How to Proactively Manage Your Company Reputation in the Search Engines
Determine the cause of the negative posts and feedback.
Learn from and correct the problem that caused the feedback.
Proactively manage your reputation management in the search engines so that the impact of negative posts in the future is lessened.
As they say in sports, often the best defense is a good offense. It’s a cliché, but it endures because it still rings true today. Here are some easy steps that you can take to manage your company’s reputation in the search engines:
Determine Your Current Reputation – Search for your company’s name using the major search engines to see what’s being said about your firm on blogs and forums throughout the Internet.
Consult with an Internet Marketing Professional – By consulting with an Internet marketing expert, you’ll gain invaluable insight into reputation management as well as get an insider’s perspective on how to correct or turn negatives into opportunities for improvement.
Subscribe to Google Alerts – Google has a service called Google Alerts which allows you to post both positive and negative keywords and phrases for the service to monitor. When someone posts something using those terms, Google Alerts can send you an email with results for the terms that you have chosen. This allows you to find the items quickly and easily in real time.
Use Social Marketing to your Advantage – There are a number of social marketing strategies that you can use to your advantage, such as starting your own blog with optimized keywords and keyphrases, updating your website with fresh content and taking part in the blogs and forums where the negative posts appeared. Ask your Internet marketing consultant for more options.
Subscribe to Online Services – There are a variety of inexpensive services on the Web which will scan the blogosphere for your company’s name and provide reports on both positive and negative blog and forum posts.
Contact Blog and Site Administrators – It’s a long shot but it never hurts to contact blog and site administrators directly and ask them politely to remove the negative posts. Depending on your approach and their disposition, they may or may not remove the posts, but you’ll likely gain some insight into how these online communities work and how to use that to your advantage.
Be Proactive with Press Releases – Compose and issue press releases on a regular basis to announce new products and services and important events to keep plenty of fresh and positive content about your company on the Internet.
These are just a few of the many ways that you can proactively manage your online reputation with the search engines and the wider online community. For more options and thorough explanations of these approaches, contact your Internet marketing consultant and remember that a large percentage of people use Internet research to inform their purchasing decisions. Proactively managing your company’s online reputation directly affects your bottom line.