Internet Reputation Management Blog

Handling Comments in Your Social Media Page

Carl Sgro — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 01:46:00 GMT

In the social media era, major brands, products and services are taking on social media space and building their own page or profiles. These channels can be effective ways to interact with customers and build a good internet reputation. However, you must remember that you cannot please everybody and there are bound to be parties who will put in negative comments in your page or blatantly disagree with the positive comments other satisfied customers have indicated. The following are ways on how you can handle such comments:

Learn to Identify Trolls – Trolling is a way of making negative comments without any valid reasons from someone who may not necessarily be a former employee or customer. Some of these comments may be completely irrelevant to your brand and may be considered as spam – as their sole purpose is to draw in attention to their own brands or products by riding on negative comments hurled against you

Respond Accordingly – Customers who posted questions through your social media page should be answered accordingly and at the soonest possible time. This will make an impression that you care enough about your customers that you respond to their comments or complaints accordingly. Nothing will turn off customers more than inactivity or lack of response to their inquiries

Apologize – If the complaint is valid, making a sincere apology can actually straighten things out, particularly so if you throw in commitments to perform corrective actions or making your products and services even better. Arguing with your customers is a definite no-no and will make these negative comments even more viral. An apology on the other hand will turn these complaints into non-issues in no time.

Communicate – Parties who made valid complaints should be contacted properly so you can address their concerns accordingly without bringing other people, who are mostly unaware of the issue, into the discussion and prolong the negative thread even more.

Delete – It is very easy to simple delete negative comments and feedback but you must first understand the policies in place in your social media channel before doing so. There are categories like verbal abuse, inappropriate content, and antagonistic behavior that justify deletion, but you should learn to identify if the comment made false into these categories first before taking action.

Deflect – Arguing or prolonging the discussions on a negative thread will make the negative entries even more viral. The best approach is to thank the commenter for their entries and then try to deflect the discussion into other topics and information that will bury the negative entries down into oblivion.

Social Media and Internet Reputation Management are two very powerful channels that will provide a positive image for your brand that will protect your reputation online. Learn how to do this properly by working with online reputation experts like www.internet-reputation-management.com who can help you improve your existing brand’s online exposure – and take control of negative comments before they can control you.

Problems You Will Encounter in Social Media

Carl Sgro — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 01:16:00 GMT

Building a good internet reputation for your brand, product or service would mean entering the whole dynamic realm of social media. It can be a very effective platform for building your brand, but it can also be a significant source of negative feedbacks and problems that can destroy your online reputation in an instant. You should learn how to identify these issues, so you can properly harness the attributes of social media space to build a good reputation.

Straight Problems – A customer who has a specific issue with your products or services can lay out exactly in what particular sense where they were not satisfied. This can put your brand into a negative light but it can actually make you aware of real problems that you need to address immediately

Constructive Criticism – A straight problem coming from a complaining customer but with a suggestion attached can be reclassified as constructive criticism. It simply means customers will be more loyal to your brand if these suggestions can be accommodated within reasonable bounds

Merited Attack – An unsatisfied customer or an angry ex-employee may have sufficient reasons to be angry with your brand, angry enough to make negative feedbacks that can ruin your social media reputation. In their eyes, your company did them wrong and should be penalized by negative criticisms

Trolling and Spamming – Unlike merited attacks that may have valid reasons behind the negative feedbacks, trolling need not have any valid reason to attack your brand. In a similar manner, some spammers will make use of making negative comments about your brand to build a reputation for their own products or services, which may or may not be competing against yours

It is a reality in any business that you will not please everybody all the time. Even if you managed to please all your customers, there are others who will still try to attack your online reputation for selfish and often not valid reasons.

Addressing Negative Comments in Social Media

Carl Sgro — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:31:00 GMT

In the Internet age, an integral part of brand development is social media marketing and this means creating a Facebook page or a Twitter account for your brand or company. By doing this you can take the advantage of viral exposure for your brand or products, but it also exposes them to the opinions and scrutinizing eyes of the general public. You may opt not to participate in social media, but the truth is your brand or company can still be subjected to social media exposure – even through unofficial means – and this means being subjected to unflattering or even negative comments about your brand.

