Managing Your Online Reputation
1. Monitor Your Buzz – By using either a professional service, or Google Alerts, monitor your name, your business name, various keywords and variations on each. By doing this you can catch what is being said about you, both the good and the bad. Promote the good, and answer to, if needed, the bad.
2. Use Privacy Settings – Most social media networks will offer privacy settings that you can use to control some aspects of what gets out to the world. But it is important to know that if you say it, share it, or comment on it anyplace on the net — whether on social media, a discussion board, or a blog post – it can be seen by the public if the right search has been conducted. Remember, you are never anonymous on the Internet.
3. Monitor Photo Tags – Be aware that on Facebook, other people can tag you in photos without your permission if you do not set up your privacy settings correctly. This can be a problem especially when a well meaning friend uses the tagging function as a way to get you to look at the picture which might be completely off-brand and even in bad taste. It might just be a simple picture of you off work drinking the super bowl of margaritas on your birthday that causes the issue. While in some cases, you may not care who sees the picture, in other situations, you may not want it public. What you want people to see depends on what image you’re trying to promote.
4. Think Twice – Before you post something whether it’s just a quote, a picture, a comment, or an entire blog post think twice about it if it’s controversial. Stories abound of people who made an innocent comment on Twitter then became the top trending topic over night, and not in a good way. If you wouldn’t say it or share it openly, perhaps you might not want to say it or share it, at all.
5. Build your Brand – Keep building your brand through positive comments, articles, blog posts, press releases, and proactive sharing that matches the image you are trying to project for your business. The more positive content you have out there on the web, the more likely anything that is negative will be buried.
6. Stay Active – Today it is so easy to automate a lot of social media, that we could technically ignore social media for weeks without anyone being the wiser about our absence. We’re sharing blog posts, Tweets, and new articles automatically, but are we active enough in our online presence to share other people’s good news?
7. Ask For Reviews – You should not only ask clients and customers for reviews, you should also make sure to promote those good reviews in all channels. By promoting the good reviews that you get, you’ll put a lot of good news into the search results for anyone searching for you.
8. Be Mindful Of Your SEO – Search Engine Optimization is more important than ever. As the old ways of getting search engine attention go by the wayside, new ways come to the forefront. Ensure that you keep abreast of changes so that you can keep your search engine optimization working for you.
9. Google Yourself – First, you will want to remove the personalization from the search in order to get the right results. Learn how to phrase your searches properly so that you can find out what people really see when they search for you, your business, products and / or services.
Just remember, there are ways of taking care of your good name online. If you follow the suggestions above, you will have a better chance of keeping your reputation in order and will be able to react faster if problems arise.
If you find you don’t have the time to take care of this important aspect, we offer Online Reputation Management Services so you can take care of running your business.