More than 70% of internet users research brands or products online before buying them. Given this, it goes without saying that online reputation management is one of the cornerstones of our brand or eCommerce.
As users, we all know that a negative comment weighs far more than a positive one; in other words, it takes ten positive comments to offset a negative one.
This creates the need to monitor the web to identify the comments that least favor our online business or brand. The more we expand online and the better known we become, the more seriously we have to take online reputation management.
Image source: http://www.marindelafuente.com.ar/reputacion-online-posicionamiento/
So imagine that when searching Google for a concept, product or service we offer, a negative comment about our business on a forum or blog shows up in the top results. What do we do? Set up a monitoring policy to find out what is being said about us online. To do so, we have several sources that will give us the information we need:
- Many opinions about our brand are generated on blogs, both in posts and in their comments. We therefore need tools that let us find blogs talking about our products or services. For this, we can use Google BlogSearch or Technorati
- Another source of information is Google Alerts. With it, we can set up alerts that are sent to our email. In this case, the alerts should include the brand name. Considering that Google is the search engine that indexes the most web pages, using this service is clearly essential.
- Many of the opinions and comments we make are on social media. To monitor mentions of our brand, we will use the internal search features of the main social networks.
- We also recommend using the main search engines as a source of information, since opinions and comments about our brand can rank there.
- There are specialized monitoring tools, both free and paid. One of the paid ones is Trackur, which offers a free trial when you sign up. You can also use Social Mention, which lets you monitor your brand online for free.
Once we have identified the tools and sources we can use to manage our online reputation, we need to identify the keywords to use for monitoring. Obviously, the company name is one of them, but so are the names of our products or services and our industry; any slogan-type phrase that represents us should also be monitored, as well as the names of partners and key executives.
What should we do about negative reviews? First, identify the cause of the opinion: was it poor service? A defective product? A disgruntled employee? Maybe a troll? Each case needs to be analyzed, since they are different and each calls for different decisions. When customers are involved, they must be handled as quickly as possible.