An integral part of Internet Reputation Management is to monitor the social media sphere for the buzz – positive or otherwise -- about your products and brand. Some of these negative comments are simply misinformed comments from clients while others are deliberate attacks from trolls wanting to gain exposure by preying on the reputation of brands and companies. Although ignoring these comments seems like a logical move to make, an unanswered comment will make your brand or company look irresponsible in the eyes of true clients – so it would be best to study and carefully analyze each comment and fabricate a proper response from there.

If the comment brings to the surface a valid concern from a customer, you can turn this to your advantage by addressing the concern professionally, owning up to it, making an apology and ensure that an appropriate action will be done on your part. This will earn the respect of your customers and those who had read the comment. If you are faced with a misinformed comment that has absolutely no truth to it, be respectful in your responses and correct the information in a polite and factual manner.

More Thoughts on Brand Protection with Internet Reputation Management

Carl Sgro — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:25:38 GMT

The goal of Internet Reputation Management is to push back negative content about your brand way down the search engine results and this can be done with a wide variety of activities which include: creating and posting positively optimized content on strategic websites and other locations; optimize other non-text assets that you have online including images, video and PDF files; taking advantage of social media and other discussion boards related to your brand or industry; and monitoring the buzz online about your brand and product using Google alerts and other similar applications and utilities.

If your goal is to build a positive image for your brand, then you can expand what Internet Reputation Management can do for you in terms of brand protection and developing a better and more positive brand image. An integral part of this task is to be vigilant in scouring the web for every instance where your brand has appeared online, and put greater focus on sites where your brand has appeared in a negative light. Be vigilant also in identifying scam sites that use your brand or pages with a primary intent of putting your brand down.

Brand protection and Internet Reputation Management can go hand in hand in developing and creating a positive image for your brand and online reputation experts like www.internet-reputation-management.com can help you improve your existing brand’s online exposure. It is truly a worthwhile task to do and a sound investment that can protect and preserve your brand image for years to come.

Protecting Your Brand with Internet Reputation Management

Carl Sgro — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:15:33 GMT

Branding is a very important aspect in any business and many large corporations spend a great deal of money creating and building a brand that would define their core business. Sometimes this process would take years to unravel – only to be taken apart is hours and days by a viral that would destroy your brand’s online reputation. That is why organizations which have spent years protecting their brand need not underestimate the power of the online realm – and protect their brand through Internet Reputation Management.

Online Reputation Management experts like www.internet-reputation-management.com can develop a system of optimizing and utilizing the power of the Internet to displace or even eliminate negative or unfavorable information online that can ruin your brand’s reputation. There are many ways as to how this is done as described in earlier entries in this website but the goal is push back all these negative entries down the drain and away from the top pages of search results – and replace them with optimized and favorable content that will help bring back and build up your brand’s online reputation.

So, if you want to build up a strong and positive brand image, your business should constantly scour the Internet for negative attacks against your brand’s reputation and bolster this image by flooding the Internet with positive and favorable content. It’s a complicated and cumbersome endeavor that you need to do to ensure your brand and your business survival – and you need not do this alone.

Proactive Internet Reputation Management Strategies You Can Consider

Carl Sgro — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:45:16 GMT

An irreparable damage to your online reputation brought about by a vicious and deliberate attack on your brand, product or profession can occur so suddenly and can spread out like a virus online before you can even act on defending yourself. Performing mitigation action to salvage your Internet reputation may be too late, and if not done properly can even make matters worse.

What your brand, product, or profession needs to prevent such scenarios from occurring in this highly volatile online world is to be proactive with your Internet Reputation Management programs and activities. The need for such practices is so vital that business should make it an integral part of any marketing endeavor or strategy. There are several ways to do it and experts like www.internet-reputation-management.com can help you plan such programs and get the best results according to your needs.

Some of the strategies employed in a proactive Internet Reputation Management program include utilizing social networking channels to your advantage by providing pages, profiles and sites with good content about your products or brands. Issuing press releases is another way of generating positive interest for your products or brands and more so if done in newsworthy and well written way.

