The 5 Steps Needed For Putting Online Reputation Management into Action

Are you wondering about how to improve on self-values or your enterprise levels in the virtual world? Looking to form a few action steps to get them into action? Check this article to know more about online reputation management and start planning your success steps. Why Do You Need Online Reputation Management? Gone are the days when life was as simple as having only food, clothing and shelter. Neither are the days of waiting for the news until the next day when the newspaper comes in, or the radio cracks its voice at low frequency to give us the updates about what is happening in the world. The world is a smaller place to live. Connecting with friends and relatives, clients and vendors are way too easy than what was a decade or two back. Whether it is your first client, or first start-up or first business, people will search first and easily find out some basic information about what you are and what you do. People can see photos, links that related to you through traditional search engines, social media pages and business sites. That tells us that your first date or first client would have already vanished into thin air if you are not presented well in the virtual world. Keeping your profile clean and of good repute, is popularly known as Online Reputation Management. It helps to present you better, personality wise and helps people to understand self/enterprise even before the first meet. Below are the first five steps that should be taken to build and manage a better online reputation. Step 1: Search Yourself Online Search Engines are a better way to find out what is being mentioned about you. Search by using the most basic type of words that would represent yourself or your enterprise. Try and see the content that comes up with such keywords. Look out for what kind of search results come up with them. Are they some irrelevant search results or is it what you really want to find out. Make a note of all the search results on the first two to three pages in the search engine web page. On an ideal note, there should be results about the official website, social media web pages, tweets and mentions about the enterprise or individual. The search engine pages should also be able to bring up a few related images. If you notice that there are irrelevant search results, then think of writing some articles around the searched words. Consider buying websites that correspond to your search words and book them so that you can safeguard them from being misused and also for future purposes. Step 2: Check Your Reviews There are many websites on the web (and including social media sites like Facebook), where detailed reviews are written. These reviews can either give you more page views/Likes/Mentions or can bring in a big dent in your online “personality.” If you notice such negative reviews, you land up with mostly two options. Either get the negative review removed or build up content on the review which will be in favour with you. The first option is nearly impossible. The second option is viable and in fact, gives a very positive vibe amongst end users. Step 3: Remove Copies of Your Content A demon in disguise, copying of self-written content by content farms and other websites can endanger your reputation under the label of copied content. Fortunately, search engines are becoming smarter and can filter out copied content pages and keep the original ones on the first result page. Check for filing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices across Search Engines and with webmasters of the site where the content is copied. This will help to maintain the authenticity of your content and reduce chances of diminishing the importance of your website and its content. Step 4: Follow Analytics Online tools like Google Analytics are free to use, and a continuous study of the statistics helps to understand which page are gets more views and which do not. Tweaking, working on down pulling reviews, and handling negative content should contribute to improving the page’s reputation. But how much has it helps, which are the existing weak areas and how to make the same in a more returnable customer, is the need of the hour. Another class of Analytics is related to sentiments. Like, Dislike, Wow, Angry, Surprise, Laugh, Cry are all emoticons that you get to notice on a social media page. And the tracking of them could let you know what emotion people are expressing for the related content, and thus your reputation. Step 5: Invest in Online Tools Online reputation with social media was quite simple ten years back. We had only one or two sites which were under the heading of social media. But now there are many. It has become quite a challenging task to go on to each site and check the reviews and write-ups. There are many apps and social media aggregator sites which help to focus on many sites in one go. Certain apps like Reputology, Mention and Google Analytics assist in reputation management simple and ease tasks and improve your Unique Value Proposition (UVP).

Tags: digital marketing, online reputation management, search engines,