When I get bored I Google myself.
Are you like me? and do the same?
If you have never Googled yourself or your company’s brand – now is the time to do it.
See what you find.
If all is well – then no problem.
What if you find negative reviews about your brand or unpleasant things about you.
1. Claim your social profiles.
It is an absolute first step.
Chances are that already have a Facebook page and a Twitter handle (profile).
Add – a LinkedIn company page, Pinterest presence and RebelMouse account in your company’s name.
2. Make sure you have a good product.
If you have a good product and competition has written negative reviews about it – then it can be handled.
But if your product is not good – then it is a tough call.
You see, digital medium is a good amplifier – more so with the power of social media. So anything good or bad can go far. Bad news seems to travel even faster.
To avoid that from happening, it helps if people like your product.
If you do not a solid product yet – listen to feedback and make your product better.
If you are launching a half-baked product – which is what many lean startups do then tell your customers so, and assign alpha or beta stage to the product.
Google had a beta sign on gmail for long after it was launched.
3. Make sure that you are listening.
Listening is important.
There are variety of social dashboards and services like Google alerts – that you can set to get updates – about the mention of your brand.
Google Alerts
It is an easy way to know what’s being said about you.
Sign up for Google Alerts and save a new alert after creating it. You can set alert for your company name and various brands/products your company.
Once you set it up, you will receive automatic emails from Google with the links where your company/brand name is mentioned.
Social Listening Tools
You can go for a comprehensive tool like Radian6 or something like Social Mention.
Innovation
You can go a step ahead and do something like – Our food. Your questions by McDonald’s Canada is doing. You can learn more about this interesting efforts in Jay Baer’s Lessons From the Best Example of Content Marketing.
4. What to do if you see negative updates.
If someone has posted comments about you then you can respond to that comments – do not reply as an anonymous poster but as an official representative of the company. The person responding should also write her name.
If you see any comment is in bad taste and provides false information – then you can reach out to owner (of a small site) or moderator (if site is large) and ask for the comment to be removed – add links/documents to support your case.
5. Be prolific in your content creation efforts.
Write new blog posts, post to your social media profiles on a regular basis. Frequents updated profiles and websites and indexed more.
This way – your branded profiles will be the first to show up in search results – when somebody searches for your brand on the web.
When you publish quality content – that adds to the lives of your customers then they respect and trust you brand more.
Negative reviews that are already there will not go away – but they will not show up on first few pages of search results.
about you or your business. It may take some time but ultimately you’ll be able to get through.
6. Be careful while publishing information about your brand.
Prevention is better than cure.
Do not create hype – if you can’t back up what you say.
Be consistent
Update all your company profile with consistent logos, images and text.
Create a social media policy if you represent a large company.
Here are some more social media policy examples.
This policy should be the model code of conduct for each of the company’s representative.
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Hope this helps in creating a solid online reputation management process for your company.
More thoughts and questions, please share in comments.