Tweet

Why Online Reputation Management is an Important Part of Your Online Marketing Strategy

Guest post by: Wendy Suto

Article Overview: Maintaining your online reputation is very important in the day and age of the Internet. Being prepared for a crisis, negative reviews, or negative PR is one of the most important ways to protect your online reputation.

Why Online Reputation Management is an Important Part of Your Online Marketing Strategy

With the global connectivity of the Internet, rarely anything a company does goes unnoticed. Managing your online reputation is obviously important - you don't want customers or other businesses to see you in a negative light. But are you covering all your bases? Aside from maintaining a great website that is easy to navigate, looks good, and has good content, with Web 2.0 you now may have to maintain a Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account, as well as deal with bad reviews on other websites. With so much to take into consideration, how can you manage it all?

Be Prepared

The most important aspect of managing your online reputation is being prepared. If you're prepared to handle negative situations that are inevitable to arise, dealing with these issues will be much easier and less costly in the long run. With the speed that news is spread over the internet, negative publicity can pop up seemingly without warning.

A Lesson Learned from BP

Your company may not be as globally recognized as BP, but there is much to be learned from their oil spill crisis and how they dealt with it. While you and your business (hopefully) will never have to deal with a crisis on such a large scale, there may come a time when you have some issue to deal with that could mean disaster if not handled properly.

BP made a mistake early on by attempting to underplay the impact of the spill. After much ridicule and negative press, BP tried to fix their reputation through various social media, including their Facebook page, Twitter account, and Flickr photostream. Since they weren't prepared, the effort made to clean up the bad publicity cost the company a lot of time and money, and may have still been too little, too late. After all, how many of us currently have a positive opinion of BP?

How to Prepare for Dealing with a Crisis or Negative PR

One of the most time consuming steps is to establish trust and credibility. If your company has a good reputation for being ethical, reliable, and responsible, then when a crisis arises, people will be more likely to listen to your side of the story.

Equally important is setting up a crisis team, who will be in charge of cleaning up any negative PR. This team should include an online media spokesperson, who will act as the voice of your company on your social media sites, blogs, and anywhere else online PR is required. Your team should also include advisors whom you can consult with before reacting to a crisis or bad reviews.

While negative press could pop up with lightning speed, your reaction to it shouldn't be so hasty. Taking time to consult with others, and carefully think out your response can save a lot of headaches and having to deal with more bad publicity.

Dealing with Negative Reviews

For instance, some business owners might be angered by a bad review, and want to strike back. While we'd like to think that most people can hold their temper and act in a professional manner when dealing with business issues, this isn't always the case. The best way to respond to a negative review is to apologize to the person for their bad experience and defend your business in a calm, respectful, and professional manner. Don't attack the reviewer or call them a liar. If they happen to say something about your company that isn't true, simply clear up the misconception by explaining the truth. An angry or disrespectful response will only make you and your company look worse than the negative review itself.

Once your crisis or PR team is in place, you can have them search the Internet for any bad press or reviews, and handle each one with grace. This will make your company look more professional and will show that you care about your customers and the experiences they have with your company. Interacting with customers online, even disgruntled ones, can help build your reputation as a compassionate and professional company.

If your company is too small to have its one crisis or PR team, make sure the person you put in charge of online reputation management is someone who is capable of handling these situations in a courteous and professional manner. Hiring an SEO firm or public relations professional can also be a good way to manage your online reputation. After all, you've put a lot of time in building your business, and your online marketing strategy. You don't want to throw away all your hard work over one crisis or a bad piece of PR.

Related Articles
  On-line Reputation Management For Your Small Business
  Online business: Build a reputation
  Book Review: Web Marketing For Dummies
  Why Personal Branding Is Essential Online
  What Is Personal Branding?
  What is Reputation Management?
  What is Online Reputation Management
  How to Guarantee Success With the Right Internet Marketing Strategy! ~SUCCESS SECRET EXPOSED
  Manage Your Online Reputation - 7 Simple Steps
  Do you have Employee Policies to protect your online reputation?
  Reputation Management: How to Avoid Online Identity Theft
  How Do You Find Legitimate Online Home Based Income Opportunities
  The Growing Importance of Personal PR within Business
  Reputation Management
  Managing Your Online Reputation
  The Secrets of Social Network Marketing and Why Marketers Should Use It
  Online Damage Control: How to Stay on Top of Reputation Management
  Personal Branding for Better Visibility
  Do You Have a Reputation?
  Write and Publish as your Online Marketing Strategies

Article Tags: online marketing strategies, online marketing strategy, search circus, seo firm



Related Forum Posts
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks
Re: Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - [quote:31qpen1j]This is just my opinion, but I consider the prospective categories, Online Marketing, Internet Marketing and Online Promotion, as being pretty much one and the same - just different words that different people use.[/quote:31qpen1j] I completely agree! Those are all just "internet marketing" as far as I am concerned. And I normally would have voted for internet marketing, however I chose social media marketing simply because there are more than enough IM forums out there already.
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - [quote="BuzzAroundBooks":p78047w2]Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".[/quote:p78047w2] Okay - I have a request -- can the title be changed to "Online Marketing"? The reason I'm asking is because people may not know what social media marketing is , while that would make me vote for it to learn more, but not every thinks like that. Also, online marketing could capture more attention when people spot in on the list. Shri
Re: Let’s talk about the ways of marketing your products, servic - I agree with some of the others who responded it depends on what your selling... but to answer your questions here are some of the methods I use. Forum Marketing Yahoo Answers (I need to use more of) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Bum Marketing or Article marketing P-P-C (Pay Per Click) Marketing Online Directories Hope this helps.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

4 Steps To Hypnotize Your Business Prospects

Living on The Edge of Chaos...

The OLD Way of Advertising, May Not be so OLD

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.