Online Reputation

Internet Reputation Management – How It’s Done

By Ken Arp

Internet reputation management has become an important factor to at least consider as part of an overall internet marketing strategy. A positive reputation leads to consumer confidence and ultimately sales while negative perceptions can have the complete opposite effect. But how can you control what others are saying online about your company, product or brand? The answer is that you can’t but rather than control what is said what you can do is have an internet reputation management plan to be able to manage what is said.

Buyers today quite often make decisions based on or at least influenced by what others say in online reviews, message boards and Social Media sites. If they come across something negative about your company it can have a serious effect on whether or not they do business with you, and you may never even know it happened.

Internet Reputation Management enables you to become actively involved to protect and manage your online reputation through a combination of marketing, public relations and managing of search results.

The first step in the process is to monitor what’s being said about what is important to you, whether it’s your company, your product, your people or even your competition. The next step is to have a plan on how to respond to what’s being said, both positive and negative. If someone is saying positive things about you why not share that and spread the word using your own Social Media properties? If someone has something negative to say is it better to ignore it or to address the issue and try to correct the problem? There are many examples of how sticking your head in the sand can do terrible damage, one of the most famous ones courtesy of United Airlines. When an upset Canadian musician complained that they broke his guitar in transit they ignored him, so he wrote a song about it and posted it on YouTube.  At last check “United Breaks Guitars” has been viewed more than 10,000,000 times, certainly not the type of negative publicity that United Airlines would want. It’s also served as a venting hotspot with thousands of comments to the video with people sharing luggage horror stories. And it all could’ve been avoided if they just responded to that 1 complaint.

If you monitor the conversations and participate in a positive manner where necessary you can lead the conversations about your brand, product or company in a positive direction, and people will respect your participation.

Another important facet of Internet Reputation Management is to influence search results as they relate to your brand or company. By actively engaging in a program to build online assets that are optimized for search you can ensure that positive results dominate any searches for you.

If you would like to talk more about Internet Reputation Management I’d be happy to take the time with you, I can be reached at ken.arp@wsitotalinternet.ca or you can call me at (905) 257-8789.

Published by Ken Arp in Online Reputation, social media