Online reputation management
The increasing popularity of consumer websites and social networking, including blogs, discussion forums and community websites like Facebook or Twitter, has meant that more opinions and comments are appearing online which may be damaging to a business. Whether or not the comments are truthful, it can often be difficult to counter this information and, for example, if these sites appear prominently within search engine results for a company or brand name search, they may reflect negatively on a business.
Reputation management describes the activities undertaken by a company to defend their business name or brand against potentially negative information appearing about them on the web. For many companies, this is now becoming a serious consideration and an important part of their online PR or marketing strategy.
There are 2 main strands to online reputation management. Firstly, a business needs to monitor what is being published online that refers to their company or brand name/s. Secondly, if there is information being published which could be damaging to their business, then the appropriate action needs to be taken.
The way that a company may respond to a blog posting or a consumer comment in a discussion forum will determine how successfully the issue will be resolved. On many occasions, companies have appeared to bully or threaten individuals in a way that simply escalates the problem and creates more negative publicity.
Therefore the level of response needs to be appropriate to the problem and to remain factual to counter any negative comments. There are responses that can be implemented without direct recourse to the poster of the original information and a strategy can be developed to counter negative information online and to support positive content.
Managing effective reputation management
Web Marketing Workshop UK offers a number of different services to manage your online reputation. We can monitor the information being posted online about your business and brand and supply you with reports and an assessment of the potential issues that may arise from such information.
We will then work with you to develop and implement a reputation management strategy, so that the negative impact of any potentially damaging content will be minimised as quickly as possible using a range of techniques.
If you would like to discuss how online reputation management will work for your business, please contact us now for more information or you can request our FREE website marketing assessment.