Tag: reputation

    Top Mistakes Made Online by Business Owners

    Many business owners, small, large, online and offline make mistakes regarding their online reputation. Sometimes it seems purposeful it’s so dumb, such as a politician sending naked pictures of himself to a young co-ed. Other times, it’s just accidental such as when a bad joke goes wrong, or you got into an online flame war with a customer. But, all of these things can be monitored and controlled if you understand what a mistake they are.

    Before we go over the top mistakes made by business owners, here is a great quote:

    “Begin somewhere. You cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.” Liz Smith

    * Revealing Personal Information of a Client – You might mean well by talking about a specific client, but the best thing you can do is ask for written permission before discussing a client’s personal details in any form. Some people don’t like it when you talk about them and they can tell it’s them. If they can tell, they will worry that someone else can tell.

    * Calling Out Others in a Bullying Way – It’s one thing to give an honest review of someone’s work, but yet another to seek to ruin their business entirely. If you want a really good example of this, look up on YouTube “Freely & Harley Law Suit” and watch the flaming ruin of several fitness business owners in a public nightmare that involves the Supreme Court of Australia.

    * Posting Images of Your Drunk Night Out – OK so your youngest daughter got married, your oldest had a baby, and your best friend turned 60 all in one day. But, no one needs to see you drunk and partying in public. While your family and friends will love it, some business partners will question your judgement. Some people might not buy from you.

    * Choosing Weird Cute Names for Social Media Profiles – The truth is, unless you give your social media profile the name of your niche or product, using your own name is a good idea. Don’t use something personal because you want to represent your business as a moral and honest company that’s open about who you are.

    * Telling Lies – Believe it or not, more than one business owner has been caught in a bald-faced lie online which ruined their entire business. If you don’t make six figures and you’re not a million-dollar blogger, then don’t imply or say you are. The online world is small in many ways and it will come out, sooner or later.

    * Stealing Other People’s Content – This is an easy one to detect, but there have been cases of people stealing other people’s hard work, information products, images and so forth and then joining the real producer’s Facebook group and trying to promote their products there. Yes, they were humiliated and caught and ruined within minutes. Don’t steal.

    * Ignoring or Blocking Complaints – It’s a big mistake to ignore or block complaints. Your clients and future clients are watching how you will deal with a complaint, and how you deal with it will either help you or hurt you. Answer them quickly and always try to provide to your client a solution to their problem.

     

    Finally, it’s important to never behave in an angry and defensive manner – no matter whether you are in the right or not. This is a huge mistake that will backfire. Always be humble, generous, honest and kind, and you can’t go wrong online.

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    Eight Reasons Your Online Reputation Matters

    Your online reputation is the same thing as your offline reputation but, thankfully, you can discover what your online reputation is and work toward making it better. In contrast, it can be very difficult to discover what your offline reputation is.

    It doesn’t matter what type of business you have these days – it can be online or offline, large or small. You must manage your online reputation. Here are eight reasons why.

    1. Most People Will “Google You” before Buying

    You know you do it, so of course, most others do it too. If you want information on a business or product, you search on Google to see if you can find it. You don’t care if it’s a local business or not – you go to Google, type in the name, and then you read the reviews and other information about that business.

    2. People Buy from Those They Trust

    Finding good information during the searching process helps build a feeling of trust in your customer. If instead they find bad information, poor ratings, or other things about you or your business that is negative, they may choose a competitor – even if they can’t find information on that competitor. Worse, they might find information about a competitor who is far away and order through the mail.

    3. Reputation Builds Brand Awareness

    By building an online reputation through the use of social media, websites, blogs, YouTube videos and more, you will build brand awareness. If you do it right, it will build positive brand awareness about yourself and your business. But, if you do it wrong you might inadvertently make yourself look bad. Focus on always being positive and not negative, unless of course that is your personal brand.

    4. Good Reputation Gives a Competitive Advantage

    The aim is to build such a good reputation that when someone searches for your name, a search term, or your product or industry, you appear in the searches in a healthy way without controversy. In this way, you’ll have an advantage over your competitors who either don’t exist online or have a bad reputation online.

    5. Nothing Is a Secret Anymore

    One thing you have to accept about our new technological world is that nothing is secret anymore. You cannot be anonymous online if you expect to make an impact with your business. Instead you need to be yourself, out and proud as they say, taking control of your reputation by making an appearance on discussion boards, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos and more. Even if you have one negative event, you can ensure that the positive outweighs the negative if you make a concerted effort.

    6. Customers Care about Your Values

    In the old days, everyone cared more about the bottom line than their reputations as employers or corporations. Today, people want to know about your character. If you have poor character, or appear to online, you will lose money because consumers want to buy from people that are upstanding citizens who care about the world.

    7. Unscrupulous Competitors May Attempt to Trash You

    By keeping an eye on and working to improve your online reputation, when and if a competitor tries to trash you, you’ll be ready. Believe it or not, some very misinformed and bad people will actively seek to trash you online. They’ll hire people to do poor product reviews, or do one themselves, and call you out on things that aren’t true just to make you look bad. How you respond makes all the difference.

    8. Every Action You Take for Better or Worse Affects It

    One thing you have to know about being online and running an online business is that everything you do will be analyzed and scrutinized by everyone. It’s imperative that before you post that picture of you hanging off the ceiling at that convention that you consider how it will impact your future. Before you spout off to a rude customer on social media, consider how you can turn it around in a way that is positive because even if you’re ultimately right, how you respond matters.

