The reputation of a business is essential to its survival. In the time of social media, reputational risk is the most important of those facing organizations. Are you managing this risk properly on the Web?
Internet, online reputation accelerator
Reputation has been a major challenge for businesses since time immemorial. Today, it has never been easier for someone to share their discontent. A simple message on social networks, consumer review sites, discussion forums or blogs, can quickly become a critical situation for a business. The uncontrollable nature of this phenomenon makes its management very complex.
“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”
– Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon
The speed of information dissemination on the Web thus forces businesses to set up a constant monitoring of their online reputation. We must react in time and know how to defuse bad buzz.
React to a bad buzz
You have to respond quickly but take the time to think of an appropriate response. You can do your mea culpa, take a step back or find a way to turn a bad buzz to your favour. Self-deprecation, humour and sarcasm are sometimes the most effective methods.
Follow your online reputation
There are many free tools to measure and track your online reputation like Social-Searcher to name one. Most of these free tools can generate RSS feeds that you can add to your feed aggregator, like Feedly for example. You can also create multiple Google Alerts on the keywords associated with your company name (or brand) and subscribe to the RSS feeds for those alerts. This will provide you with a real-time monitoring platform for your online reputation.
For many companies, it is sometimes vital to set up a professional solution. The use of a specialized agency is often essential. It will be necessary to put in place a more exhaustive watch system to be aware of all that is said about you. In addition, developing a strategy to respond to negative information about you will be crucial. Of course, setting up a professional platform can be very expensive.
However, there are effective and more accessible professional solutions that offer you a set of services to manage your online reputation. Among others, Sindup and Mention which will allow you to be autonomous for an affordable monthly cost.
If you have any questions or comments, let us know by contacting us. We would love to hear your feedback.
