Sep 17, 2013 | 3 minute read

Monitoring Your Online Reputation

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By: Ginny H.

Managing your online reputation has become more important than ever. With the increasing popularity of websites like Yelp, PissedConsumer and ReviewBank, consumers have more opportunities than ever to review your brand online. Do you know what they are saying about you?

If you’re like most business owners, you are fairly reactive about your reputation management. You wait until you see a problem and then figure out how to fix it. Very few businesses fall into the proactive category; those who are actively monitoring and working on their brand’s reputation.

If you want to have a better idea of how to monitor and manage your online reputation, consider these tips:

• Stay on top of your brand with reputation monitoring. While keeping an eye on what consumers say about you on Facebook or Twitter can be relative easy (if not time consuming), finding out what is being said on the thousands of blogs and websites is infinitely more difficult. A quality brand management and reputation monitoring program provides an efficient way for you to view all mentions of your business in one convenient location.
• Ask for feedback. Most companies just wait for consumers to reach out to them. Be the company that reaches out to the consumer. Provide a convenient location on your website for consumers to leave feedback. This will likely create goodwill and could prevent negative comments from ending up on public forums.
• Build an internal team. Whoever is going to handle your brand/reputation management internally needs to develop a strong working relationship with your customer service team. They need to be sure they are presenting the same solutions and messages to consumers contacting your business.
• Accept what you can’t control. Accept that you can’t control everything that will be posted about you. Understand that negative postings will happen and it’s best not to try to take them down. This creates questions in the consumer’s mind about your credibility. Better to address them quickly and try to resolve any issues.
• Be quick and offer solutions. As we stated above, don’t try to remove negative reviews. Work with the consumer to understand what went wrong and find a mutually agreeable solution. Do it quickly so the consumer understands you are concerned. Don’t ever let a complaint go unanswered!
• Ask for a second review. After you’ve helped your unhappy customer, ask them to post a follow-up review. If you’ve done your job they should have nothing but good things to say about how quickly you responded and how you fixed the problem. You can turn that unhappy consumer into one of your best customers.

While monitoring your brand can be time consuming, it is essential work that cannot be neglected. You must keep your brand healthy and having a realistic idea of what is being posted on the web about your brand is essential to your brand’s health. Take the time to listen to consumers, to respond to their concerns and your brand’s reputation will remain healthy.

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