Online Reputation Management: Improving Your Social Media Identity

Getting a good online reputation is like getting good credit ratings. Your ability to make loans, enter ventures or transact business can be affected by how good your credit standing can be. This goes the same with your online reputation. Your credibility with existing or potential customers, partners and supporters would simply go down the drain whenever they land on a page or a site with negative entries about you, your product or services or your brand – whether these entries are true or not.

Among the online channels available to people in this very “connected” world, social media holds the most punch in affecting one’s online reputation. A negative comment, photo or link can go viral before you can even boot up your laptop, and the damage to your online reputation can be extensive enough that it can, and will, affect where it matters most – your revenues.

We have featured several ways here on how a person or a company can protect their social media identity through online reputation management. All these are geared towards improving the online presence of your profession or business. Through online reputation management, you can monitor what others say about you or your company on discussion groups, pages, and profiles. Knowing these entries can make you aware of false or negative entries – all damaging to your online reputation – and give you ample time to react and take action in the proper manner.

Online reputation management to improve your social media identity can also promote positive content or entries about your products, services or brand. This will build trust and confidence from your clients, as well as new and potential customers, which will eventually lead to higher conversion rates, increased customer retention – and increase income.

People Search And How To Control Your Online Reputation

Because the Internet has altered the media, trade, and society, everyone is still adjusting to its impact. Through the way people buy Birthday gifts to how corporations pay bills, the Internet has delivered a considerable number of radical alterations. Nonetheless, at the same time as lots of these changes have been constructive, several have been extremely harmful. Even as it might appear useful to be able to search for citizens online, the equivalent can be extremely dangerous. A few of these harmful changes like scambook.com, ripoffreport.com or tripadvisor.com have required specific shielding tactics such as reputation management.

Reputation management is essential when somebody, or several people, are producing (or have produced) harmful remarks about you or your company on the World wide web. Online reputation management, or ORM, will allow you to examine and study a person’s reputation across all sorts of online media. This latest business has become a necessity in with the purpose of organizations and individuals are confronting the reality that there is an overwhelming amount of information on the World wide web. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo develop into doorways for people to hear all sorts of rumors regarding you, or for individuals to see boards where unknown individuals bash others.

Reputation management can help you in the long term, and a regular concentration on keeping an eye on your reputation is definitely a very good thing. If you’re a consumer, you should take note of your credit score, and if you’re a business or firm you must always police what individuals are saying in relation to you.

Sustaining an unquestionable reputation on the internet is why reputation management is very important to corporations that may be being written about online. With a competent reputation management company looking after your internet credibility, you won’t have to worry about constantly scanning several numerous appraisal websites to ensure no one is posting fake or negative opinions about your organization. Reputation management organizations can work out a method which facilitates your customers to post their fine experiences online, while simultaneously ensuring that harmful testimonials or opinions from competitors are viewed by a few people as possible. This is especially vital for online businesses that do a large amount of their business online that may not have a lot, or any, physical foot traffic who you’re able to talk to concerning their grievances with your store.

What CyberVision Can Fix?

Clearly, CyberVision cannot remove websites from other servers, and solving problems can take time, however, CyberVision can assist taking care of:

• Bad product critiques
• Complaints
• Abusive Forum remarks
• Anti-corporate blogs
• How Reputation Management Works

As a rule reputation management services work by tracking what’s written about a client on the Web and responding by doing SEO (search engine optimization) which promotes constructive pages. They also can create additional websites that will push the negative suggestions off of the 1st page or two of search results. It’s essentially and sophisticated, technological type of public relations.

Reputation Management Evolution

Prior to now, if a business, or person, had bad press, they’d have to spend 1000's, and sometimes millions, or charity events, speaking engagements and so forth. With the Worldwide web though, it’s actually somewhat faster and easier as well as somewhat cheaper to try to erase the disapproving remarks being propagated by one or more individuals. The bottom line is to perform it in such a way that it isn’t apparent. That’s why obtaining a qualified reputation management firm like CyberVision working for you is a vital part of the process.

Samples of Reputation Management Scenarios

CyberVision works for small and large companies. A small corporation customer might consist of pet stores targeted by animal rights activists, stockbrokers linked to decades-old SEC violations or local politicians with a fifteen-year-old DUI indict. Getting this kind of information removed is near unachievable, although flooding the Net with positive information is far faster and easier and the information is usually easily manipulated to produce nothing but optimistic reports on Google or Yahoo.

Why is web-based reputation management key?

It delivers internet marketing stability, protects against unchecked slander, moreover most importantly, enables a company or individual to “put its best appearance forward” in the online world.

Laws Of Online Reputation Management

We all have an online reputation to maintain. If you don’t believe us, go ahead and “Google Yourself”– We promise you won’t go blind! Even if you don’t find anything written about you, then that’s still your reputation–or lack thereof. 

