Author: reputationmanagement

Grow Your Company with these 5 Digital Marketing Tips

Digital marketing, including ORM, can no longer be put on the side burner when it comes to an organization’s long-term sustainability. Whether you are a B2B or B2C firm, your digital footprint can have a monumental impact on your bottom line. Here are five ways you can protect your reputation and garner financial freedom.

1) Streamline the whole customer experience. Company’s omni-channel strategies should not be forgotten when constructing an inviting digital interface for potential and current customers. Consistency is key and should be maintained across all platforms so as to avoid confusion. For instance, you don’t want your sales force to be known for their high responsiveness rate and expert service while online inquiries go unnoticed.
2) Determine your digital objectives. Don’t neglect the user friendliness of your digital interface, along with how the platform can be integrated into the rest of the customer experience.
3) Only make promises on what you can deliver. Understanding the psychographics of your customers can be tough, however the knowledge rendered by knowing what your customer expects will allow you to effectively communicate your offerings. The last thing you want to do is disappoint your customer, thus leading to high dissatisfaction rates and a trail of bad online reviews. Whether you own a mom and pop shop, a restaurant or a spa-customers will search about you beforehand and compare you to the competition in your area before making a proper decision. Most won’t think twice about visiting your establishment if they see a star rating fewer than three. Your main goal should be to over exceed expectations every single time you have another customer touch-point with your potential or current customer.
4) Dust off the microscope. Ethnographic research is an effective method to gaining extra insight into your customer’s attitudes and behaviours. The time and money invested into this research is worth it can result in a complete shift in the way you market your offerings, thus skyrocketing revenue.
5) Always Be Transparent. If you’re collecting customer data, let your customers know. It’s that simple, and trust us, a simple message can save you hundreds of headaches. It’s easy for customers to take their customer service issues to Facebook and Twitter, in which the electronic word-of-mouth quickly spreads. Be proactive and let your customers in on your potnetially questionable practices and policies.

How to Boost Your Bottom Line with Influencer Marketing

Google’s main mission is to provide relevant and up-to-date content for all searchers. Marketers’ main objective should be to do the same, simply tweaked to their own offering. In the age where millennials make up the majority of brands’ target markets, there’s no longer an excuse to avoid influencer marketing. How much activity your social media channels receive can protect your online reputation in the long-run, therefore choosing both credible and relevant influencers to advocate for your brand will bring you right on track.

Engagement Matters Most

When choosing the perfect influencers to back up your brand, it’s not simply about the number of followers they have on Instagram or Facebook. Let’s key you in on a little secret: Some influencers pay for followers. That’s why if you see that they are lacking engagement on their photos but have hundreds and thousands of followers on their profile, it’s probably a scam. Either way, marketers today prefer engagement over impressions any day. We’d rather have 1,000 loyalists engage with our brand with the intention of purchasing versus 5,000 placid consumers who scroll past your post in a millisecond.

Use Social Monitoring Devices

Connecting with influencers via social media monitoring platforms such as Hootsuite, where you can type in a keyword or profile in order to monitor their interactions, will allow you to chime in to their conversations every once in a while. This may lead to a greater opportunity where the influencer warms up to your brand and decides to launch into a campaign with you, or become a part of your influencer program. You may decide to send them your products to try out and give honest feedback to their followers.

Companies of All Sizes Are Doing It

Companies small and large have used influencer marketing to get ahead of the game and spread awareness concerning what they do best. Montreal-based swimsuit company (and swimwear is an uber competitive industry in and of itself) June Swimwear dubs their influencers by “Team June”. These women embrace the brand’s sports aesthetic by either living out a surfer lifestyle or travelling for work. Their influencers will then take photos of themselves in their June swimwear abroad their travels to then be posted on June’s Instagram profile.

Other brands such as Tarte have taken influencer marketing to the next level by flying out over a dozen famous YouTube and Instagram stars to tropical destinations. There, they partake in fun activities and bonding moments between each other in which everything is recorded on their channels of choice. From Bora Bora to Turks and Caicos and Hawaii, the influencer entourage has made a great splash on social media concerning the brand’s new sea-themed product line that adorns mesmerizing mermaid and turtle packaging.

