subject: Why Is Reputation Management So Important To My Business? [print this page] The World Wide Web is a double-edged sword, if ever there was one. It opens up new markets, allows for fast and easy market research and customer feedback. It facilitates better customer service and shortened the time it takes to do business.
Unfortunately, the very things that make the Internet so wonderful for business can also be very dangerous, especially to smaller businesses. The rise of blogging and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter has accelerated the speed at which information circulates through the world; if that information is damaging to your company's reputation, you could be in big trouble.
For example, suppose a food critic writes an unfavorable or downright vicious review of a restaurant and posts it on a blog. Other dining-related web sites will most likely pick up on the information within a day at the most (and more likely within a matter of hours). Each web site writes and article or somehow refers to the review. Viewers all over the place will soon be reading an article and either forming or reevaluating their opinion of the restaurant. Within the space of a single day, the restaurant is already in danger of losing vital clientele.
It is almost impossible to track the spread of information via the Internet. Once damaging information is published, it's there to stay. However, there is a way to minimize the damage negative information may have on your business and even improve your company's standing reputation. It is called reputation management.
Reputation management professionals specialize in protecting businesses' online image by controlling, to a degree, what people read, watch, or listen to. Research shows that the vast majority of Internet users only look at the first three pages of search results generated by an online search engine. Therefore, the kind of information that appears in those first three pages is largely what determines a company's online reputation.
Reputation managers use the tools available on the Internet to make sure, as far as is possible, that negative information doesn't show up on those first three pages. Using the same tools that can be so harmful--blogs, social networks, business profile linking, wiki--reputation management teams make sure that enough positive, or at least neutral information makes it onto the first few pages of search results to counterbalance the effect of any negative information that may be out there.
As the business world begins to rely on the Internet more and more, it is important that every business have a good reputation management strategy.
by: Christian Heftel
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