Don’t Let Your Small Business Crash & Burn Because You Don’t Have a Reputation Management Strategy In Place
“Gone in 60 Seconds” is a movie cult classic, released in 1974, with a popular reboot in 2000 starring an A-list cast. So what does a film about a car thief have to do with reputation management?
One crisis online can wreck your company’s good name. And it’s gone in what seems like sixty seconds. One client misunderstanding posted online can mushroom and affect your business for years to come. If only you had a roadmap to navigate managing your company’s reputation in today’s word of mouth world of online reviews, comments and misinformation.
Now you do.
In this blog post: we’ll tell you what reputation management is, show you what tools you need to protect your brand, and tell you when to call in a professional.
What Is Reputation Management?
Reputation management is the process of monitoring and shaping public opinion about your brand online. The goal is to build your brand’s image while maintaining your good name and reputation. Your strategy is to actively respond to and overcome any public relations pitfalls that make their way in headlines or online.
If you fail to protect your business from negative reviews or misinformation, your business can suffer.
Why Reputation is Important to a Business
Having a proactive reputation management plan and system in place to respond to negative online articles, posts, comments and reviews puts you in the driver’s seat when it comes to protecting your company’s good name.
How Reputation Management Can Help Your Small Business
- Establish Your Brand Image & Maintain It: Today’s digital savvy consumers reportedly read an average of ten reviews before determining a brand or business is trustworthy.
- Rank higher on Google: While seeking out information online, 59% trust search engine results. And, most view only the first four to six non-ad listings on the left hand side of the page. Consider your own browsing habits – how often do you go beyond page one?
- Boost sales: Positive reviews and mentions on platforms like Google or Facebook land more customers in comparison to those with zero reviews and bad online ratings.
No reputation management plan is complete without a proper toolkit necessary to get the job done.
Reputation Management Tools
Keeping track of reputation management can be time consuming. However, there are reputation management tools available that make it easier and faster to keep up.
Some of the most popular today:
Gatherup: This tool tracks what people are saying about your brand online and allows you to respond quickly and effectively via cloud application and centralized keyboard.
Google Alerts: This tool allows you to track mentions of your brand across the web. Your business can receive real-time alerts whenever your brand is mentioned, allowing you to quickly address any negative sentiment.
Mention: This tool also allows businesses to track online mentions of their brand. In addition to providing real-time alerts, Mention also offers analysis and reporting tools to help businesses understand the sentiment around their brand.
Brand24: This tool provides businesses with a real-time view of what is being said about them online. Brand24 also offers sentiment analysis and reporting, as well as competitive intelligence tools.
Reputation.com: This tool provides businesses with a comprehensive suite of reputation management tools, including online review monitoring, social media monitoring, and crisis management.
However, keeping up with the alerts, notifications and serving as the guardian for your business brand can be a job in itself and one often best left to professionals.
Reputation Management Services
When it comes to managing your online reputation, it pays to hire a digital marketing agency. A professional reputation management strategy with a trustworthy firm can help you build your brand and maintain a stellar reputation.
Your online reputation guardian should listen and respond quickly to both positive and negative feedback as well as watch for and respond to inaccurate or false information online about your brand.
You’ve worked hard to build your reputation; it pays to put in place the systems and tools to protect and enhance it.
Look for an agency with experience in crisis communications and handling bad reviews before they become too bad or even permanent damage has been done.
From actively seeking reviews to an ongoing SEO strategy to improve search rankings, a professional digital agency can help get your brand noticed.
The right agency can also boost those efforts along online channels; social media platforms, your company website or blogs, in order to consistently create and publish positive content.
Don’t let one customer service interaction or miscommunication wreck your company and ruin your company’s online reputation. Precision Marketing Partners can put you on the road to success in driving your online reputation.
We are a friendly and affordable soup-to-nuts, turn-key marketing agency. We specialize in helping professional service companies grow. From website design and boosting your Google rankings to creating your print collateral and writing blogs: we do all things marketing.
We’d love to have a conversation with you about great ideas to help grow your business or stay ahead of your competition.