Use the 4-1-1 Tactic

If you want to make a large impact with your audience, then you should follow the 4-1-1 strategy that social media mavens have effectively used to grow their businesses. For every one piece of promotable content that you publish, make sure it is backed up by four influencer-driven posts and one personable, behind-the-scenes type of post. This is the key to unlocking a world of opportunities for your company’s growth. And it’s worth the investment as studies have revealed that for every $1 invested in influencers, the average company will receive $6 back in revenue. Now that’s an ROI we like to see!

Be Research Savvy

The rest of your company’s marketing teams can use some insight from the Marketing Communications department since these are the managers who see first-hand how customers are interacting with your brand. Take the pedestal and explain to your branding and product development teams what’s going well for your company, what your weaknesses are based on the competition and in which ways you can increase your competitive advantage.

ORM Experts Explain How to Tackle Personalization

As an ORM agency, we are constantly on the look-out for how our clients can improve their business strategies to optimize revenue. After monitoring countless bad reviews-and suppressing them or removing them altogether-we have a few tips on how to properly personalize your offering to your customers.

With a flood of decisions to be made, reviewing platforms have become an essential and influential factor for potential customers. The fact of the matter is that people don’t like to make decisions when faced with ten very similar options. Also, they have developed trust issues with brands thanks to a decline of customer service and employee expertise.

We have seen many companies attempt to personalize their offerings-the numbers ring true. Studies have indicated that 75% of customers are more likely to show signs of loyalty if they feel that they are remembered and cared for by the brand in question.

Unfortunately, too many brands have tackled personalization all wrong. Here’s what ORM experts believe you should be doing differently:

1) Don’t make customers feel like you’re intruding on their privacy. Some companies have taken the boundaries of privacy too far, such as Walmart. This grand and trusted retail giant has begun testing in-fridge delivery by pairing up with the smart lock company, August Home. Through a one-time passcode, Walmart delivery people will be able to enter a customer’s home and place their favorite grocery items in their fridge. To top it all off-because privacy is inevitably an issue in this case-customers can access an app to watch the deliverers through a surveillance camera that has been installed in their home. Of course, the test market for this innovation is Silicon Valley. Although this idea definitely borderlines privacy issues, it turns out that most customers (80%, to be precise) don’t feel infringed by brands. Those that do feel creeped out by a brand’s inquiries are when they never provided specific information for the company’s using. This is often a result of brands’ use of exterior data to try and sway over potential clients. So, the method is simple: To avoid being creepy, all you need to do is stick to what the customer has given to you. It’s about how you use that information in your attempt to convenience them that will make you stand out from the rest of the crowd.

2) Drop customer personas. The old persona tactic is a trick that many marketers may have learnt in the classroom setting, but times are changing-and they’re changing quickly. You can’t put customers in a box anymore. Their psychographics extend past the purchase of the shoes they bought last month. They may have a new item that they’re on the radar for, such as a clutch purse or statement earrings. As a digital marketer, there’s no point in showing them a different alternative to the shoes they have recently purchases since they are now onto something now. If you want to catch their attention, you need to remain relevant to their needs.

3) Seek opportunities where your customers can trust you. Take Netflix as the prime example here. They consider the attributes of what you like-such as the genre of movie, the characters and the director-as opposed to the name of the movie you are watching. You shouldn’t be pushing things onto your customer for face value, but instead you should dig a little deeper. What is it that your customer fancies when in the market for new sunglasses? Perhaps it’s the brand and frame style, not necessarily the color scheme. Personalization is all in the details, not so much the big picture.

What Can ORM Agencies Do for You?

