Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

The introduction of social media has changed the way businesses communicate with their consumers. It has also changed they way consumers talk about the businesses they use. In many cases this opens up a great relationship between company and consumer. But with the good comes the bad and there are cases where social media becomes an outlet for consumers to voice their frustrations and share negative experiences.

Online brand management is key for all businesses. Just because your business doesn't have any social media profiles and isn't implementing a social media marketing plan does not mean your consumers are talking about you in those outlets.

1. The first step to managing your online reputation is to incorporate a monitoring system. The internet is larger and more complex than is even imaginable. This makes the idea of monitoring your online brand manually nearly impossible. Thankfully there have been several products introduced that will monitor your brand for you.

There are a lot of monitoring systems to choose from. Some such as Google and Yahoo Alerts! will email you when someone mentions your brand online. They also allow you to set up searches for keywords surrounding your brand. Another option such as Hootsuite lets you manage your own social media profiles by pushing out messages on multiple profiles at once and scheduling messages in advance. Hootsuite also shows you the mentions being made about your brand online. WSI offers a program called ReachCast that manages your social media, blog posts and content copy as well as monitoring all mentions of your brand.

These platforms offer different benefits so do your research and find the one that best meets your needs. Once you choose a monitoring system it's important to allot ample time to monitoring what the platform finds for you.

2. The second step is to analyze what the monitoring system prepares for you.

How do you anticipate the feedback (negative or positive) will be received by your audience? Does it necessitate a response?

If you use your monitoring system to seek out negative feedback and then simply delete the negative comments you aren't actually using the information to benefit your brand or your business. Someone who has posted their negative comments is giving you the opportunity to make things right. Responding to the comment and letting the person know that you heard what they had to say and are working to fix the issue will go a long way. Even if you can retain the business of the person who commented you may satisfy the concerns of others who read the comment.

3. The last step in this process is to influence your audience.

Choose the right social media outlets for your business. Facebook and Twitter are the most popular but that does not guarantee they will be the right fit for your business.

When you receive a negative comment in your social media page, spin it into a positive one by responding with a solution. Even if you can't fix it right away let them know you're working on it. This will go a long way with your followers.

Keeping current on industry trends and participating in online discussions surrounding your service or product will help to influence your social community. Start an industry blog to share your knowledge and opinions. This will also reinforce your credibility as an industry expert.

Use your monitoring system to do good things and improve your position with your clients and your industry peers. If you are ready to implement a monitoring system consider learning more about WSI's ReachCast and contact a WSI consultant today.

Facebook boasts over 400 million users and 50% of those active users will log into Facebook on any day. While logged in they are updating their status daily and uploading over 3 billion photos every month. Users are sharing links, blog posts, articles and more, over 5 billion weekly. Each month 3.5 million events are created and 1.5 million local businesses have active Facebook pages.

Despite statistics like these many business owners are nervous about what an active Facebook page will do for the brand reputation of their company. People will be able to come to their Facebook page and share an experience of terrible service or a negative review. This negative feedback can be very unnerving for a business owner.

It's true that not all businesses are a good fit for Facebook. You will want to determine that it's an effective way of reaching your target audience. If you do decide Facebook is a good fit for you then potential negativity is no reason to stay away. As a matter of fact there is nothing stopping a disgruntled consumer to start a page on Facebook simply to talk about how lousy your customer service is. Or to post negative comments on their own page. There really is no stopping a disgruntled customer from sharing their opinion. What Facebook will give you is a clear line of communication between yourself and your audience as well as a platform to defend yourself where appropriate. You can upload customer photos, share customer feedback and use your page to improve your customer service.

Don't think of how Facebook can hurt your company, think of how it can help your business grow. You'll soon see that the benefits far out weigh the negatives.