One aspect of online marketing consulting that is very important and has a huge impact on whether your business can grow profitably: reputation management.
It's essential in today's world - whether you acknowledge it or not, your customers and prospects are talking about you.
You can do all the advertising and marketing you want, if people are looking for info on your business and they find a bunch of negative feedback, they're unlikely to buy from you.
There are three steps to your basic reputation management:
• Receive
• Respond
• Re-build
Receive
The first step is for you to receive the feedback, and a huge part of this is awareness. Yes, some feedback my land in your email inbox, but most of it is going to be posted on forums, social media channels and review platforms.
Of course there are many complex ways and software to monitor your reputation, but you can also use some simple and free systems that you can set up today to monitor what people are saying about you online
You've probably heard of Google Alerts by now. It's an automatic monitoring service that sends you a daily or weekly email about your alert topics. This should include your business name, the business owner's name, product and model names, and anything else that you think should me monitored closely.
Another great alert software is Twilert - which specifically sends you alerts from Twitter. Monitoring conversations, topics and hashtags (# Tweeter's way of having an ongoing conversation with others even though it is limited to 140 characters) Twilerts are especially important if your target audiences uses social media - it doesn't matter whether you have a Twitter account or not.
Respond
The next step is to respond to any type of feedback or comment that involves your company - whether it is possible or negative. In many cases, online reviews and comments of a product or service are a way of expressing feedback that was not heard or acknowledged in the store.
The timing of your response policy depends on your monitoring mechanisms and capacity to respond using the same online channels as your users. With established policies specifying response time somewhere between several hours and several days, your company should really respond within a week.
In many cases, negative feedback online can be turned into a positive by making customers feel heard and let them know that you are working hard to solve their problem. Often it's not the problem itself but how you deal with it that makes an impression on your customers and prospects.
Rebuild
If there is unwelcome material about you or your business online that is unsolicited, you may want to approach a lawyer for legal advice on how to handle the situation.
In terms of rebuilding your image, a PR specialist, or an expert in internet marketing can help you to add some of your own positive material to the online feedback. Spreading some of your glowing customer testimonials, and engaging customers with your brand can help you to re-build the relationships with your customers and the perception of your brand more quickly than you ever imagined.
For more information on online marketing consulting, reputation management and SEO, including our monthly internet marketing newsletter and the free whitepaper "How To Generate More Leads, Attract More Customers and Make More Profit With Internet Marketing" visit http://www.eminentonlinemarketing.com.au.
By Janna Jungclaus
It's essential in today's world - whether you acknowledge it or not, your customers and prospects are talking about you.
You can do all the advertising and marketing you want, if people are looking for info on your business and they find a bunch of negative feedback, they're unlikely to buy from you.
There are three steps to your basic reputation management:
• Receive
• Respond
• Re-build
Receive
The first step is for you to receive the feedback, and a huge part of this is awareness. Yes, some feedback my land in your email inbox, but most of it is going to be posted on forums, social media channels and review platforms.
Of course there are many complex ways and software to monitor your reputation, but you can also use some simple and free systems that you can set up today to monitor what people are saying about you online
You've probably heard of Google Alerts by now. It's an automatic monitoring service that sends you a daily or weekly email about your alert topics. This should include your business name, the business owner's name, product and model names, and anything else that you think should me monitored closely.
Another great alert software is Twilert - which specifically sends you alerts from Twitter. Monitoring conversations, topics and hashtags (# Tweeter's way of having an ongoing conversation with others even though it is limited to 140 characters) Twilerts are especially important if your target audiences uses social media - it doesn't matter whether you have a Twitter account or not.
Respond
The next step is to respond to any type of feedback or comment that involves your company - whether it is possible or negative. In many cases, online reviews and comments of a product or service are a way of expressing feedback that was not heard or acknowledged in the store.
The timing of your response policy depends on your monitoring mechanisms and capacity to respond using the same online channels as your users. With established policies specifying response time somewhere between several hours and several days, your company should really respond within a week.
In many cases, negative feedback online can be turned into a positive by making customers feel heard and let them know that you are working hard to solve their problem. Often it's not the problem itself but how you deal with it that makes an impression on your customers and prospects.
Rebuild
If there is unwelcome material about you or your business online that is unsolicited, you may want to approach a lawyer for legal advice on how to handle the situation.
In terms of rebuilding your image, a PR specialist, or an expert in internet marketing can help you to add some of your own positive material to the online feedback. Spreading some of your glowing customer testimonials, and engaging customers with your brand can help you to re-build the relationships with your customers and the perception of your brand more quickly than you ever imagined.
For more information on online marketing consulting, reputation management and SEO, including our monthly internet marketing newsletter and the free whitepaper "How To Generate More Leads, Attract More Customers and Make More Profit With Internet Marketing" visit http://www.eminentonlinemarketing.com.au.
By Janna Jungclaus
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