Easy Calvin, That's My Brand…
Is your good name at stake?
In today’s online world, a company’s reputation can be ruined easier than any time in history. The reach of an everyday consumer’s bad experience has never been larger; the growth of blogs and websites like Ripoff Report has given consumers the ability to reach thousands with their review of you. It most cases, it’s a good thing that consumer’s now have a voice, but in some cases that voice can wrongly damage your name…can you afford not-to-know when someone is talking about you?
Regardless of how hard you try, you can’t make everyone happy…
Every week I stumble upon a web page aimed at convincing consumers that a certain agent or home builder is terrible at what they do. Regardless of whether or not the claims made by some are true, their existence in search results is evidence that your reputation is at stake. How many sales have you lost from blemishes on your reputation? How much of what they are saying is true?
Not everything consumers are saying is bad…
A few months ago, I found a review of a friend’s business that was an incredible endorsement from a large client – the “testimonial” was more than a year old and my friend never knew it existed. I bet that testimonial, from one of his largest clients, would have made a nice addition to his testimonial page. Do you know what products and services your clients like the most, and why?
No one mentions me…
Not everyone is lucky enough to have a client willing to go the extra mile and endorse their products, or unlucky enough to have missed something important enough to ruin a consumer’s experience. Some businesses just don’t get mentioned, but what if you knew what it took to get mentioned by an excited customer or what services your competitors offered that people love…wouldn’t this be priceless?
Two easy ways to manage your reputation…
I'm Free
Google Alerts is a free service that sends you emails when the topics you want to monitor appear in Google results. You can set up alerts for your name, your business, your competitor, services you offer – you can manage anything you want. You can choose a comprehensive search or sort it by publication type and you can choose to receive alerts as they happen, daily, or weekly. It’s a great starting point for any business.
Try Me Free For 14-Days
Trackur is a reputation management tool similar to what you’d get if Google Alerts took steroids. You get everything Google Alerts provides as well as easy to understand graphs so you can analyze data, and tons of filters making it easier for you to determine what’s important, and what’s not. In addition, Trackur typically finds more alerts than Google Alerts because Google usually doesn’t show you duplicate alerts of the same content – Trackur makes it easier for you to manage the impact of your public relations campaigns by showing you when those duplicate alerts occur. Packages start at a measly $18/month, it works out to about $.60 per day…what does building your brand cost? You can try Trackur free for 14-days.
Online reputation management is a necessity for small, medium and large businesses. What are you doing to find opportunities to protect or enhance your brand?
Feel free to mention any other services you find useful.
You made some good points. We have a wesbite for which several contributors (all experts in theri field) write content for. Still we pay a lot of attention to make sure our site owner is only credited for conetnt he himself has created. We dont want any of it coming back to haunt him later. regarding google alerts if you have a very common name its useful to create a very specific nick name to include in submissions that way your alerts are more targeted.
Nice post – I’ve never thought about my online reputation but as we grow I imagine I’ll find it more and more useful. That 14-day trial seems like a good way to see if I’d find any use in it.
I agree with the first comment. With a name like John Edwards setting up a alert would do me no good. I like the idea of coming up with a nick name or something.
Johns last blog post..Baltimore Real Estate
I have read so many times how important it is to build trust and build yourself almost into a brand.
There’s another one called visibletechnologies
I use to work for them a while back, but they charge 100k+/year
I really like your blog friend. I like how you write and express through your post…
Negative press about your name or your company really hits your hard especially when you’re applying for a job or closing a deal on a client.
.-= John Tapan@Online Reputation Management´s last blog ..How To Remove Negative Publicity Or Press From Google =-.