Protecting your name on the Internet is important, especially if you are a business owner or entrepreneur. It only takes a few bad remarks about you or your brand to ruin your online reputation. To maintain a good online reputation, you need to step up to the plate and take care of it through social interaction and strong online tools.
First, you have to be constantly monitoring it, managing it and nourishing it or else you run the risk of having your value disintegrate and once this happens, you can kiss your reputation goodbye, at least for a while until you get it back up there.
In an effort to maintain their online reputation, many marketers or entrepreneurs attempt to offer free incentives and freebies with the hopes of obtaining good reviews. This tactic, although very common, can backfire. Global CEO, Jez Frampton, of brand value agency Interbrand states “People who are perceived to be super users or opinion leaders in market places have to be careful to protect their reputation, their brand, within the blogosphere.” He then went on to say, “It’s not in the interests of people to take freebies and write good reviews, because if the reviews prove to be not accurate than they lose their following.” (Tim Anderson, guardian.co.uk, July 2013).
Second, you need to interact and engage with your followers directly. Social media is where it is at today and making yourself present and available, especially when people have not so good things to say about you is important. In fact, this can really make or break your name. During these times is when you as the entrepreneur need to really step up and get into the discussion.
Third, it can be difficult to track down all online activity involving you without the use of effective online tools. Just a single Facebook post or Twitter tweet can break your online reputation and ruin your name. You need to have powerful tools at hand to stay on top of these types of posts.
Now, Google has a great tool known as Me on the Web that can be found in your Google Dashboard. It helps you to easily monitor your name through the search results and manage your online identity. It makes the process of locating negative comments from other companies or individuals simple and even helps you with the removal of this negative content. Remember, although it can be just as easy to remove unwanted content and this tool can easily help you do that, it might be more worthwhile to address the unwanted content instead and put the value back into your name.
To sum it all up, you first need to understand how important it is to maintain your good name. Do not be tempted to offer incentives and freebies in the attempt to obtain a few good reviews. Instead, use special online tools like Google’s Me on the Web to monitor and help you locate unwanted content about you. Then either remove it or address it in a positive manner and add value to it.
