Online Reputation Management Basics

BY Dec. 06, 2010 28 Comments


It’s a well known fact that word of mouth can be one of the most powerful forms of marketing. It makes sense: I would take a close friend’s restaurant review over that of the business itself. Online the word of mouth concept still holds true. People share things differently, but that kind of marketing can be just as effective – for better or worse. The biggest difference between how business mentions happen online and offline is that on the Internet nearly everything that happens is 100% public and instantly archived.

This means a business can – and should – be monitoring these reviews.

Good reviews are great, but we all know that regardless of how awesome your business might be, not every review of your brand is a good review. Those are the most important times to be monitoring your online reputation. It is those bad reviews that should get you in action to clear up any mishaps. They give you a chance to let your great customer service define itself. Sometimes bad reviewers are just trolls looking to stir up trouble. There is not much to be done about these trolls online. It’s the potentially great customer that just caught your business on a bad day that gives you the opportunity to turn a bad rap into something good.

It should be fairly obvious that some sort of online reputation management is needed for a business concerned about its image. Bad reviews are bad for business. The question is how to keep your image clean when the Internet is so large?

Setting Up for Reputation Management Success

The first place you should start with is ensuring that no one tries to steal your brand identity. There are a few reasons why this might happen. Someone might be out to make an easy buck by trying to sell your own branded name to you. It also might be a troll trying to steal your potential customers or scare them away. So the first step is to claim your territory online. You can do this in 3 general areas.

1. Grab your domain names. Don’t worry about the obscure domain extensions like .ly and .cc, but register your brand name domains for the big top-level domains like .com, .net, and .org. If there are any common misspellings, consider buying those also.

2. Register your social profiles. You should already be interacting on major networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Myspace, and Flickr. There are dozens of other social networking sites worth the few minutes it takes to register a profile.

3. Sign up for local listings. Even if you deal primarily to online customers, you should secure local listings to aid in your reputation management efforts. Start with the major local search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp. Move out from there to popular online yellow page sites and local business directories.

Keeping Your Eyes and Ears Open

Once you’ve secured your brand identity online, the next step is to watch for reviews. Good reviews can be rewarded. This can range from a simple thank you to a discount on their next visit. Bad reviews should not be deleted. Consumers are smart, and they get a little wary when they see a business with a spick-and-span reputation. Leave the bad reviews in place, but feel free to reply to them with an apt apology. There are a few ways to keep aware of your brand’s reputation.

1. Setup Google Alerts. What better way to monitor for mentions of your brand than with quite possibly the biggest, most up-to-date index of the Internet? Google Alerts notifies you of new content related to the query you input. Set up some alerts for your brand name and any other method people might identify you.

2. Monitor social mentions. Google might be great at indexing the web, but social networks are a little bit of a special case. There are several tools to monitor for mentions of your brand in the social world, beginning with their own search engines.

3. Keep an active eye on your rankings. Search engine rankings are great for bringing in traffic, but if bad reviews begin to show up they might be driving away potential customers. This is most important for searches for your brand name, but you should regularly monitor your high traffic search phrases to ensure nothing bad creeped in.

Online reputation management is an important aspect of branding and marketing. If you’re interested in diving deeper into it, Outspoken Media has a great starter guide to point you in the right direction.

How do you monitor your brand’s online reputation?

Online Business, Your Brand
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  • http://www.InternetEntrepreneurConnection.com Hector Avellaneda

    Matthias great post! I definitely agree in keeping an eye on your personal brand, especially in the world of network marketing or mlm.

    There are is so much competition out there that distinguishing yourself from the pack is imperative. The only way to do this is to keep your personal brand clean and maintain a good reputation through out the internet marketing world.

    Thanks fro sharing your suggestions on maintaining your band!

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Thanks for the compliments, Hector. Just yesterday I was researching a potential client and came across about two dozen complaints about them on various websites. This includes 13 complaints against them filed with the BBB and an accompanying F rating. When someone searches their brand name, all of these complaints come up. I can only imagine how much money that is losing them.
      As fun of a challenge as that seemed to me, some of the complaints were ethical problems rather than the usual “I received the wrong item.” I had to pass on that client.

  • http://www.chatmeter.com Michael

    Matthias Great advice! It’s surprising how many business owners don’t even claim their listing on top local search directories. That’s why we think our “Listing Manager” tool from chatmeter is so important to SMB Owners. Not only can they claim their listing but it highlights any inaccuracies that may exist and creates awareness of good site listing opportunities.

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Thanks Michael. You’re right, just claiming your listing is a pretty easy task that can give an SMB a lot of good resources and customer data. Several times I’ve ended up at a wrong address because the business didn’t update their listing. They’re losing an easy customer There.

      • http://www.chatmeter.com Michael

        No problem Matthias. You should give our Agency chatmeter report a test drive for one of your clients and let us know what you think.

  • http://www.lavenderuses.com Patricia@lavenderuses

    Hi Matthias

    Very well-written and informative post. I work hard to make sure my reputation is one of integrity, honesty, trust and excellent customer service. So important for success on the internet.

    Offline I use the same principles. Being helpful and giving even more to the customer than they expect, marks the business as different to a lot out there who don’t bother.

    Thanks for sharing Matthias. Much appreciated.

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      I’m glad to hear you have such solid principles in your business dealings. It’s beyond the scope of this post, but I’m a firm believer that a successful business needs established guiding principles and a mission statement.
      Exceeding your customers’ expectations is likely to get you referrals – which is always a good thing.

