How to protect your brand’s reputation online

These days, the first thing you do before you meet a person or seek a company for a job or when looking out for a vendor is Google them. As a company, you want your brand to look good in the eyes of people who are reaching out to you. Your company’s online presence matters a lot because of this. It affects everything from getting a contract to hiring someone. No one wants to be associated with a brand that has poor ratings. In a dog eat dog world, it is imperative that you have a fantastic social standing to optimise your success. It is a given that disgruntled ex-employees or competitors might try to tarnish the reputation of your brand through unscrupulous means. So what do we do to tackle this?

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Actively monitor your brand

Google your brand name daily and look for areas where there needs to be a course correction. Respond to your customers, especially the ones who have a negative experience to share. If there are questions that need response, take the time to answer them. If there are inaccurate stories floating around about the company, explain why it is wrong and proclaim your stance on it. Set up a Google Alert for your brand. Everytime someone mentions about your brand, you will get a notification.

Have an updated website

There is nothing more embarrassing than finding ‘lorem ipsum’ text on your website when it is open to the public. Remember that your website is the first place they go to when scouting for information about you. Make sure that the contact information, landing page, product description, and other details are up to date. Writing about your employees along with their pictures humanises your company, try it out unless you are working on a top secret project in partnership with the government. Add awards and recognitions. Showcase your company blog as well – it is a medium for the company to talk to its potential customers, employees, and vendors.

Worry about social shares

SEO is important, but there has been so much change of late that massive kickass content with a lot of social shares will trump the power of SEO any day. If you write great content that is shared by everybody, you do not have to worry about the keywords. Your content should get a lot of shares on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and other such platforms for it to rank higher and create an impact. If there are any negative reviews, it will get shoved down when your content gains the upper hand in the fight between the two.

Use online tools

There are lots of online tools available that helps manage your online reputation. You might want to use some of these. One of these is Naymz, a tool that helps track and manage your social media influence. Another is Hootsuite, which allows you to manage all of your social media networks in one place, while Reputology provides analytics for customer service management and sends emails about negative customer experiences.

Establish yourself as an authority

Again, the only way to achieve this is by offering content that will show your expertise. Conduct interviews of eminent personalities in the industry for your blog, request them to write on your blog, get published on news portals, and send out press releases every time there is a new feature added. The more the number of places you have your company published, the more credible you will look and the faster it will help reach a following. Your company can also conduct conferences in association with clubs relevant to you, sponsor an event, or spend on charity. All of this will increase the goodwill of the company too.

By following the above methods, it becomes incredibly easy to manage your reputation online. It is not always about ranking number one on Google or any other search engine, it is being able to provide the best information that people want. Before you spend a lot of dollars on managing online reputation, make sure you follow the steps that we have outlined above.