    Building and maintaining your online reputation is an important way to build your brand, improve your business, and make a difference. Leave no stone unturned and you won’t be unhappy.

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    Online Reputation Management: What Is It?

    You’ve likely heard of Olivia Pope – the fictional character who fixes everything on the top-rated TV show Scandal. Something embarrassing is threatened to come out and she does what needs to be done to cover it up or spin and change the story to something more positive and flattering.

    Online reputation management might not be as dramatic, but it’s very much the same type of thing. There is information about you and/or your business out there that you’d rather not be made public, but it shows up on search engines and now you need to bury it.

    Don’t worry; you don’t have to be as diabolical as Olivia Pope’s “family” to bury negative information online. There are ethical ways to manage your online reputation. Not only that – these are things you should do anyway if you want to be run a successful business today. Let’s talk about the different types of information that can be found online about you that you want covered up or buried.

    Images You or a Friend Posted

    Sometimes when we are young, or drunk, we do things that are regretful. If you have posted the image you can remove it, but more than likely someone downloaded it and saved it. You’re essentially out of luck. You can email anyone you know who has the image and ask them to delete it. Then, ask your friends and family not to post certain types of images of you in the future.

    Comments You Made That Showed a Dark Side

    A customer spouted off to you in a rude way and you just lost it and made some derogatory or defensive comments that do not show your best side or put your business in the best light. If you have the ability to delete your comments that’s a good start, but an apology also goes a long way. If you can humble yourself and tell the person you’re sorry as well as any readers, before deleting, that might be a better course of action due to the fact that you really cannot delete something like that without it causing a stir too. You can bet someone took a screen shot.

    Erroneous Information Posted by a Competitor

    When you see a concerted effort by your competitor to lie about you, and maybe even slander you, you’ll need to choose a course of action that works. In some cases things will blow over if you ignore it. In others, especially when it comes to online slander and bullying, you’re going to need to take legal action. That might at first blow up the situation though, so you need to be sure the law is really on your side before acting.

    You May Need Your Own Olivia Pope

    Ok, hopefully you won’t hire someone who is adept at torture and slashing people’s throats, but in serious cases you may need to hire a firm that specializes in online reputation management and let them take control of managing your online reputation. A firm will help you figure out how you can actually remove things from the net, and how you can bury it in the fastest manner possible while also being ethical.

    Online reputation management can not only be used to manage negative aspects of the net, but it can also help boost the positive aspects of the net. Keeping your reputation intact is really only part of the issue. It’s also important to use the internet to its fullest potential for your business needs. Practicing online reputation management can do all that and more.

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    Ten Steps to Improving Your Online Reputation

    Today, managing and improving your online reputation has become essential. This is due to the advent of Google Search and the ability of anyone to look for you online and find out information about your company and your personal life. Even if there is something out there that you don’t want people to dwell on, you can make it better. It takes a little bit of work but it can be done. In fact, everyone who wants to be known online should be doing these things.

    1. Monitor the Buzz – People are talking about you. You can use Google Alerts and other online apps to monitor your business name, personal name, product names and more to know what is being said about you online.

    2. Listen to Your Customers – So many business owners conduct surveys, read their online buzz, check out rating sites and so forth but never really listen. It’s important to show your audience by your actions that you’re listening.

    3. Respond Quickly – When a customer has an issue or complains about you online, always respond quickly to the complaint. Even on social media, if you don’t answer a complaint they’ll see you as providing poor customer service regardless of whether you planned to provide customer service there or not.

    4. Remain Positive – No matter what a customer, client, or review says, it’s imperative that you never allow negativity to take over. Stay positive and try to read between the vitriol. A good tip is to copy and paste their complaint or reviews into a word document, then delete anything that takes away from the complaint. Then only answer to the complaint.

    5. Apologize – Even though business owners know that sometimes customers are wrong, in public they are right. You must apologize to them in public and offer to make it better. It’s the only way that you can regain the confidence and trust of the public. Better yet, ask the customer what you can do to make it better and you might be surprised at how little it takes.

    6. Be Everywhere – You need accounts on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and whatever else happens to come up where your audience likes to discuss anything to do with your business. Then interact and engage with them.

    7. Solicit Reviews – When you send information to your buyers in a follow up, always ask for positive reviews and give them the link of the place you want the review to be posted. This will help increase the positive and counteract any negative reviews that might exist.

    8. Publish New Content Regularly – Blog on a regular basis, posting new content as often as you can: at least three to five times a week if you’re new at it, and once a week if you already have over 300 pages of content. Consider guest blogging on high-ranking authoritative websites too.

    9. Avoid Making Social Media Mistakes – Sounds easier than done, but all this means is you need to think twice about anything you put on social media, positive or negative. Even innocent jokes can get you into trouble if you don’t know your audience well enough.

    10. Don’t Neglect Your Accounts – Once you have a social media account, do not allow it to remain dormant. Keep it updated on a regular basis – at least once a week personally, and if you enact some smart automation it will appear that you’re more active.

    Regardless if anyone has said anything bad about you, it’s important to build up your online reputation in order to protect it – even if it doesn’t need improving. By building out every aspect of your online presence, you’ll soon have an excellent online reputation that cannot be torn down or paralleled.

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