Online Reputation Management is perhaps one of the fastest growing fields in Internet and Social Media Marketing. In fact, it has become an industry onto itself as more and more consumers are leaving feedback for companies with which they conduct business.
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When a prospect or sales lead performs a search on Google or any of the other popular search engines about your business and they see a negative feedback, it can and will adversely affect your sales. Think of the last time you read something negative about a company. The first thing you likely thought was that you would NOT purchase anything from that business simply because you did not want to experience the same thing the person who left the negative feedback experienced. It is called self-preservation. You do not want to get hurt or scammed.
Online Reputation Management Experts and Service Providers
Extensive research has been done and the findings reveal that it only takes one customer who wasn't treated fairly, or an ex-employee with a score to settle to damage a company's reputation online. With review websites such as Google Places and Yelp!, it is easy for consumers to leave feedback for companies almost on the fly.
Consumers in this day-and-age are becoming more Internet savvy and the Internet is one of the first places they visit to perform a search on a business before they decide to make a purchase. It doesn't matter if the business is service-based or simply sells products; if they receive a negative feedback it will mean loss of business.
Reputation management should not occur only when a company has received negative feedback. It is something which should be diligently managed on a regular basis. Every time there is communication between a customer service representative and a client, it's an opportunity for the representative to create a positive experience for the customer and present the company in a positive light.
The respoinsibility is therefore on the company to train it's employees to embrace the company's philosophy in dealing with customers. In the case of small business owners and entrepreneurs, it's your responsibility to adopt basic principles in dealing with your customers regardless of how difficult they may be and decide beforehand how various situations will be addressed. While there is no guarantee that applying Golden Rule customer service will prevent negative comments about your business, you will do your part to the fullest extent to prevent someone from posting damaging comments online that can undermine your online reputation.
Reputation Management Strategies are Easy to Set-up
There are several reputation management monitoring strategies which can be implemented to help a business get a feel for what their customers are saying about the business. One of these strategies is as simple as setting up Google Alerts for your business. You can set up a Google Alert with your company's name and your name so that every time something is published online that matches your 'alert' you'll receive an email from Google.
Companies that do not have a reputation management system in place may be leaving themselves open to months of unnecessary headaches and loss of revenue. Fortunately, there are reputation management service Reputationsmanagement businesses for companies who do not have the time to manage their online reputation.
These service providers will monitor your company's reputation and handle any issues which arise quickly and correctly. Moreover, firms such as these assist businesses and individuals in taking certain preemptive measures to assure that their reputation remains relatively untarnished.
Reputation management for your online business is like reputation management in the physical business; you keep track of what people are saying about you, your products, and your company in order to find out what you can change, what should stay the same and get some new ideas. Unfortunately, as useful as reputation management is, it's also extremely time consuming, especially on the internet where you could have thousands or even millions of people talking about your products and services or related to yours. These discussions could be taking place over countless blogs, forums, and review sites; it would take a lifetime just to filter all of it alone!
This is why you need to outsource this aspect of your online business. Reputation management is very important, but it's also incredibly time consuming and requires several people or a team of independent contractors, so you'll want to go with one firm rather than freelancers. Reputation managers can scour the forums, blogs, comments, and review sites to bring back vital information for your business that you would have a great deal of difficulty obtaining. This includes positive feedback, so you can see what you're doing right and should continue doing; negative feedback, so you can see what to fix; and ideas and thoughts that people have had on your products and services so you can get more ideas for your business. Reputation managers can also look at things like which products are popular with people, which ones aren't, and so you can see where to do some trimming of your products so that you have a consistently popular range of items and services to sell to customers.
A firm is the only way to go if you want to outsource your reputation management because the more people who are working together on it, the faster you'll get your information back to you. Make sure to pick a company you feel comfortable with, that falls in your budget range and that they will be able to do everything you need them to do. When you are shopping around, figure out exactly what you need from your reputation management company so that your employees will be able to bring you back information you want and can use.
Outsourcing reputation management is not only advisable, but if you want someone keeping an eye on your popularity, it's necessary to outsource it. There is no way you'll be able to get as much information by yourself as you could get if you have several people looking out for you and these people will also know more places to look for information than you may know if you try to go alone. It's well worth spending some money if you're interested in knowing how you're doing with your public and want to be able to tweak your business to please more people and keep them consistently happy, so outsource your reputation management and get all the information you could want.
© JL Croto, Virtual Assistant Solutions, 2010
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