If you plan on running a business for long, you best make sure that you’re working towards building a solid reputation. If not, other businesses and customers in bad moods will eat you alive. Not that you’re going to be totally despised, but it’s just the facts of life. You must absolutely learn how to manage the reputation of your business.
One of the primary ways you can manage your reputation is to claim your business brand online and take charge of the content about you. Use either KnowEm.com, UserNameCheck.com or NameChk.com to locate every online instance of your business name popping up. You only need to use one, but any of them can let you know if anyone out there is misrepresenting your business or speaking ill of you.
Keep in mind that your online and in-person reputations both matter just as much. There are many people that are great in person yet they are not very great with customers over the Internet. You should be nice either way since you have no idea if this customer will spread negative information that can destroy you.
Pay attention to the reputation your business has offline. Your offline reputation will make its way into the online world. If negative content on your company becomes a trend, you need to know why. Treat all your clients and customers well and urge the happy ones to leave positive reviews on sites like Yelp.
Customers are an integral part of any business. With this comes complaints from time to time, and you must be sure you are addressing all customer complaints. You need to address them in a manner that others agree with.
Always manage your customer’s expectations about how you personally do business. You must handle customers directly and honestly, and if problems should arise, take care of it swiftly. You’ll develop a good reputation by always being as transparent as possible.
Something like a breach of security in a customer database can really damage a company’s reputation. If your company experienced this problem, do not try to hide it. Notify your customers right away and assure them that measures will be taken to boost security of your data. You can minimize damage to your company’s reputation with this approach.
Make the most of social media to build a solid online reputation. Be sure your company name plays prominently on your social media pages. If you have a couple of dozen fans on your Facebook page, get a custom URL that includes the name of your company. This is also possible with LinkedIn. Having your company name in your URL will help get your social media page ranked higher in the search engines.
Time to turn on the ignition switch and get these ideas into action. Making sure you have an upstanding reputation within your industry is what it’s all about. Now that you have this advice, you have some things you need to be doing. Keeping your business image where it should be keeps those customers coming to your place.
