Keeping a good reputation is vital to businesses and business owners alike. If customers look you up and see negative reviews or scandals at the top of search engine pages, you could be damaging your potential for new business. While it’s not always possible to influence what people say about your company, there are multiple ways you can monitor your company’s reputation online.
Wikipedia Monitoring
The first place you should be monitoring is your company’s Wikipedia page. While the cliche of school teachers telling their students not to trust Wikipedia has become a bit of a joke nowadays, the general public relies on the site for information. When you search for a topic or business, one of the first sites that pops up will be Wikipedia. If someone looks for you or your company in a general informational search, there’s a good chance they’ll click on the Wikipedia link for unbiased, factual knowledge.
Because Wikipedia is such a trusted source, ensuring your page is both up-to-date and positively written is crucial to your business’s online reputation. While the editors for the site will prevent false information from being posted to your page, you can employ editors and marketers to keep your entry stocked with accurate, yet positive, information. Sure, keeping your page filled out is an investment, but the ROI Wikipedia entries can be immense.
Yelp and Google Reviews
The second place you want to monitor your business’s online reputation is on review sites. There are two main places customers will leave your company reviews for other potential visitors- Yelp and Google Reviews.
As a business owner, you get to create an account on both of these sites and get insight into what folks are saying about your services. If something went wrong on a particular day, chances are, you’ll see it reflected in your reviews. While you can’t edit or remove these reviews, fake or libelous ones will be removed by the site itself.
When it comes to monitoring your company name, keeping tabs on Yelp and Google Reviews is crucial. Although you may have an account on these review sites to leave comments under positive reviews, taking the negative ones into account will help you as well. Even if potential customers see a couple of poor assessments on your record, seeing you handle them with grace and tact will leave a positive impression in their minds.
Social Media Activity
The third place you want to monitor your company’s name is on social media. While it’s an incredibly powerful marketing tool, social media can also help you keep an eye on your business’s reputation. Sites like Twitter and Instagram allow you to search your business name or the hashtags you use to promote your products. If clients are talking about you, even if you aren’t tagged in the posts, you’ll be able to check up on the details.
Similarly to Yelp and Google Reviews, you may not be able to remove negative posts, but you can respond to them in a positive way. For many disgruntled customers, a well-thought-out response from the business owner or customer service team will make them quickly forget any inconvenience.
When you’re active on social media, you get a first look at these client reviews, whether they’re positive or negative. From there, you can make changes to your business or marketing strategies to meet customer needs. Even if you don’t directly respond to every piece of feedback you receive, putting out blanket statements saying you see the comments and are acting on them will help protect your image. Your clients should know that you’re active and listening.
Overall, monitoring your company’s reputation online should be a vital part of your PR tasks. With the world firmly in a digital era, you need to know how you present online, just like you evaluate your word-of-mouth reputation. By keeping an eye on these three sectors, you can have a good idea of what clients see when they look for your company.