Most ORM agencies can cost over $1,000 a month for suppression contracts, which is when a company or individual is experiencing the case of a bad press release that is shadowing their positive attributes. Whether it be a court case or an unfair customer raging-we have seen it all. However, maintenance contracts in which an ORM agency is hired after the bulk of the suppression has succeeded (i.e. when the bad press release has reached the second page of Google’s search engine results page or farther), can cost about half of the aforementioned fee. The ORM agency will ensure that the bad result doesn’t jump back through various measures, and may or may not continue to provide backlink juice for positive results (this depends on the customer’s preference).

“But why the steep cost?” we sometimes hear individuals ask. And you have a right to know where your money is going, however we are certain that this question will become more and more rare as the years go by. This is because you have to think about the pricing structure as one of a lawyer or consultant. Our ORM experts will dedicate hours of their time to leveraging positive news through crowdsourcing methods, creating neutral content to combat the fretful reviews and designing SEO sites for your benefit.

Here are the pillars of what we do as an agency to fight your bad news:

1) Monitor your social media platforms and search results: If ORM agents see a bad review, they can swiftly and politely respond to it in order to avoid a tidal wave effect of negative press. They have the technological prowess to get accurate alerts as to when a certain article changes position on Google, or from what site a bad press release was leaked on.
2) Take legal measures for slanderous press: Take Taco Bell’s 2013 incident, for instance. An employee published a photo of himself licking a rack of hard taco shells on the company’s Facebook page. It automatically got thousands of shares. Imagine if you had an ORM agency on your side? Bad news about large companies may spread like wild fire, but an ORM agency would be quick to respond and take down the bad news before it got out of hand. Also, this is the type of case where taking legal action for the removal of such content is possible. Whenever a news article or post is defamatory or hitched with falsities, ORM agencies can take the legal route.
3) We treat your company’s search results as a forward-facing predicament for your revenue. If results are bad, we will polish up Google’s results to let the positive truth subside. We are your best friend when it comes to generating long-lasting revenue.

Therefore, monitoring and reacting to bad electronic word-of-mouth is what we do. We will shape up your brand and pre-emptively protect it. If you think about it, the cost of hiring an ORM agency is incomparable to the thousands or even millions of dollars your company could lose because of a bad online reputation. Be proactive and protect your brand’s reputation today.

Are You a Health Practitioner? This is Why You’re Losing Business

If you’re a health practitioner, whether it be a surgeon or a dentist, your reputation likely keeps you up at night. Competition can be stiff with a flooded realm of bigger and better health practitioners. Are you not reaching your goals in terms of clientele, or do you have an operational issue that has been made visible through your reviews? You’re not alone.

A 2013 Pew study revealed that 59% of Americans sought health information online by first browsing through search engines such as Google and Bing. This fact poses a vital resource to our path in uncovering the reason behind your diminishing clientele: What does Google have to say about your reputation? Nowadays, Americans are becoming pickier than ever about who they hire as a health practitioner. If they’re not satisfied with your work, they’ll quickly turn to the internet for the next best practitioner that can solve their health issues. There’s nothing more sensitive and personal than one’s health, leaving most patients on the hunt for only the best in the field—no matter the cost.

You must first consider these three important questions:

Are you, the health professional, easy to find by online search?
Do your web pages and doctors’ profiles describe accurate information?
Do you have good ratings and reviews?

If you answered no to one or more of these questions, then it’s evident that your competitors are capturing your potential patients. Here are tell-tale signs as to why you’re losing business.

1) Potential patients can’t find you online (or offline).

Has your establishment changed its building complex recently without updating its new business location listing on Google? This in itself can cause frustration for new clients that aren’t aware of the change. In fact, a study done by Placable found that 73% of patients who encountered business listing inaccuracies experienced a loss of trust, and 67% experienced a loss of trust if they couldn’t find the intended address due to a wrong listing.

Large health systems find it challenging to keep a hold of the constant flux of data coming from different physician sources. It may be more beneficial to your business’ bottom line if you simply hire staff committed to optimizing physician sites and keeping them up-to-date.

2) You don’t promote ratings and reviews on your website.

