Many companies only start to worry about their online reputation when that reputation is threatened by negative comments online. However, that old adage – “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” – is very relevant to online reputation. Taking a few steps to ensure that your reputation stays positive is far more effective than trying to bolster a reputation under attack. If you want to maintain a good reputation online, simply follow these tips:

1. Be transparent and sincere. The best way to maintain a good reputation is to remain transparent in all your business practices and sincere when dealing with customers and clients. In many cases, negative online comments occur when businesses try to hide something or when companies appear two-faced.
2. Deal with customer problems quickly and well. Few customers will complain about a company online at the first sign of trouble. In most cases, it is only after customers become thoroughly frustrated with delays and bad service that they turn to blogs and online forums to vent their anger. It is inevitable that some customers will be upset or will complain about your service or a product. However, taking care of these problems quickly and ensuring that the customer is satisfied with the solution will go a long way towards ensuring that the situation will not be featured on a blog that makes your company seem irresponsible.
3. Train your team members – and choose new employees carefully. Your business is only as good as your employees. You need to train your employees to deal pleasantly and promptly with customers so that complaints can be resolved well. When hiring, you need to make sure that your new employees will not do anything to jeopardize your company’s reputation. Many businesses find that buying good customer relationship management (CRM) software is very helpful. A good CRM strategy and CRM software can help your company keep track of orders and complaints so that they can be dealt with promptly. This can help you avoid overlooked orders and problems that can spiral out of control into online accusations against your company.
4. Have a good SEO strategy in place to optimize everything that appears online, from videos to blogs to articles. SEO refers to “Search Engine Optimization” and it is the process of using keywords and content to ensure that websites and pages appear high on search engine rankings. Using SEO ensures that your websites appear high on search engine results – well above any negative comments made about your company on other sites.
5. Be more than a company. Participate in online communities and develop a personable, approachable name and face for your business. This will help you create a positive online reputation and will help you become an authority in the eyes of potential customers. Even if these customers do hear negative comments about your company, they are less likely to believe them because they trust you and know you – at least online.

While companies often spend thousands of dollars to optimize their websites, design their websites, and develop a great online presence, businesses are often reluctant to hire online reputation monitoring services. This can be a problem. There are many reasons why you might want to turn to a service for internet reputation monitoring:

1. Professionals can monitor the Internet more effectively. Some companies assume that they can monitor their company’s reputation effectively on their own. Unfortunately, in many cases these companies assume that monitoring only requires an occasional Google search. The results of this sort of monitoring are very incomplete and can give you a very skewed view of your reputation – which can hurt your bottom line. Internet reputation monitoring professionals, on the other hand, can check much more than Google. They can carefully monitor forums, ezines, blogs, websites, social networking pages, and many more sources that will not show up in search engines. Professionals can tell you as soon as negative comments appear about your company, as well, so that you can respond promptly.
2. It can save you a lot of money. Imagine this: your business is booming and you are busy filling orders. Suddenly, the business slows down dramatically. What has happened? A bad online reputation can have customers running to the competition – and unless you are monitoring your reputation, you may not know why. Negative comments that ruin your reputation can crop up literally overnight and unless you have someone monitoring system in place, you could be losing customers without even knowing why. Worse, by the time you do realize that your online reputation is affecting your bottom line, you will have to start damage control. It can take you months to reverse a bad reputation that has been left unaddressed for a long time. In the meantime, you will be earning far less money than you deserve. Having an online reputation monitoring service means that you become aware of problems fast, so that you can resolve them quickly and with minimal loss of cash.
3. It can save you time. Doing your own monitoring is not only ineffective – it can also take up a great deal of time. Websites and blogs are created every day and forum posts appear by the second. Keeping track of all the information available about you company online is a daunting task – one that requires a team of professionals working around the clock. Trying to do it alone will take up time that could be better spent developing your company and expanding your business.
4. It can help you build a better reputation defense strategy. Being able to defend your reputation well depends on your ability to respond quickly to criticism. Professional Internet reputation monitoring can ensure that you learn about problems fast so that you can formulate a plan – and act on it — quickly. This is important, since replying to older criticisms is ineffective and can actually backfire, since it can cause these critical comments to develop a new life of their own.

Defending your company against a bad search engine reputation begins with having a good business and reputation strategy. You can help guarantee that you develop both by ensuring that you:

1. Have a branding strategy. It is not enough to simply want a good online reputation – you need to define exactly what you want your company to stand for. It is hard for you to develop a great reputation online if you are not sure what your business represents. What would be the best possible positive comment about your business? What image would best allow you to get the business results you want? Think carefully about your answers and put them in writing. Start projecting this image in your marketing materials and online presence. You will notice that you are more easily able to identify potentially damaging comments if you know what your company stands for. Contrary to what most companies believe, not all online comments are completely identifiable as bad or good. If a customer says “This company only wants to promote their product” is that a positive or negative comment? If you know what your company represents, you will know – and you will be able to react appropriately.
2. Have a realistic search engine strategy. What do you want – specifically – from search engine results? Of course, you want anyone searching for your company name to be lead to your company website first. Beyond that, however, which keywords do you want to lead to your website? What rankings do you want your site to get for each keyword?
3. Have a customer relationship plan. A good customer relationship plan lets you and your team members know how to deal with orders, new customers, and billing. With this type of plan, everyone will know what to do and it will be easier to keep customers happy – which will help reduce complaints and problems.
4. Know how to deal with complaints. Even if you are very careful in your business dealings, it is inevitable that some customers will be unhappy. When your company receives a customer compliant, you should know exactly what to do. You should have a plan in place to ensure that the complaint is dealt with fully and quickly. Your plan might include apologizing to the customer, asking what can be done to correct the problem, and following up to make sure the customer is satisfied. Of course, it goes without saying that any complaint should be resolved quickly – make it a top priority. Dealing with problems quickly and effectively will mean that fewer angry customers will be posting negative comments about your company on the Internet.
5. Manage your reputation – online and off. Even if you take every precaution against customer dissatisfaction, negative online comments can still occur. Competitors may spread rumors about your company to hurt your business and customers may inadvertently spread false rumors about your company. Knowing what is happening with your reputation allows you to respond quickly and stop problems before they spiral out of control.