When you start a new business, your company’s reputation is like the immaculate snow at the top of a gorgeous mountain – it’s all smooth and glistening and free from all speck and dust.
Unless you continuously monitor the top of your mountain regularly – and have safety procedures in place relatively early – you run the risk of losing your cleanliness fast. And, once it’s gone, your business reputation is hard to restore.
Unless you take prompt steps to repair the negative comments it would grow like a Frankenstein Monster. You have to fight fire with fire.
Reach out to as many existing happy customers as possible and ask each one of them to write about their positive experiences about your company. Many of these customers – satisfied with your product/services – will respond to your request, posting their positive reviews on the site where the negative feedback had originally surfaced.
The end result will be the onslaught of positive reviews appearing at the top of the thread will successfully push the negative reviews the lower pages of search results and out of sight. Seldom will a reader scroll quite a way through the deep list.
A reactive strike may work, but you are certainly better off being proactive in your push for positive online play.
It is better you take the initiative to craft your way the world is going to view your company (or product) than to sit back and hope the positive reviews come rolling in.
Sadly, the internet allows any spiteful individual to launch an attack and throw an unflattering light on you and your business. The surge of social media is partly responsible for the fact that online reputation management (ORM) is now a frontline industry. There are hundreds of professional ORM agencies devoted to monitoring, repairing, improving, and policing the reputations of individuals and businesses.
If you build reputation management into your business plan, you can avoid the hassle and cost of reacting to a negative campaign. Building a positive online reputation is critical for your business to survive and thrive.
Go to Google and other major search engines to research your company. When others head to the search engines to check you out, you should to do all you can to make sure the majority of what they find is positive and flattering in nature.
Search Google for your business name (and your name) and check out the first-page results and ensure nothing adverse appears.
If the results are somewhat negative, it’s time to get reactive and start working to fix the damage. Create Google Alerts for your company, products, and top executives.
Create social profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Create a public relations strategy and implement it faithfully.