Efficient Reputation Management Strategies For Small Business

Online reputation management is an integral part of modern business operations. When consumers want to find out about your business, where do they head? Probably to Google, Facebook or Twitter. If they find even a single complaint, this will have a negative impact on your business reputation with that particular consumer, who will then pass along that unflattering information to their friends and family. As a small business owner, it can be difficult to stay on top of maintaining your online reputation without a severe impact to your resource management processes. Unfortunately, there are far less tools available at price points that small business owners can afford. Fortunately, you can just use these online reputation management strategies below to maintain your online reputation free of charge.

Establish Online Presence

Establish an online presence for business by creating accounts and listings on all relevant venues. Without an online presence, there is no reputation to manage. Make sure you have accounts on all the top social media platforms. You should also take time to create listings for the Yahoo business directory, Google’s business listings and even the Whitepages directory. This way, you are in control of the information consumers are getting about your business. This is a fundamental element of managing online reputation, so be sure to take care of this first.

Don’t Forget Personal Accounts

Do not forget to monitor the reputation of your personal accounts as well. Your account, as business owner, means almost as much to your business as your actual business profiles. You can build up your online presence and maintain your personal reputation online as a means of strengthening those same things for your business. This will help improve business reputation online, because it shows customers just how involved with your business you are. It proves that you care about customer opinions and outcomes, which is great news for business. In addition, it can also help you protect yourself and your business from cybercrime. If you want to use reputation management best practices, maintain your personal accounts as if they were your business accounts.

Stay Active

Stay active on social media. This is the absolute best way to manage reputation online for business. If you are proactive, you will be able to prevent problems before they arise. You will also be in a better position to address customer complaints quickly, which will improve customer satisfaction with your business. Make sure to log into your accounts at least once a day to see what mentions and replies you have waiting in your notifications. You may also want to schedule tweets or Facebook posts in advance to ensure that you keep up with your accounts, even on your busiest days. Staying active on social media is one of the most important online reputation management tips for you to enact right away.

Reply To Complaints

Be sure to reply to customer complaints in a quick, courteous manner. Do not attempt to solve problems with just 140 characters on Twitter or in the comments section of one of your Facebook posts. Ask the customer in question to send you a direct message with their phone and email so that you can reach out personally to rectify the issue. This may be difficult to keep up with in busy seasons. However, it will be worth it. Customer complaints can do a number on your business’s online reputation. Make sure you plan to respond to these online complaints with your reputation management strategy.

Use Google Alerts

Sign up for Google Alerts about your small business. Google Alerts can help your business stay on top of reputation management processes.It sends you an email every time your business gets mentioned online. Google Alerts does not alert about social media mentions of your brand. But, it is still a useful tool to stay in the know about what industry blogs or local blogs and websites are saying about your business. This way, you can reach out to the parties involved to correct mistakes or thank them for the promotion. Google Alerts are of the best, if not the only, 100% free reputation management tools online. Take advantage of them to develop a strong online reputation management strategy.

If you are a small business owner, you are probably worried about how to navigate online reputation management strategies without having to pay an arm and a leg for reputation management tools and social media monitoring solutions. Hopefully, this post has eased your fears a bit. You do not need a small business coach to help you learn how to tackle this time-consuming task. Instead, use the online reputation management tips mentioned above to develop a reputation management strategy that anticipates problems before they occur. This way, you can benefit from a positive brand image online and increased brand awareness. Let us know how these tips work out for you and your business’s online reputation below.

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