If your website doesn’t have physician reviews, then your potential patients are likely to go to other platforms to hear what others have to say about a certain health professional’s practice. It’s easier to effectively respond to reviews (the good and the bad) if your website has the option. Of course, pay attention to reviews that populate on Google or other sites specialized in the matter and make sure that you respond to them!

3) Scheduling appointments is a hassle.

You want to make scheduling an appointment as easy and hassle-free as can be for your customers as this is the initial point-of-contact—the moment where you get to make a lasting impression on the patient that may bloom into loyalty. Use vertically integrated scheduling technologies that allow patients to find a provider, scroll through reviews about that same provider and schedule an appointment all in one place. Don’t bog them down with the barriers of phone calls or accessing another website for scheduling. Think like a patient and make the whole process clean and simple.

Why Online Reputation Management Services for Individuals Is Important

If you’re an individual who is working hard to build up a robust brand for yourself, then you should invest in online reputation management services for individuals. After attending countless networking events, trade shows and online webinars, you certainly know that building a brand for yourself from scratch is a far cry from a walk in the park. A strong brand reputation can harbour trust and loyalty in your customers, and of course spread that much desired word-of-mouth to potential clients. Recently, showcasing your brand through social responsibility programs and purposeful marketing promotions has been a trend in driving customer recognition. You’ll see renowned companies like P&G embark in such matters with campaigns dedicated to demonstrating how their products touch and improve human lives. Dedicating your programs to inspiring and motivating your greatest corporate assets—your employees—as they are your walking advertisements. Your brand purpose should be simple, meaningful and memorable. Don’t overcomplicate it. Any John Doe should understand what your purpose is within minutes of reading it. Only once your employees grasp onto your newfound vision for the company can you externally promote your brand purpose with honesty.

Imagine that one day, something devastating breaks your normal business routine. You wake up fresh-eyed (after a hot cup of coffee of course), only to realize that your business has been plagued with one of the most severe illnesses out there. You own a small online jewelry store that relies on customer reviews, and you see that a rotten blog post reviewing your company has made it’s way onto Google’s first search engine results page. How did it get there, and how come you didn’t catch it earlier? You notice that the blog post’s date stamp is from over a month ago. There are many corners of the web in which bad news that can be severely hurting your reputation without you even realizing it may be festering. That’s why online reputation management services for individuals should not simply be reserved as your last resort when you realize a bad review is hurting your reputation. It should be used as a pre-emptive strategy in order to avoid such damaging effects.

Not only can the few companies that exist in the market today, one of the prime being Reputation.Management, help you to identify bad results before they trudge their way to Google’s first page—but they can also help you increase sales long-term by populating your channels with positive news. Also, if your company’s website, blogs and social media accounts are consistently updated with new information, it will be easier for companies specialized in online reputation management services for individuals to erase your unwanted news. This is because Google rewards search results that have many clicks and have been live for a long period of time. Chances are that if a positive post has been published years ago and reverse SEO (also referred to as online reputation management) is conducted, then your lousy bad press release that was published a month ago will soon disappear. However, the opposite is also true. Online reputation management specialists dictate that the longer a bad review infects your reputation, it will take equally the amount of time to suppress it.

Now, back to our e-retailer story. When you take a closer look at the scandal hurting your business, you suddenly realize that most of the information is not even accurate. Sure, the customer should always be right, but in this case they are plain wrong. The customer has mistaken your company name for another e-retailer and proceeds to complain about the cheap materials used to fabricate the now tarnished bracelet that they have purchased. This is only the beginning to an even bigger mess, in which the blog’s comment section is flooded with other astonished and maddened customers. Remember, your small business relies heavily on good reviews to operate. In this case, you need to contact a credible company known for online reputation management services for individuals. Most Public Relations firms are traditional and don’t have the resources to heal your headache. Your best bet is to go directly to the source with a boutique agency that is committed to understanding your needs and protecting your reputation long-term. The company can ensure brand-focused social media campaigns and SEO tactics to move your wanted news higher up on Google’s Search Engine Results Page while detecting and suppressing bad reviews before it becomes more imminent for your company.

