If you’re ready to take your business or personal website to the next level, it’s time to consider your reputation management online. Whether you’re launching your business, expanding your services, or about to apply for new jobs, people are going to look at your online presence in order to make a decision about whether or not to do business with you. So make sure they see you at your best.
Research Your Online Reputation
Are there old pictures or videos of you online that could be public and compromising? Are there posts you’ve made that should be taken down? Maybe they don’t say anything “bad” so to speak, but they’re from early in your career – when your portfolio didn’t reflect the skills you have now. Maybe they’re unprofessional, contain an error, or have some outdate information that no longer represents you or your brand.
Do you know what people are saying about you, your company, and your products online? Do you know what your reviews and social media comments are like?
Reputation management online involves all of these things – your complete online presence should be evaluated. You never know where someone is going to stumble across you for the first time on the big wide web, so you want to be prepared for whatever they might find.
The first step in this process, is to do the research. Answer these questions and get to know how other people see you when they come across your name – not just on your own site, but on public forums, review pages, and other common platforms.
Scrub Your Online Presence
The first thing to do in reputation management online, after you’ve gathered your information, is to “clean it up.” Like your credit report, certain things are more important to your reputation management than others, so you will need to prioritize.
Professional reputation management companies can handle negative reviews, comments, and other press. By contacting the platform where the review or comment is published, or by reaching out to its author, a professional company can often negotiate to have the negative review removed or challenged.
Increase Your Privacy
An important part of upgrading your online presence is to put it on lockdown. You don’t want to become one of the thousands of companies or brands that gets hacked or is the victim of identity theft online. If someone else can get in and manage your posts or online reputation – or if people outside your “insider circles” are able to share out confidential information – your reputation management can be at risk.
Consider your strategy for security settings. Do you want to schedule different types of content to be seen by different groups of followers? Who on your team will have administrative access to make changes that can affect your reputation management online?
You will want to consider all these things when upgrading your online presence.
Build Your Brand – Post Great Content
The next way to drown out the negative content is to counterbalance it – push it down in the search results by posting newer, fresher, more positive content.
If your company has some amazing public news to celebrate, sing it on high! Talk to your professional reputation management team about putting out press releases and social media posts that engage, educate, and entertain. Consider running an email marketing campaign that gives your most loyal customers an incentive to post a positive review online.
Start an aggressive campaign to get some public buzz going. Then, when someone searches for your name or your company, they will be more likely to turn up something awesome.
Stay Alert! Don’t let it slip.
One of the best reasons to hand the major part of your reputation management to a group of professionals is that they will keep a diligent watch on your reputation so you can get back to business. Although you could set up alerts and monitor your online presence yourself, it’s worth having a team of experienced SEO experts, social media managers, and reputation management online professionals. By building the right strategy, taking the steps to clean up your current reputation, and proactively staying aware when new buzz starts up, all you’ll see online about your company is people singing your praises.
