Online reputation management
Online Reputation management is a growing field affecting all businesses and individuals with an online presence. Everyone with an online presence should at least be aware of it. The massive growth in review sites, such as TripAdvisor www.tripadvisor.com, LouderVoice www.loudervoice.com, Yelp www.yelp.com, means that no matter how big or small your business is, everyone can publish a comment, a review, a status update to vent their frustrations at poor products or bad customer service. This could possibly tarnish your reputation. And the worst bit? This can all be ongoing without you even knowing it! These conversations about your product could also be happening on www.Boards.ie, www.Facebook.com or www.Twitter.com. So how do you keep an eye on all these sites to see who is talking, and what they are saying?
The best thing to do is take some preemptive steps. Bring the comments you you.
1. Open a twitter account, connect with your customers. A good example is http://twitter.com/vodafoneireland, check them out if you are a Vodafone customer.
2. Setup a Fan page on Facebook. Once again bring your customers to you, if people have an issue they will most likely post it here where you will be able to deal with it, almost immediately. Take a look at “The Secret Garden”
3. Setup a Blog on your website and leave the blog open for comments.
You can also Sign up for Google and Yahoo email alerts using your desired keywords (http://alerts.yahoo.com/ and www.google.com/alerts). Your keywords are your name or your company name. There is nothing stopping you looking to see whats being said about your competitors either!
Determine what message boards/forums to track. www.Boards.ie is the main one in Ireland. Setup an account and see what people are saying.
Next month we will look at replying to Computer Generated Content.
image attributed to http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxypar4/
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