One of the most effective means of developing a good internet reputation proactively is with the use of blogs, either hosted by your company or through other channels maintained by third parties. Not only will blogs provide a good online platform for interacting with your clients, blog posts usually rank very well in search engine results and a positive post about your product or brand can set a lasting impression to existing and potential clients. A similar strategy is to create articles and have them posted on article directories where they can be syndicated by other blogs and websites if written properly and authoritatively.

Internet Reputation Management is Different from SEO

Carl Sgro — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 01:42:26 GMT

Although they have great similarities in principles and procedures, Internet Reputation Management is different from SEO or Search Engine Optimization. It would be more appropriate to say that internet reputation management is the next iteration of SEO. It is more than putting your brand, product or professional website in a good position on search engine result pages. It’s more than increasing traffic to your websites. It involves ensuring that what appear in search engine result pages provide a positive outlook on your online reputation – your internet credibility.

Search Engine Optimization aims to make your website popular in the search engine’s eyes. The more popular your pages are, the higher your websites will rank in search engine results. It involves getting traffic from other popular websites with high page ranks. However, traffic can also come from no-so-popular sites that may contain posts that can damage your online reputation. And this is where internet reputation management comes in.

Internet reputation management experts like www.internet-reputation-management.com helps to build up a positive image about you online. They do this by making a lot of other pages and websites appear in good ranking in search engine results pages. These sites are designed to say positive things about your product, services or profession with the aim of driving negative results that can damage your online reputation down the search results – building a good online reputation for you.

Internet Reputation Management when You Don’t Have Bad Reputation

Carl Sgro — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 01:05:01 GMT

In the current global marketplace, having your business present in the online stratosphere is your assurance that your business is ready for the next generation and the next level of marketing that is to come. Many have the wrong impression that the only thing they need to do is set-up a website, probably set-up a social media page or profile somewhere, and watch the orders come in. Besides, they don’t have a “bad reputation” to worry about as it seems all their customers are well satisfied.

But the online world is very volatile and a single bad review, not necessarily from an unsatisfied customer but from an envious competitor or a laid-off employee, can go very viral online and damaging your online reputation wherever it is posted, shared or linked into. So, before bad reputation hits you, and the possibility for it is very high in the current situation, you should have good internet reputation management to ensure that all these bad reviews are under check and only the goodies reach your clients and potential customers search results.

First impression will make the lasting impression and to ensure that your online reputation only shows the good stuff way before the bad ones set in, you would need internet reputation management experts like www.internet-reputation-management.com to build up a positive image about you online. If you have positive reputation all over the online world and every search results yield only strong and good feedback about your products and services – then be ready to answer all the customer inquiries, orders, and repeat orders that will come knocking at your door.

Online Reviews and Internet Reputation Management

Carl Sgro — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:50:00 GMT

In a world where information can be obtained with a click of a button, reaching out to your targeted audience online is critical to the success of a business or profession. Without the required exposure, information about your brand, product or service will not reach your intended customers and thus affected your overall sales and revenues. One way of getting good exposure that can boost your online reputation is to get good mileage in online review sites about your particular niche or product category.

However, a bad review can damage your internet reputation. Reviews can go viral and once it spreads it would be very hard to control and would affect your sales and worst – your revenues. It is said that an unsatisfied customer will make some noise and influence up to 10 people to feel the same way about your brand, product or service. But in today’s fast-paced, online world, the possibility of this bad review reaching hundreds of people in a matter of days or even hours is quite possible.

Consumers now are very different from their counterparts years ago. Consumers now can simply search online for information about a product or service before they can commit to the purchase. During these searches, negative reviews about your products or services may surface up, turning off a potential paying customer to look the other way and towards your competitor.

If you need to revive your damaged online reputation, you would need internet reputation management experts like www.internet-reputation-management.com to build up a positive image about you online in a bid to drown out all the negative reviews out of the most important search engine result pages. Acting too late in addressing a bad online review will forever leave its mark about you online – unless proper measures are set in place.