Reputation Management – Simple Tips You Need to Know

If there’s one thing to be said about reputation today in an online business sense it’s that you’ve never been more at the mercy of your target audience. Word of mouth has always been powerful enough, but these days it can take little more than one wrong move and the anger of a single individual to smear your good name and lay waste to your brand.This is why it has never been more important to be aware of reputation management and be sure that all bases are covered. It doesn’t matter whether you outsource SEO to the world’s best authorities or take care of all marketing in-house – in any and all instances you need to take control over your reputation before it takes control of you.    So with this in mind, here’s a look at some of the most important tips for effective reputation management:Respond…AlwaysOne of the worst things anyone in business can do is get into the habit of either not responding at all to feedback, or only responding to a certain few examples. By responding only on occasion you are to some extent giving off the impression that you care more about some customers than others, which might be right but isn’t what you want them to know. So if you’re going to reply to feedback, be consistent.Never Lose Your TemperAn extension of the above, even in instances where you’re having every false accusation in the world thrown at you, it is vital never to lose your temper. Lashing out at a customer or peer business regardless of the circumstances and even if you are right will not earn you any favour with anyone at all – it just comes across as unprofessional and crude.Use ToolsThere are so many tools you can pick up right now to help you with the job – use them! If you really want to know what is being said about you and your brand each and every day from all four corners of the web, the only way to make this happen is to use the appropriate tools to help you keep tabs on it all. Otherwise, it’s simply an impossible task.Keep Up to DateChances are you have plenty of properties across the web or at least a few different pages that carry your brand name – Wikipedia, Google Local, LinkedIn for example. As there’s nothing worse that coming across a brand or business that’s apparently letting its properties go to seed, be sure to keep ALL of them up to date at all times.Invite FeedbackFeedback is so incredibly important to you – even the negative examples can be turned into pure gold with the right approach. So rather than sitting around and waiting for it to come in, encourage it and even ask for it if need be.Spread the WordAnd finally, if the good people of the world aren’t going to spread the word about you, your brand and all the great things you do, then why not do it for them? There’s a big difference between showing off and getting your message out into the wild – the latter being a little thing we call marketing!