Once your business is online and especially if you have a presence on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+), people are likely to talk about your business. It’s great if everything said is positive, although there will inevitably be negative comments related to your company’s brand.
As a small business owner, you probably don’t have the resources to hire someone to handle online reputation management, and it probably isn’t necessary. Although spending some time every day, or once a week, doing your own online reputation management can be beneficial to your business and something to consider.
Positive mentions should be publicized, retweeted, linked to, or displayed on a news page, as this will help build an online brand identity. Negative mentions, especially on popular websites or blogs, can have a negative impact on your company’s brand online, so be sure to deal with them effectively.
Reach out to the commenter and rectify the situation to the best of your ability, or use SEO techniques to minimize and counter any negative effects it may have on your business. Here are some tools to help you do your own online reputation management for your small business.
Free tools to make your own ORM
Google Alerts – Google Alerts is a free service from Google related to the search queries you specify. Whenever new content matching your search query is indexed, Google will notify you by email. It would be a good idea to set up alerts for your company name, as well as key figures within your company. Competitor related search queries would also be good to help get an idea of the popularity of other businesses in your market segment. More information at http://www.google.com/alerts
Social Notice – Social Mention is a search engine that will find mentions across multiple platforms for a term you specify. Give it a try using your business brand or website address and you’ll be surprised how often your business appears. It is a useful tool to add mentions from various sources quickly. Learn more at http://www.socialmention.com
Twitter Search – Although it’s a part of Twitter and often overlooked, it’s important to use Twitter Search to find mentions about your business for ORMs. Software like TweetDeck allows you to save searches, which makes it easy to quickly find new mentions and reduces repetitive searches. Monitter.com provides a free online tool with similar functionality.
yahoo! blowjobs – For more advanced users Yahoo! offers a service called Pipes that allows you to aggregate content from all over the Internet. This will take a bit more time than the tools mentioned above, although if you are an advanced user it may save you time in the long run.
There are many other tools out there and finding the ones you are comfortable with can take a while. Devoting a portion of your work week to online reputation management is important in online marketing for your business. Once you are successfully monitoring and managing your business brand online, it will positively affect your business and improve search result rankings.
ORM is also a good way to identify how internet users view your business and allows you to influence this for the best of your business.