There are a plethora of other reasons as to why you may want to consider online reputation management services for individuals. In business, it’s a no brainer that everyone is obsessed with driving sales up. Based on a thorough study conducted by Vendasta, a few shocking yet relevant statistics pave the way to your ORM enlightenment. While 92% of customers read online reviews, over half of people aged between 18 and 34 years old trusted user reviews more than they trusted the recommendations of their family and friends. Almost half of online browsers only read one to three reviews before making a purchase decision. If your nasty review pops up first, potential clients may stray far from ever wanting to search about your company again. With the help of ORM agencies, you can ensure effective long-term returns as bad reviews will be kept under the water. An online positive reputation creates keen trust and credibility for your customers. If you have a trustworthy brand thanks to your positive trail of reviews, then you’ll see sales slowly but surely skyrocket.

5 Ways Reputation Management is Being Redefined for Small Businesses

Reputation management is a way of controlling the impact and visibility of negative reviews on your small business. When your business is small or just getting started, reviews are important. Negative reviews must be carefully managed so potential customers looking for your business only find the good reviews you want them seeing.
More than ever before, consumers are researching companies before they do business with them. What is the quality of their product or service? How is their customer service? Consumers are searching for information from past customers to learn more about you. According to BrightLocal’s 2017 Local Consumer Review Survey, 97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses and 85% of them trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
You Can’t Avoid Reputation Management
For most small businesses, trying to avoid reputation management leaves them in a bad position. The more your business grows, the more often consumers will be searching online for your business by name. Having poor reviews or even imposter social media accounts ranking on search engines can negatively impact your business’s bottom line and growth.
The goal of reputation management is to become and remain active on social media and produce up to date, high-quality blog content to push any negative reviews off the first page of search engine results and out of view for most consumers. Very few online searches go beyond the first page of search engine results. By controlling the first page of results, you increase the visibility of positive reviews and high-quality blog and social media content.
Below are five reputation management tips you can use to help control what consumers see when they search online for your business.
1. Monitor search engine results. Taking the time to sit down and search for yourself or your business may seem like a waste of time, but knowing what others see when they look for you online is the first step in making sure they only see the positive. Setting up a Google Alert when something is posted online with your business’s keywords or key phrases is a good way to help automate the process.
2. Monitor social media. Just because you only use Facebook or LinkedIn doesn’t mean those are the only social media platforms your potential clients are using. Make sure you are regularly checking the mentions of your business or brand on all major social sites. Utilizing a service such as Hootsuite helps you keep track of mentions and comments of your brand on most major social media platforms.
3. Monitor comments on blogs. Anytime you write an article on your website or contribute to a third-party blog website, you should be monitoring for feedback and comments so you can respond quickly and appropriately. Most major blog platforms allow authors to be automatically notified when a comment is made on that post. This makes it easy for you to stay involved and connect with a larger audience.
4. Monitor major review sites. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways of growing your business. Online reviews, when positive, are extremely effective in turning potential customers into paying customers. Monitoring major review sites such as Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and Angie’s List is critical in maintaining engagement, thanking customers for positive reviews and resolving negative reviews so they can be turned into a positive experience.
5. Create a policy for handling negative reviews. Having a policy in place allows you and your employees to respond in a positive way without becoming emotionally charged. You don’t want to delete the negative comment unless it uses vulgarity or is overly offensive. Respond quickly and empathize with the reviewer. Admit to the mistake and offer to solve their problem via email or over the phone. Finally, ask them to update their negative review with a description of the service they received and the resolution to their problem.
Online reputation management is important to the long-term success and growth of your business. Contact us today to see how we can help simplify the process so you can focus on what you do best.

