Your Onliine Reputation Needs To Be Protected

Shakespeare said: “Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”

Keeping your good name is increasingly difficult in this age of the Internet.

Maintaining a positive online reputation is now an everyday task and will get harder in the days ahead.

Your business needs to have a positive online reputation.

With increasing regularity, customers, suppliers, potential partners, and others will check your business out in advance of a meeting and form an impression. 

So make it as positive as possible.

Find out your business’s online search results. 

Try typing your company name into Bing, Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

You might be surprised on what comes up for your business, as well as others with the same of similar names.

In general, search engines post agreeable and disagreeable information, unless the later clearly violates the law.

To bury the less favorable mentions (both dilute and push to back in your listing), make sure your business has a greater number of positive mentions and that they are more current. 

Protect your business name through ownership if you haven’t already.

Go to an Internet domain registrar such as GoDaddy.com, NameCheap.com, Hover.com among other providers to purchase all domain containing your business name with the various extensions (.com, .net, .info, .biz, .me, etc.).

Set-up your profile on LinkedIn and consider using Facebook and Twitter as well.

Search engines tend to rank their links high, and you can control the material.

You don’t have to put everything about your company online.  Rather, select what supports the image you are trying to project for your business.

For “how to” set-up your profiles, there are a number of guidebooks you can use; and, the sites are user friendly for DIY.

Update your information regularly.

While some businesses post updates daily, others do so weekly or monthly.

By updating your business, you are making your online presence active: notices will go out to online communities; and updated information usually is ranked higher with search engines.

Updates might include announcements of company milestones, new product/services launches, promotions, activities in the community, etc.

Remember quality of postings is more important than quantity, and once something goes out on the Internet it stays out.

 Set-up Alerts for your business name.

If your business name appears online in an article, blog, etc., alerts through the search engines will let you know by sending you an email.  If your business is tagged in a photo on Facebook or Flickr or your business pops up in a tweet alerts through SocialMention.com

To easily monitor who is talking about your business on social media channels, check out WhosTalkin.com

 Watch your competitors.

Firms like SpyFu.com and SEMrush.com allow you to keep up on your online competitors and key words you should use for our business to be competitive.

Both generate a list of organic competitors.

Each of these sites generates a list of keywords for which your business is likely to rank highly in Google.

 

Manage, repair you reputation.

Unless illegal, it is difficult to get unfavorable online information removed.

There are a few reputation management firms such as Netmark.com, reputationmanagementconsultants.com, reputationrepair.com among others who do try to help.

They monitor and review your current standings amongst the online community and try to improve your reputation.

Proactively manage your business’ online reputation.  Also, if you as a business owner and/or leader are highly visible, you too need to manage your reputation as it will reflect on the business.