Mike Andrew Consulting

On Line Reputation Management for Small Business

By mike, Oct 09 in blog with 0 comments

Image representing Google Alerts as depicted i...

On Line Reputation Management for Small Business

On Line Reputation Management, four words that as a business owner you should be very very aware of, why? because these four words can ruin your reputation,create negative search engine results and can directly influence whether a consumer does business with you or your company.

Just how could this effect your business? Well let me share with you a story about some friends of mine who recently decided to upgrade their current home and build their own, so they set off and started to research building companies. They visited a number of display homes of several well known national building companies, and became very excited about the prospect of building their own home.

When they got back home that night, deciding to check out the companies on Google, they typed in “complaints about (I’ve removed the names for privacy reasons) company” and what was displayed, were pages and pages of comments and complaints about services or lack of, once the contract had been signed from current clients of these builders.

Needless to say, my friends were influenced not to use either of these companies because of the range of complaints against them.

One interesting point about this that stood out to me, was that neither of these companies had attempted to try and rectify or even respond to these complaints, yet this simple search had just lost them approx $400,000 in business, that was the cost of building the home.

Word of mouth has changed due to the influence of social media and where once a consumer who’d had a negative experience with a company, could only influence their circle of friends at a Sunday get together, today these same people are able to publish their comments to hundreds of thousands of consumers via forum sites and blogs. So word of mouth brand building has changed forever, and if you’re not aware of the impact of this then now’s the time to learn and learn quickly!

There are numerous blog and forum sites active on the Internet, that carry complaints from consumers about all sorts of businesses, and in most cases they end up on Google. Any company that has a transactional business, deals face to face with the public or advertises on the web is vulnerable.

When planning my last holiday, tripadvisor.com became my best friend, and I was influenced to change my hotel choice after reading what other consumers had to say about about their experience with the hotels I’d chosen.

It’s estimated that over 40% of consumers who see a negative search engine result, will not use that company, and I cannot imagine how much business has been lost to companies that feature on these forum sites, and more importantly, they are probably not even aware they’re losing business on the web.

So it’s time for you to set up an On Line Reputation Management strategy for your business today, and you need to Monitor, Manage and Repair when necessary.

Setting up Google alerts is a great start, include keywords that you want to monitor, and once a day Google will send you an email giving you all the information if your name or business is mentioned on the web.

Sites such as trackur.com,serph.com etc will all help you monitor your on line reputation.

My advice to you is start monitoring your brand on line today, you just never know who might be searching you or your business right now.

If you would like more information on how to protect your brand on line, please let me know via this blog and I’ll be happy to assist you in setting up an effective strategy to monitor your on line reputation.

Mike Andrew owns and operates an Internet Marketing Consultancy on the Gold Coast in Queensland

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.