“A good reputation is more valuable than money” wrote Publilius Syrus in the 1st Century BC, little realizing how true the maxim is today, especially on the net. Individuals and businesses alike, now have to be concerned about their online reputation, and monitor it, to sustain their public image. A bad online reputation can be devastating. Online reputations are more potent than word-of-mouth criticism or praise. Today’s net savvy population relies heavily on the internet to make financial transactions, shopping decisions, or travel plans, and hence depends heavily on online commendations. Thus it is imperative for every business and individual to monitor their online reputation.
You need to begin by monitoring what your customers and others are saying about you. You can take the aid of free or paid web applications that can help you by notifying you every time you are mentioned on any social networking site. Tools like Google Alerts, Tweet Beep, Kurrently, Monitor This, Social Mention, are just a few that will alert you on a separate feed, or on email, every time you are mentioned online, whether on FaceBook, Twitter, or any search engine.
There are custom tailored tools available too, that will rank those mentions. Online mentions about your business can be both structured and unstructured, and while the structured ones often come with their own rankings, the unstructured ones could be random. The unstructured ones can be more damaging, if negative, because often negative criticism (especially if combined with an emotive appeal) can spiral into something larger; hence, the importance of monitoring online reputation and managing it.
By monitoring your online reputation, you will be able to address all negative criticism timely and aptly, whether by apologizing, or offering incentives; thereby improving your customer service. Positive feedbacks, on the other hand, are excellent publicity tools, as you can publish those in different social media and broaden your reach.
Guarding your online reputation is as important as guarding your offline reputation. After all your business rivals and competitors could do as much damage to you online as they could do offline — and that too without you having a clue about it! As an entrepreneur/professional you would not have time to check out what all your rivals are saying about you on the internet. At the same time you would need an expert who would manage to identify negative publicity about you and take immediate as well as effective measures to counter it. For this you would need internet specialists – who would know how to locate and counter negative publicity about you in the virtual arena. So how do we monitor your online reputation and manage negative publicity? Here are few of our strategies…