Online Brand and Reputation Management

The internet age has brought on new responsibilities when it comes to brand and reputation management. Information travels lightning fast and just one misstep can reach a wide audience in no time at all. The addition of social networking has added to the velocity of information propagation. Now more than ever it is important for the small business to monitor the internet for their brand. This gives you another opportunity to provide another valuable service that is easy to implement and manage.

Reputation management is an ongoing process that involves the monitoring and research in order to discover feedback, both positive and negative that has to do with a small businesses brand. This process is very important for any business and should not be overlooked. Unfortunately, most businesses do not manage it properly and learn about their feedback after it is too late. This is why it should be part of your service portfolio and will add more value to your overall business.

The first step in online brand and reputation management is monitoring the search engines for mentions of the business, service or product. This might sound like a daunting task, but it can be implemented very easily. The best solution is to setup Google alerts which they define on their homepage as, "Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic." Just head on over to http://www.google.com/alerts where you will be presented with a simple form to create your first alert. The first option is the search term you would like to monitor. It is best to start with the business name.

Next, select the type of search that should be monitored. In most cases this will be "comprehensive" but there may be instances when you only need to monitor search. Then select the frequency you would like alerts to be sent and the amount of results to be sent. Finally, just fill in the email that you would like the alerts to be sent to and that's it! Depending on the frequency, Google will send you a new alert whenever it finds a new occurrence of the search term in its index. Now you will know right away when a business or brand has been mentioned on the web and gives the small business an opportunity to respond.

Next, it is important that the businesses website shows up first in the search engine results page. This can be done with proper SEO and was discussed in a previous lesson. Whenever a potential customer searches for the business or brand, it is important that they see the businesses website rather than a site with negative feedback. A lot of this can be accomplished by creating press releases, social media accounts, and video sites. A broad presence on the internet will help insure that the small businesses website will show up in the search results.

The final step in online brand and reputation management is to make sure the business is present on all the major social networking sites. That way if a complaint or compliment is entered on one of these sites, the business owner can respond. Social networking sites are the place where information travels the fastest. It takes a second for a person to post something and instantly share it with hundreds of friends that in turn share it with hundreds more. This is why it is vital to be able to respond to social networking posts.

Now that you have a better understanding of online brand and reputation management, you can offer this service for you clients. Most likely none of them have even thought about reputation management which will demonstrate to them that you have their best interests in mind. Coming up next we will discuss some more techniques to help your small business clients succeed.