Online reputation management is extremely important. It’s the practice of monitoring the reputation of a person, brand, or company on the Internet. People tend to think that online reputation management begins when a company develops a bad online reputation. However, this is where most people are mistaken. Online reputation management should really be a part of a company’s Internet marketing strategy from the get-go. Online reputation management is not only for businesses that are responding to a problem and want to contain negative content by outweighing it with positive content. Online reputation management is also for businesses that are just starting out and want to develop a good strategy and for established businesses that want to maintain a good reputation.
The form of online reputation management that comes to mind most often is reactive. Reactive online reputation management happens when a company has a negative reputation online and has begun to lose money and customers and has a hard time growing. The best way to avoid this scenario, besides having a good and respectable business model, is to engage in the other form of online reputation management: proactive online reputation management.
Proactive online reputation management strategies are essentially brand image building campaigns online. It’s important to have a large amount of content online that displays a company in a positive light. The content can range from engaging blog posts and articles that portray the company as a knowledgeable industry expert, press releases that are distributed whenever the company is involved in anything newsworthy, and social media networking. A company that is willing to take the time to engage with its target audience on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Yelp will be viewed positively. Once a decent amount of good content has been generated, the company will have an overall positive image online and in the search engines. It’s best to engage in these image building tactics early. Therefore, in case there ever is anything negative said about a company online (warranted or not), it won’t be the only thing out there besides the company website. There will already be a lot of good content that will outweigh anything negative.
In a way, proactive online reputation management works as a search engine optimization link building campaign. Not only are the press releases, articles, blog posts, and social media updates building a positive brand image and creating awareness, they are also helping to build quality links pointing back to a website. So, in that sense proactive online reputation management is good for two reasons. It establishes a positive reputation online as a legitimate company and creates trust amongst a target audience, but it also creates trust amongst the search engines. While building a reputation a company is also able to boost its search engine results page ranking.
About the Author:
Brick Marketing is a full service search engine marketing and search engine optimization company in Boston, MA that offers proactive online reputation management services. For more information please call 781-999-1222.
The best way to avoid this scenario, besides having a good and respectable business model, is to engage in the other form of online reputation management: proactive online reputation management.