How to Boost Your Business’s Online Reputation

This article is a guest post by Jamie Saxe, the Director of Business Development at Reputation.com. Jamie is a frequent public speaker on behalf of the company and he has filed multiple patents on privacy and reputation topics. Jamie earned his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University.

Building your company’s online presence and reputation is one of the most important things you can do to improve your bottom line. Today, before consumers buy a product, visit a store or use a service, they search online for reviews, pictures and other people’s experiences. So how do you make sure that everything your potential consumers find online accurately portrays your brand and reflects your business in a good light?

Here are some tips to get you started with boosting your business’s online reputation.

Monitor search results for your business name.

Every once in a while, search your business’s name on Google. Make sure that everything about your brand that pops up on the first three pages of the search results is accurate and positive. If for some reason they’re not, use companies such as Reputation.com to help boost positive search results about your company.

Open all lines of communication.

Make sure that customers can get in contact with you if they have a concern or problem with your product or business – on social media, on forums and on your website. When lines of communication are closed, consumers tend to head towards social media to post about a negative experience, which can impact your business and bottom line.

Review your social media strategy.

Your reputation is not only impacted by your product, but is also impacted by how well you interact with customers online. Companies like Applebees, Urban Outfitters and Papa Johns have recently been slammed by customers for a simple tweet that didn’t resonate with their audience, so explore what consumers want on each platform and create a plan for posting and interacting with customers online.

Ask customers to post positive reviews online.

Have a few customers that are raving fans of your product? Don’t be afraid to ask them to post about their experience with your company online. Also, don’t be afraid to ask customers who wrote mediocre or bad reviews to write a follow up review once you’ve addressed their issue.

Hire someone.

Some companies are short staffed, or simply not able to spend their time actively monitoring their online presence. Companies like Reputation.com were built to help monitor and manage your business’s online reputation, making sure that good content about your company circulates the web and any negative online content is suppressed.