In 2011, you should make sure that what’s found in Google, Facebook, Twitter et al is something you’d be equally comfortable showing your mother, friends or your boss! And the recent SuperInjunctions have shown there are a lot of stories out there. You don’t have to be one of them.

Law #1 – Your reputation is an extension of your character

It doesn’t matter how hard you work on managing your reputation, it will only ever be as solid as your actual character. Tiger Woods had a reputation of being the greatest golfer–and a family man. 

His character revealed otherwise. As Abraham Lincoln once said,

“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Law #2 – Every reputation has an Achilles heel

While Toyota may have spent years telling us that its cars are the most reliable in the world, sticking gas pedals told a different story. In fact, even though Toyota tried to deny the increasing incidents of sticking accelerators, its customers were the ones steering the car manufacturer’s reputation in another direction. Instead of denying the issue, Toyota should have been the first to recognize it! When you recognize and acknowledge your weaknesses, before your customers, you have the opportunity to craft a response to the public outcry. Do you know your reputation’s weakness?

Law #3 – Listen twice, act once

It’s too easy to simply jump in and reply to that tweet or Facebook post–without fixing the underlying problem. Instead, you should spend time actively listening to the feedback you’re collecting about your reputation. Listen for trends. Listen for opportunities. Listen, listen, listen–ok, that was three listens, but you get the point. 

When you actually take onboard what your stakeholders are saying about your reputation, you do more than just fix a problem, you make sure you fix the underlying issue that created the problem in the first place! GAP’s customers weren’t so much angry that the company’s logo was changed, they were mad that the company hadn’t initially thought to listen to their feedback–a decision the apparel company quickly reversed!

Law #4 – A crowd is louder than a solitary voice

Reputation at Google at some point every company realizes the power of the crowd. You’ve heard of “crowdsourcing” right? It called “crowd voicing.” Simply put, your reputation is going to be far greater shaped by a crowd of opinions than one single voice. Your choice in 2011 is to determine whether you want that crowd to be a choir or a lynch mob? By being proactive, by loving and nurturing your online community, you can build a harmony of satisfied customers–all willing to say great things about you. Alternatively, you can ignore your customers and wait until they become so angry, so disgusted by your actions, that they rise up against you. Just ask P&G which it would have preferred in hindsight!

Law #5 – If you build it, they will come

It’s 2011, do you know where your customers are? Have you built them a thriving Facebook community? Can they receive customer service via Twitter? Do you have a blog that keeps them updated on all the changes with your products? If you build an official, company supported social network, then your customers will know exactly where to head, should they have a question or complaint. Ensure you remove your name from Google.

Law #6 – If you don’t build it, they will

If you decide not to embrace your reputation stakeholders, then you run a huge risk that they’ll create their own community. Not so bad, if you happen to have a strong reputation–Apple gets by with no official social media effort. But, it’s generally not a good idea to stick your head in the sand and ignore those that want to share their experiences with you. If your customer wants to complain about your abusive customer service reps they may well head to Facebook or Yelp. If you don’t have an official presence then you are leaving these dissatisfied customers to define your reputation for you! Resolve to discover where your customers like to “hang out” and then make sure you’re hanging with them!

Law #7 – Your reputation WILL come under attack

No matter how hard you try, your reputation will someday come under attack. It happened to us–and we are the number one reputation management consultants! In fact, Oxford Metrica warns that during the next five years, 83 percent of companies will face a crisis that will negatively impact its share price by 20 to 30 percent. I’m pretty sure BP didn’t think such a crisis could happen to it–and that’s a lot of profit at stake!

Law #8 – Being stubborn is more expensive than saying “sorry”

United Airlines, what in the world were you thinking? Seriously! It would have cost you $1,200 to, but instead, you refused to take responsibility. Two music videos and 10 million views later, you ended up with a tarnished reputation and apologized anyway. Don’t make the same mistake as United. When you receive a complaint from a customer, look beyond your pride. Look beyond the immediate expense of making the customer happy. Instead, ask yourself, what’s the worst case scenario here? What’s the lifetime value of this customer–value that would be lost. How could this hurt future sales, new customer acquisition, and your reputation? I’m pretty sure United Airlines wishes it could go back in time and cough-up the $1,200.

Law #8 – Three strikes and you’re out

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third time and you may as well kiss your reputation goodbye. The law here is that most customers will forgive you the first time you screw-up. Some will forgive you a second time it happens. Get to the third screw-up and yerrrrr out! Seriously, how many times has Comcast come under fire? A gazillion? I’ve lost track, but it’s gotten so bad that the company is now undergoing a massive re-branding–arguably due to its negative reputation. Companies rarely re-brand when they have a great reputation! When you make a mistake, make sure you learn from it, tell your customers you have learned from it, and make sure you never repeat it!

Are you concerned about your Online Reputation ? Please click here for a free name audit to help you.