reputation doesn’t compromise your business reputation
Your personal online reputation will affect your business reputation whether you like it or not. Offensive posts and comments on Facebook from yourself or your team are going to cause your brand to lose ground against your competitors. You need to know exactly what potential customers see when they look you up online, and fix any problems there.

3. Engage on social media
There is very little brand reputation building you can do today if you’re not active on social media. When done right, engaging on social media can generate lots of referrals to your website and business. Remember that social media engagement goes beyond content management – real time engagement with your customers and fans is the crucial too.

4. Get feedback and ask customers to share their experience
A good way to get consistent feedback from your customers is to create a follow-up system that allows you to contact them. Capturing their contact information is a good place to start, since you can always email them and ask for a review. Additionally, you could also ask your loyal customers to share their experience, thus contributing positively to a healthy online reputation.

5. Be strategic about responding to negative reviews
Negative reviews can feel awful, but you need to remember that customers are generally forgiving, provided you respond quickly, with empathy and a solution. You can also offer some sort of compensation, such as a voucher or discount, but if there’s nothing you can do, don’t forget to at least apologize.

Helpful tip: Building and monitoring your online reputation can be tasking, and could even start to take your attention away from your core business, particularly if you are growing. Getting an online reputation marketing agency on board will benefit you in ways only the experts can.

If you are looking for expert and professional advice on how to build your online reputation, don’t hesitate to contact us today. We’re happy to help.

 

5 Reasons Why You Need To Build Your Online Business Reputation

build online reputation

About 61% of shoppers research products online, and about 90% of customers say their buying is influenced by online reviews. Additionally, 85% of consumers say they will read up to 10 reviews before they can trust a business. This shows that your company’s reputation should be prioritized as part of your marketing efforts.

Your advertising efforts, regardless of how much you spend on them, only serve to introduce your business to the public. However, most people today will go online to find out more about your business and gauge its reputation before doing business with you.

To break it down, here are 5 reasons why you need to build your online reputation:

1. Your online reputation attracts customers or turns them away
Acquiring the trust of your client’s trust is a huge step towards the success of your business. Consumers typically discuss their purchases, and it’s never been easier to do this than it is today, thanks to the internet. It is worth noting that while a good reputation can take years to build, it can be destroyed in a short time. Even worse, negative reviews can cause even your existing customers to go elsewhere.

2. Your online reputation affects your sales
Since customers want to find out about a business beforehand, it follows that a good reputation will bring paying customers to your business. In fact, your reputation may be one of the biggest factors affecting your profits. When the reputation of a business falls, you can be sure that its profits will soon follow.

3. Your online reputation affects your competitiveness
When customers read negative reviews about your business and decide not to buy your products or services, this does not solve their problem. They will keep searching for a company they are comfortable doing business with, and will ultimately buy from your competition. Additionally, customers will often compare ratings before deciding where to buy. In other words, your reputation indicates where you stand in comparison to your competition.

4. Your online reputation affects your business partnerships
With a poor reputation, you have even more to worry about than just the customers. Potential and existing business partners may come across a poor review posted online, or even read about alleged bad business practices in your business.

Your business partners have an even bigger stake in your business than your customers, because they stand to lose their money if your business fails. A poor reputation is therefore dangerous as it could put your future income at risk in case a partner is put off by something online.

5. Your online reputation affects your workforce
Prospective employees will likely research your company before they apply to work for you. A negative blog post by one of your former employees could keep the highly competent professionals you need from your company.

Helpful tip: The best approach to building your reputation is to use a system that allows you to be proactive.

We offer a simple yet efficient system that will not only monitor your online reputation, but will also help build a good reputation for your business. Contact us today for more information.