The first time reputation management became used in the business world was as part of human resource strategies. Essentially, it concerns itself with promotion or influencing how a company or individual comes across. Because everything is now online, and with the advent of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), reputation management also started to become important outside of human resource management as well. Today, people actively search for a business' reputation before deciding whether or not to shop with them, so it is very important for businesses and individuals to engage in online reputation management.
How Online Reputation Management Works - When companies publish articles, these should highlight the positive performance of that business. A website should be filled with high quality content, to make the site more interested. This also improves online rankings, and companies that are easy to find online instantly have a greater reputation.
- You should use not just your own website, but also other sites and social media sites. Positive content about your business should be made available across all those channels, asking people to like and share it, and comment on it.
- Start to develop press releases through specialized submission sites. The Google spiders favor press releases, which means that a site is easier to get found. A press release is also an excellent opportunity to promote something very positive about a website, and any good business should have some sort of newsworthy event at least once per day.
- Creating blogs has been a good SEO tool since the internet first started, and this is till the same now. Blogs allow ideas to be created and spread. Blog posts should be interesting and easy to read, as well as encouraging people to comment on them. Do not, however, create blogs under fake identities, pretending to be someone independent reviewing your company. You will always get found out eventually, and this will greatly damage your overall reputation.
- Offer some of your customers a free sample of your product or service, or a highly discounted one, in return for their honest opinion. This works in a number of different ways. Firstly, you will receive true independent posts about your company, which instantly increases your ranking. Secondly, it means you get to truly introduce your brand and product to a potential customer. Lastly, presuming that your customers like your product, they will tell the world about this.
- Always encourage your customers to leave feedback about their experiences and always respond to these, whether they are positive or negative. Unfortunately, unhappy people are more likely to speak up, which shows just how important it is to respond to that so that you show others that you take them seriously and always try to find a solution.
Reputation management has to be done properly. Unfortunately, as with SEO, there are a number of black hat techniques, such as fake identities, now being used. It is very important that you avoid these, because they are incredibly damaging once you get found out.