Reputation Crisis: How it Harms Your Brand’s Search Results

With even a moderate understanding of how vital your online reputation is to your brand’s success, it’s mostly likely true that you have worked and you continue to work very hard in order to establish and maintain a strong online presence. This means running websites, blogs and social media accounts in order to better connect with the public, provide the transparency that is expected and so highly desired, answer questions and solve problems and much more. It is simply unfortunate that the avenues you depend upon in order to build your online reputation are the very same avenues by which you can be caused extensive harm.

Online Reputation Crises and Search Results

There are many ways that an online reputation crisis can occur, but one of the primary ways is through the posted comment or review of a consumer. This review can be entirely true and written by a consumer who did not make their concerns known to you directly, but who has chosen to speak out on social media or review websites. This review can be an error, intended for another brand but accidently posted in relation to your brand. This review can be a complete fabrication, written by an individual who intends to harm your brand for some reason. Regardless of the source of the crisis, however, the fact is that it can rocket one’s brand to the top of search results for all the wrong reasons.

Shocking and sensational news can be incredibly attention-grabbing, which means that individuals will go searching for information about specific situations that are made out to be shocking or sensational. This interest alone can drive bad news, stories and reviews to the top of search results. Media outlets can compound the situation by capitalizing on bad news–further promoting it without even verifying its validity. In fact, one study from ING revealed that nearly half the journalists surveyed openly admitted that they first try to publish news stories as rapidly as possible, and then they will correct the information in the story later if it proves necessary to do so. This means that before you have had a chance to respond to a disgruntled consumer and make things right, rectify a review that was accidentally published against you or disprove a completely false story, media outlets will share it more broadly, allowing it to gain even more momentum in search results. The survey also revealed that many journalists rely on social media as their main source of information, even though the information on social media is far from reliable.

Unfortunately, a negative article written about your brand can take some time to slowly drop in search results. Even if you seek to publish the truth or “your side” of things, the negative article can still remain high in the search results, and your response article lower. References to the negative article, either from the initial publication results or even from articles that are using it as an example of a false, negative article, can cause it to continue ranking high. Public interest in what you have to say about the matter may simply not be as high as public interest in a piece of news that seems scandalous in nature.

Search Reputation Management

Unfortunately, even if you try and work quickly to resolve an online reputation crisis, it can continue to negatively affect your brand’s search results for some time to come. Search engine reputation management is critical to establishing and maintaining a strong, positive search reputation and protecting it against potential reputation crises before they occur. Search engine reputation management will also work to focus consumer attention on positive news and information about your brand, which can further drive down negative search results that would take time to move down slowly on their own.

What is Puffery and Why Could it Be Harming Your Brand’s Reputation

Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of running a successful business is drawing positive consumer attention and creating conversions. One seeks to promote that they are there, that they provide valuable products or services, and that they are a cut above the competition with their online brand reputation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this–in fact it’s essential to one’s success–that is, unless one steps over the line with puffery.

Brand Reputation Management

Reputation management has a lot to do with helping a brand communicate effectively to consumers so that consumers understand the brand and what they have to offer. Unfortunately, it is commonly believed that in order to be successful in attracting positive attention, a brand has to engage in some degree of puffery. This promotional exaggeration of who one truly is or of what one can deliver may seem innocent enough–after all, one is constantly bombarded by advertisements that promise that a certain product or service is “the most amazing in the world” or some such similar thing. It is certainly true that puffery may attract consumer attention. However, it can also harm a brand’s reputation.

Many consumers recognize puffery for what it is: attention-seeking promotional exaggerations that shouldn’t be given much weight. In fact, some large brands use puffery regularly in their marketing, and sometimes even in their slogans. The fact that puffery has been used for a long time and continues to be used liberally today indicates how workable it can be. Unfortunately, it can also lead to both consumer discontent and even legal issues that adversely affect a brand’s reputation.

While puffery is legal, false advertising is decidedly illegal–and there is a very fine line between the two, as some companies have learned quite painfully. For example, in 2014 Red Bull lost a thirteen million dollar class action lawsuit when it was argued that the claim their drink had the ability to improve concentration and reaction was scientifically unprovable. This may be an example of outright false advertising, or it may very well be a case of puffery that simply went too far. The trouble is that for Red Bull, and every other brand, there is actually no clear delineation of what is acceptable puffery and what is puffery gone too far.

