How to Manage and Fix Your Online Reputation
These days, anyone can write anything about your company or brand online and, whether right or wrong, it'll quickly propagate worldwide to a huge audience without you being able to control it. Whether it happens through watchdog sites, online communities, customer web sites or YouTube, all it takes is one unhappy customer who knows his or her way around the Web to create a PR nightmare for you.
While this information can alert you about problems you may be having and consumer trends you may not be aware of, it can also cause significant (and hard to erase) damage to your reputation when it comes to potential customers, partners and employees. What if one of your employees leaks a sensitive document?What if it's one of the first results in the Google search results for your company or brand name?
On the positive side, this type of immediate online access to information can help you positively influence your reputation. You know have many more venues and much more data to listen to, understand and work with to meet your goals, whatever they may be. So what can you do?
Chief Marketer published a couple articles with answers to these questions. Web 2.0 Damage Control, for example, suggests that you can anticipate and mitigate the damage by regularly auditing the web and using the results as a learning tool, reviewing your legal privacy policies, developing your response before you're in crisis mode, and being proactive in addressing any issues.
Meanwhile, Manage Your Brand's Reputation Online suggests natural search optimization as a "very cost effective method of controlling talk online," as well as other other automated search tools that can help you monitor online content (both free and paid). The minimum is to regularly review the page-one search results for all relevant keywords on the major search engines, while developing sites that hold positive content (alternate domains, social media pages, press releases, etc.)
BusinessWeek also addressed this question in How to Fix Your Brand's Rep, which offers a two-pronged approach. First, follow-up with your customers, deal with their complaints and make changes based on their feedback. Then, ensure that there are more positive messages about your company/brand on the Internet than negative ones.
Finally, the Buzz Marketing for Technology blog offers five tips to help avoid a major PR disaster online - monitor (with free keyword search feeds), measure (using paid services), engage (with important influencers), buy (PPC keywords) and strengthen (your position through optimized PR). The blog even has a Reputation Management for New Media survey that can give you an idea of "how ready your organization is for a reputation disaster."
Posted by Universal Ad
While this information can alert you about problems you may be having and consumer trends you may not be aware of, it can also cause significant (and hard to erase) damage to your reputation when it comes to potential customers, partners and employees. What if one of your employees leaks a sensitive document?What if it's one of the first results in the Google search results for your company or brand name?
On the positive side, this type of immediate online access to information can help you positively influence your reputation. You know have many more venues and much more data to listen to, understand and work with to meet your goals, whatever they may be. So what can you do?
Chief Marketer published a couple articles with answers to these questions. Web 2.0 Damage Control, for example, suggests that you can anticipate and mitigate the damage by regularly auditing the web and using the results as a learning tool, reviewing your legal privacy policies, developing your response before you're in crisis mode, and being proactive in addressing any issues.
Meanwhile, Manage Your Brand's Reputation Online suggests natural search optimization as a "very cost effective method of controlling talk online," as well as other other automated search tools that can help you monitor online content (both free and paid). The minimum is to regularly review the page-one search results for all relevant keywords on the major search engines, while developing sites that hold positive content (alternate domains, social media pages, press releases, etc.)
BusinessWeek also addressed this question in How to Fix Your Brand's Rep, which offers a two-pronged approach. First, follow-up with your customers, deal with their complaints and make changes based on their feedback. Then, ensure that there are more positive messages about your company/brand on the Internet than negative ones.
Finally, the Buzz Marketing for Technology blog offers five tips to help avoid a major PR disaster online - monitor (with free keyword search feeds), measure (using paid services), engage (with important influencers), buy (PPC keywords) and strengthen (your position through optimized PR). The blog even has a Reputation Management for New Media survey that can give you an idea of "how ready your organization is for a reputation disaster."
Posted by Universal Ad
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