The fundamentals of managing an online reputation should be the basic knowledge of every entrepreneur. Everybody from the CEO to the sales team to the customer support team must now be involved in reputation management.
For entrepreneurs launching a new company, the answer to when they should begin making online reputation management a priority is before the company is even launched. From the beginning of planning a new brand, steps must be taken to choose a name and message that has an easy path to being able to control the top 10 search results on every search engine.
If negative content does pop up online about your brand, there are strategies to help mitigate this and it is where online reputation management saves the day. The key to repairing damage to an online reputation is to aggressively publish new content about your company, including socially infused content such as reviews and testimonials to regain control of the top 10 results for your brand on search engines. However, it is also important to remember that although the impact of negative content can be mitigated, it will never disappear. So whenever possible, measures should be taken to prevent negative content before it publishes.
Not only do you need to pay attention to managing the online reputation of your brand, but you also need to have reputation management strategies in place for key executives at your company. Having a clean online reputation for all of the key executives in a company is critical. The first step to doing this is to make sure each executive has a dedicated bio page on your company website which then ranks in the top search results for that executive’s name. Next, it is key to get media coverage about that executive whenever possible.
There is nothing wrong with bringing in an expert to help build or repair an online reputation when needed. What customers see when they search your business name or executives’ names is often the first impression they get of your business and it will stick with them forever. One of the best investments you can make is into your own reputation. Oftentimes, publishing large volumes of content online isn’t enough in complicated reputation management situations.
Online reputation management has lots of moving parts. Not only do you need to aggressively create high quality content, which is where PR and content marketing will serve you really well. But then you need to rely heavily on the intricacies of search engine optimization to make sure that your newly created content is doing what it’s supposed to do and controlling the top 10 spots in search results for your company.
Managing how your company communicates with the public through social media platforms as well as how other users are talking about your company on social media is vital to a positive online presence. Otherwise, social media can become a serious liability. Remember earlier that we talked about how users look for social infused content about your company. Social media is the prime place for them to find it; good, bad or otherwise.