One of the main problems that a brand will face when using puffery is that someone may very well be looking for the exact results that the brand claims they can achieve, and is unaware of the fact that they are buying into some degree of puffery. Even if the claim is within the bounds of legal puffery, there is no arguing that the consumer will be disappointed when the brand’s products or services fail to actually deliver those results. One bad review can easily spread like wildfire over the internet, effectively and sometimes even permanently damaging the brand’s reputation. Furthermore, that consumer–and every other consumer he reaches and who believes him–will be unlikely to seriously consider anything the brand has to say in the future, as their credibility has been effectively ruined.
Even where consumers recognize puffery for what it is, a brand’s reputation can still suffer because its advertising has, to some degree, become ineffective. Consumers may be wary about whether other claims or statements made by the brand are actually true, and a quick internet search can provide them with the answers they seek. Or, rather than spending the time to find out they may just go elsewhere.

Since puffery is misleading anyway and there is no telling what sort of legal issues may arise as a result of using puffery, it is better for a brand’s reputation if they just stay away from it altogether.

5 Ways Your Online Reputation is Affecting the Findability of Your Business

Many businesses today have learned that their online reputation is directly related to their income. This is not difficult to understand when you consider how many consumers today will conduct online research before deciding whether to purchase specific products and services and from who. Obviously a business’ online reputation can help to highlight how trustworthy they are, how customer-service oriented they are and what consumers think of their products and services. What may not be as well known is how online reputation affects a business’ findability.

Search Engine Reputation Management

A business’ findability is essentially their visibility to consumers who are looking to buy. Where a business is not findable, it’s safe to say that consumers are largely unaware of their existence and therefore will not buy from them. Business reputation management services can help to improve online reputation and in so doing, improve a findability. Specifically, there are five main ways a business’ online reputation affects their findability:

1. Spreading brand familiarity.
2. Providing information about the physical location.
3. Advertising the business’ products or services.
4. Maintaining a strong online presence.
5. Building positive reputation and community involvement.

There was once a time where the primary things one heard about a business were only those things the business itself promoted. With the introduction of the internet, however, as well as review sites, social networking, blogs and more, consumers have literally limitless options to generate word of mouth about businesses. Unfortunately, while some of this word of mouth is highly complimentary and beneficial to the business’ reputation, some of this word of mouth can be disparaging and even highly damaging to the business. Needless to say, the latter may potentially increase a business’ visibility, but not in a way that is helpful in attracting and securing new consumers. This is why reputation monitoring services are so important, and improving one’s online reputation is critical.

Improving Your Online Reputation

There are many different things that can be done in order to improve an online reputation. One of the most important things a business can do is listen. A business absolutely must know where and how to listen in order to find out how consumers feel about them. Generally speaking, this requires that one monitors social media networks, blogs, review sites and whatever else is necessary to uncover what is being said about them. Complimentary statements should be duly acknowledged and shared, whereas unflattering, derogatory and even downright slanderous statements must be handled carefully. These types of statements can obviously scar or even ruin a business’ online reputation, but an inappropriate response from the business can exacerbate the situation. A business can work hard to obtain scores of honest, positive reviews and increase their SEO to help push down negative and unflattering reviews. They can also focus some time and attention on addressing negative reviews honestly and professionally in an effort to make things right with disgruntled consumers. Finally, they can pursue whatever legal means are available and necessary to remove outright slanderous and false reviews.

A business that works proactively to establish a strong online reputation and protect it from damage is definitely more findable and therefore more successful in achieving their overall business goals. While they may not be able to control what is said about them (though they can certainly encourage their customers to leave honest, positive reviews), they are certainly able to quickly address negative situations. Sometimes they can even turn these negative situations around into positive ones, impressing not only the customer himself, but also dozens or even hundreds of other potential customers.