Managing your companies reputation

                                                                                         

What's the chatter online about you personally, your company, the quality of what you manufacture, the quality of your services? What are your customers, your ex-employees, and your competition saying about you? Information travels quickly across the Internet. So, listen to the online conversations about your brand. How are these conversations affecting the way people view your organization?

With the growth of consumer-generated media such as blogs, forums and messageboards, information can be quickly generated and indexed by search engines. For business leaders, it is vitally important to know what's being said online, especially messages that are negative. Listening creates the opportunity to take action and resolve internal problems or deal with malicious information, both of which hurt your brand image and your corporate reputation.

What is the best way to effectively protect an online reputation?

Online reputations should be planned out, practiced and managed. You can accomplish that by creating and optimizing positive websites regarding your name or brand. You can have a low-budget PPC campaign going as well. Send out a press release, contribute frequently to a blog, get friends to post a page about you, etc. Publish the information you wish to have people see and read about you on the Web.

Three concepts to master for search engine reputation management

Monitor

What to monitor? Brands, products, company and key executives. Types of content? News Search, Social Media/Tags, Standard Search Results, Blogs and Forums.

Where to monitor? Google and Yahoo alerts; RSS feed subscriptions to search results from organizations such as Technorati, Feedster, Yahoo & Google News, Blog Pulse (and Social Media, via tags).

Optimize

Companies that want to protect their brand visibility on the Web would do well to make optimizing their brand content a best practice. They should optimize all digital communications, including: PR, marketing, HR, investor relations, and related electronic content that is publicly available. Social Media (text, images, audio, video) will produce more branded content in theSERPs.

Engage - Address the cause, once a negative mention has been identified.

Research the situation. Is there merit? If not, provide the facts and ask for corrections. If yes, then offer to discuss. Be ready to respond with your own blog. Be honest, be transparent, and LISTEN.

Results can be anything from a position turnaround to creation of another loyal brand evangelist who will thereafter generate only positive comments about your company.

The bottom line? Today online reputation management (ORM) is mandatory.

A damaged reputation can spell the difference between being part of the "in crowd" and being a loner. For businesses, a damaged or negative reputation can mean millions of dollars in lost revenue. There are a few reputable ORM agencies to help you assess your situation and take appropriate action. For highlights on how Moncur Associates would approach your issues with reputation management, send us a quick note.

About the author:
Learn more about how you can manage your reputation in a web-centric world with help from one of the best in business, Moncur Associates. Visit Lauderdale Web Design, and California Website Design for more information.

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