The Internet has become both a great blessing and a curse to entrepreneurs at the same time. While the Internet has made marketing and branding a breeze, it has also meant that negative information about you is much more likely to exist and be found. So what can you do about it?
The first step in managing and protecting your online reputation is to find out what is out there and to keep an eye on it. You never know when someone is going to post something negative. So just looking at it today isn't a solution. Of course the easiest way to monitor most of the conversations and comments about your business is through scheduling regular search engines searches, at least once a month. Though you can also set up notifications like Google Alerts so that you are notified right away when something new is said. Of course your social media should also be on your constant radar and should be consistently monitored as well.
Better Business Bureau, consumer complaint and scam alert sites are often easy to deal with if you have a solid case. Others such as product review sites, news sites and blogs can be more difficult to deal with. So how should you deal with these negative comments about your brand? In some instances you can quickly deal with the host sites and have them take down such libelous statements. Though in other circumstances you may find that this might just spark further negative press and comments.
In these cases the best thing and often the only thing that you can do is bury the digital dirt. How can you do this? The easiest, fastest and most affordable way to combat digital dirt is simply to post more positive information about your brand that will drown out the bad on the search engines. Providing you can push anything negative off of the first 2 pages of Google and Bing you should be relatively safe.
This can be done by using article marketing and directories, beefing up your own blog, expanding your content to social bookmarking sites and now with Google's Social Search building out your social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Of course any investment you make in new content to improve your online image will also lead to improved SEO and ultimately more web traffic and additional prospects and leads.
You can do this yourself by posting an article or blog or two a week, though you may find it a much better use of your time and resources to simply outsource any additional content needs to freelance writers. Keep in mind that if you have not been making a big push with your business online you could find yourself behind in the fight. So those who take a proactive approach and preempt these issues with a regular schedule of good content will have the advantage.
The first step in managing and protecting your online reputation is to find out what is out there and to keep an eye on it. You never know when someone is going to post something negative. So just looking at it today isn't a solution. Of course the easiest way to monitor most of the conversations and comments about your business is through scheduling regular search engines searches, at least once a month. Though you can also set up notifications like Google Alerts so that you are notified right away when something new is said. Of course your social media should also be on your constant radar and should be consistently monitored as well.
Better Business Bureau, consumer complaint and scam alert sites are often easy to deal with if you have a solid case. Others such as product review sites, news sites and blogs can be more difficult to deal with. So how should you deal with these negative comments about your brand? In some instances you can quickly deal with the host sites and have them take down such libelous statements. Though in other circumstances you may find that this might just spark further negative press and comments.
In these cases the best thing and often the only thing that you can do is bury the digital dirt. How can you do this? The easiest, fastest and most affordable way to combat digital dirt is simply to post more positive information about your brand that will drown out the bad on the search engines. Providing you can push anything negative off of the first 2 pages of Google and Bing you should be relatively safe.
This can be done by using article marketing and directories, beefing up your own blog, expanding your content to social bookmarking sites and now with Google's Social Search building out your social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Of course any investment you make in new content to improve your online image will also lead to improved SEO and ultimately more web traffic and additional prospects and leads.
You can do this yourself by posting an article or blog or two a week, though you may find it a much better use of your time and resources to simply outsource any additional content needs to freelance writers. Keep in mind that if you have not been making a big push with your business online you could find yourself behind in the fight. So those who take a proactive approach and preempt these issues with a regular schedule of good content will have the advantage.
No comments:
Post a Comment