What shows up in Google when someone searches for your company’s name? Or better yet, when someone searches for your own name? More and more, we turn to the Internet for answers. I recently heard a story of a guy who, while being interviewed, was Googled by the interviewer only to expose an embarrassing profile page on one of the popular social networks. Whether this event prevented him from getting the job is hard to say. It certainly didn’t help, though.
It’s becoming more and more important for businesses to monitor their reputation these days. Consumers regularly use Google and a number of consumer review sites to evaluate companies, products and people before interacting with them. A single bad review online could mean a lot of lost business and the cause often go unnoticed.
For most major brands, there is at least one angry-consumer website dedicated to making life difficult. For example:
* dontuseuhaul.com ranks #6 for the term uhaul
* walmartwatch.com ranks #6 for the term walmart
Additionally, several consumer watch-out websites provide a means for consumers to speak out:
* Scam.com
Additionally, there are several industry-specific only communities where customers and potential customers talk back and forth and offer each other advice.
Don’t kid yourself. Every company, no matter how good or bad, has unhappy customers. Most of these customers, to some degree, will take their complaints to the web. The key is finding and responding to these complaints.
Tools used for monitoring online reputation – The following tools are useful is identifying instances where your reputation may be at stake.
* Google Alerts – When you setup a Google Alert for a keyword phrase, Google will send you an email each time it finds that keyword phrase. Setup an alert for your brand name and variations of in “quotes”. You may have to tweak the terms based on the results you get back.
* Google Custom Search – With Google Custom Search, you can easily setup your own search engine that searches only a select group of sites. So, if Google Alerts was returning too many erroneous results, try setting a custom search engine which looks for your brand name only on sites where your customers may be making comments, such as industry forums and online communities.
* Technorati – Technorati is one of the top blog search engines out there. While it’s a little hard to get clean results, Technorati is great for uncovering mentions of your brand name in the blogosphere.
Depending on how generic your brand name is, how strong it is, and how many people know about and use it, the best tools for monitoring your reputation will vary. Once you’re able to setup a good monitoring program, the benefits will outweigh the time investment.
What’s a business to do when negative comments are posted?
First off, any business with a customer-focus should take every negative comment found as an opportunity to improve. The best approach for any business to take is to respond in a professional manner to any negative comments with an aim to turn unhappy customers into happy ones, where doing so requires a reasonable amount of effort.
For example, let’s say a customer of yours has posted a negative comment about you on scam.com. You could start by posting back in the forum and attempt to prove the customer wrong. Or, you could respond to the issues by reaching out to the unhappy customer. By showing readers of the forum that you’re making an effort to resolve the issue will usually make you look better. Arguing with a customer can make you look like the big bad business that you don’t want to be. Consumers expect a reasonable effort to be made. Remember that there will always be customers that you cannot please.
Keeping an eye and responding to things that your customers say about you will not only help improve your image, but will also help you improve your business. Ignoring the issues won’t make them go away.
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