      Thank you for the compliments, Patricia.

  • William Tha Great

    Hey Matthias,

    Thanks for the well thought out post!

    I believe everyone should watch their personal reputation, because many time you lose track of what your purpose may be. Then you start getting those bad reviews when you start to slip off track. If you keep track of your reputation and how things are going you will know if your slipping off track and you can address the problem.

    Wether it’s online or offline you have to make it a mission to help other people in need the best way possible. You might not always have the right answer but you could at least try. This is what helps make an excellent business person & the average business person.

    Thanks again!

    God bless,
    William Veasley

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Hi William,

      This is so true. It’s so simple to dig up information on a person or a business. You can’t keep bad dealings hidden like you may have been able to do in the past. This also makes it easy for someone to hurt you if they dislike you or are competing with you – one more reason to monitor your rep.

      Building your life or your business around the goal of helping others is a great mission and will make you better for it. Look at Newman’s Own brand. They’ve made nearly $300 million dollars for charity because of one man’s passion for helping others.

      Thanks for the feedback!
      Matthias

  • http://www.megabizflakes.com Samuel

    Awesome post man. Yeah, small business owners must be able to interact with people on social network in a cool manner because it will help their personal brand a lot. Submitting your site to local directories is also mandatory. Also remember to protect your brand identity because it’s your #1 asset. Thanks a lot for sharing. Have fun.

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Yes! Nearly everyone is involved in social media, if you’re a business owner and not reaching out to customers you are losing out. Thanks for the comments!

  • TrafficColeman

    Protect your imagine as much as you can in these today’s time. People will Google who and it can be down hill form there.

    “Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Even individuals have to be careful. Future employers will undoubtedly Google you before hiring.

  • http://www.dennisedell.com/about Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing

    The last thing you want to hear is, “Man I was so sorry to read that article on you in that popular blog”…then you say, “huh”?

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      If you do things right, hopefully it will be an “I read that article on you in that popular blog, great job!”

      • http://www.dennisedell.com/about Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing

        Sure enough. I was going with your topic on how dumb you can look not properly monitoring.

  • http://armandomobile.com/ Morgan

    All great advice which we are currently implementing. We have some fantastic tools that help us monitor the web and social networks. I love the tools that are out right now for monitoring. Great article!

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Tools are great. I’d be interested to hear what tools you are using? Thanks for the feedback!

      • http://armandomobile.com Morgan

        I use Klout and SocialMention to name a couple. They are extremely useful when it comes to evaluating how we’re doing and to hear what other people are saying about us.

  • http://www.teenbusinessforum.com Jack | TeenBusinessForum

    So everyone knows it’s really hard to mention word of mouth. If anyone has read Seth Godin’s books Tribes or The Purple Cow, we know that creating something remarkable is worth doing. Remarkable as he defines it is something worth remarking.

    So this is how I see if my site is being talked about. I type in my domain name into google and see which sites are linking to me. Sometimes I find out that my site’s members have mentioned about the site on their blogs, without me knowing.

    I also found out that my site was listed as a resource for young entrepreneurs by the Kauffman foundation.

    Try it. Put in into Google.

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Something about Seth Godin’s style never settled with me personally, but I understand his accomplishments and recommend others read his works.

      Finding out who is linking to your website is very important. I always make a personal effort to thank others when I see they link to me. It goes a long way toward building that good reputation and getting the word of mouth buzz.

    • http://feedity.com/rss.aspx/dakotagifts-com/UVZUW1ZQ Jasmine

      Hey, it worked! I typed my domain name into google and I could see everywhere I was talked about or linked. Pretty cool. Now off to do some investigating! Gotta keep up my rep! : )

  • http://journeyfish.com/ Susan Kennedy

    Reputation management just got a lot more important. Google is going to be penalizing sites in the rankings if they have negative reviews. Neglecting reputation management won’t just be harming your sales but also will be hitting your non-branded traffic.

  • http://RaisingCEOKids.com Sarah Cook @RaisingCEOKids

    Matthais – this is such an important topic! Thank you for putting it together! How do you recommend monitoring such a common name as Sarah Cook without being overwhelmed by the alerts that come through Google alerts?

    • http://www.2helixtech.com/ Matthias Hager

      Hi Sarah – you raise a very good point! Google Alerts uses Google search technology, so you can utilize all of its lesser known features. Take a look at http://goo.gl/16v2J for more info on search modifiers.

      I would setup one to alert you weekly for ["Sarah Cook"] With the quotes but not the brackets – meaning it has your name exactly like that, it doesn’t include a page that says “Sarah is a cook.”

      You could also set up alerts to use stop words. There is another Sarah Cook who writes about curating art. If you see a lot of alerts about her, you might change the search to ["Sarah Cook" -art] – (quotes, no brackets). Any results for “Sarah Cook” which include the word ‘art’ would not be sent your way.

      You could make it specific to your CEO Kids by doing one like ["Sarah Cook" (business OR ceo OR kids) -art].

      It’s easier with a name like 2HelixTech, but it can be done with more common names too! Good luck, and feel free to contact me for any assistance.

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  • JT

    Keep an eye on your website statistics as well, if you are lucky people who mention you (whether in good or bad) will also link to your site.
    Google alerts might take some time to appear while traffic from the site doing the mentioning should be fairly immediate.