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.

First off let’s start with the obvious, what exactly is online reputation management. I feel like everyone is talking about reputation management, but very few are explaining what this is. Online reputation management involves managing reviews, mentions, conversations about your company, across many different websites. It requires active involvement on sites like Yelp, Google Hotpot, CitySearch, Angies List, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. Really its about protecting your business or personal reputation online and not leaving it up to your consumers and clients to determine your overall online reputation for you.

Keep in mind that in todays online marketing environment, it's often difficult to stand out from your competitors. And if you are in a volume business, negative reviews are most likely going to happen at some point. Even if you are not in a business that has lots of customers, one bad review can cause your prospects to hesitate to do business with you even before they even get a chance to read one word on your website.

Lets lay out exactly what NOT to do in regards to online reputation management in 4 easy steps

1) Ignore Negative Reviews – ignoring negative reviews on some of the top review sites is a great way to drive away potential business. Your prospects are going to find reviews about your company, and if you have not responded to those reviews, it looks like you don’t care about your customers.

2) Fight Back – fight fire with fire! If someone leaves you a negative review, another great way to drive away business is to be negative back. Tell the customer that they are the one that was wrong and to stop complaining, get a life, go away, find something better to do, etc . Responding back negatively is a sure fire way to lose even more prospects and customers.

3) Your Web Site is the Only Site That is Important to Your Business – continue to ignore review sites like Yelp, and Google Hotpot and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Don’t claim your Google Places page or your Yelp page, Bing Local…etc etc These sites are just fads and will eventually go away and will just amount to a big waste of time for your business or marketing team. Your web site is the only site that people will go to when searching for keywords related to your business or when looking for more information about your business. Don’t worry about establishing a web presence across multiple web sites, that’s too much work and will never help you acquire more customers or manage your reputation.

4) Don’t Look at Analytics – continue to ignore all the great built in analytics data that exists on your YouTube Channel, Google Places page, Facebook Fan Page Insights data, Google Analytics, and Twitter. Knowing where your customers are coming from won’t help you adjust your marketing strategies, or tailor your products and services to what your customers actually want. Also, you won’t need to know exactly who your customers are (Men, Women, Age, Income, etc) as that will have little value to your business.

As you can see, the above 4 steps will certainly help you drive away more customers and continue to sour your brand and reputation online. If that is what you are looking to do, then follow those 4 steps for success (if that’s the type of success you want). Online reputation management can be a lot of work if you don’t have the right tools and strategies in place. Logging into 20 or 30 different accounts can be a daunting process and not monitoring or engaging on the right websites can leave you with little impact.  

I don’t want to make this blog into a sales pitch, but every once in a while I find as solution that will make people’s lives much easier and allow them to grow their business substantially. Take a look at WSI ReachCast which can manage the entire online reputation management process for you in one easy to use platform.