6 essential steps to build a strong online reputation

Anyone considering doing business with your company will log onto Google or any other major search engine and research you, your company and its key executives. What they come across on the search engines will eventually determine whether you converted that lead or whether you lost that potential client due to the negative comments and an overall negative perception of you, your company and your executives.

Social media, fortunately or unfortunately, offers almost everybody an opportunity to publish their opinions online. This means that those who hold grudge against your company can malign your company’s reputation online and those attacks – warranted or not- will feature on search engines

So, how does a company manage its online reputation?

In order to be successful in online reputation management, the key is to use various online content portals to spread the (positive) word out. While you can’t eliminate the negative statements about your company, you can certainly mitigate the effects of negative reviews by posting the positive ones.

1. Corporate Website

This is the most essential step. If your business does not already have an online presence, then, without more ado, create a corporate website. This landing spot will perpetually be the very first place your potential customers will go to check your product or service offerings. Your information sheet / brochure should be aimed to put across a promising face on your company. Some elements that should be included are:

• Notable Executive Bios
• Case Studies
• Testimonials
• Social responsibility (if your company has donated for significant social causes)

2. Micro-sites

It is essential to create satellite landing pages that are specific to your company’s service/product offerings. This in turn will lead to more sites featuring your business’s name and more places for major search engines to discover your business. Businesses could also create micro sites for social causes, upcoming events or for promoting new offerings

3. Corporate Blog

Having a blog would furnish you with an opportunity to convey your story in the most optimistic way. It gives you an opportunity to put a “positive face” on your business.

• Post about new product / service offerings
• Flog success stories
• Broadcast special and upcoming deals
• Post about your company’s recent developments

More significantly, the blog will habitually show up as a secondary result beneath your main website on major search engine result pages.

4. Presence on social media

Your profiles on popular social media websites are not only searchable, but often rank very high on major search engines. Always encourage your potential customers and clients to follow you on these social media venues. This is yet another cost effective medium to tout all positive news about your company

Use these profiles astutely. Efficient usage of social media websites could develop your brand, draw leads, and even lead to direct sales. Abuse of these profiles could ruthlessly damage your band and your brand’s integrity and reputation.

If your company’s executives have private social media profiles, then you should have rules and policies with regards to the content to be posted on them. Snapshots of key executives drunk or posting of offensive statements made by executives on that site, would hamper the brand’s credibility.

5. Build your reputation as an Expert

Entrepreneurs most definitely have proficient expertise that they can share with others. One could do this by:

• Corporate Blogging (and then look out for industry websites that might link to your blog)
• Blog Commenting (Identify blogs that swathe areas of your expertise. Add your comments, your insight, your perception, your knowledge)
• Become an expert on an industry website (websites are always starving for consequential content)

6. Online Press releases

Tout all the positive news about your business to the world. Success stories, new product lines, charity efforts… they are all worth endorsing. Unlike conventional and customary press releases that just go to chief news outlets, online press releases go out to the internet cosmos and are pulled out both by search engines and also by online news aggregator sites.

Conclusion

When it comes to your online reputation, it pays to be both cautious and pro-active. Even if your brand image has never been assaulted online, it makes sense to build a vast network of encouraging posts about your business. By inundating the Internet with these encouraging reviews, any negative messages can be lost or at least well hidden.