How does your company’s review rating impact how people look for you online? You might not realize how much damage can be done by just one bad review or comment. With the exponential growth of keyboard warriors on the web today, business owners must double down on protecting their company’s reputation. It may seem complicated and overwhelming at first glance. Still, there are ways you could restore trust in a tarnished name - mainly if those efforts include addressing any concerns that arise once negativity starts popping up on sites like Google, Facebook, or Yelp.

Online reputation management monitors your customers' conversations about your brand and business to ensure that your company is seen positively and that negative reviews are handled swiftly and professionally. Having an established, positively reviewed brand name that people trust can make all the difference regarding your business growth and profit.

The first action is to look up your company’s name on Google. Searching your business name brings up your Google Business Profile. Reviews from past clients and any other reviews left on sites across the web will be there. If you have never responded to a review and you see that you have a lot, try not to worry too much since you can address these with time. If you don’t have any reviews, it’s time to ask your past clients to leave you one.

The second thing that is needed is to solidify your online presence. Having a solid online presence means that your company’s main website, social networking profiles, business listings, and blogs will outrank anything negative said about you, making your company look great and stopping the negative reviews from being the first thing people see. These are not the only things to do to start out managing your reputation, but these are the first two steps that need to be taken when it comes to online reputation management. You want to ensure that your brand name is well respected, and that can only be done if you put work into your online reputation management plan.

Your company’s reputation is an essential part of your business. Unlike a few decades ago, you no longer rely on word of mouth and advertisements. Everyone can have an opinion about you, and your practices will likely be publicly scrutinized and examined. Everyone can express their opinion online, and if they are clever and articulate, their terrible review can impact your business highly publicly. Reputation management allows you to take charge of the way that you look online, and it also gives you the tools to learn more about your company so that you can make it better.

The most apparent advantage of monitoring your online reputation is that you will immediately improve the satisfaction of your customers. Having an easy way to get in touch and a prompt reply satisfies customers, and you can learn to pinpoint anything in particular that may be giving your business a negative reputation. You can also do market research while attempting to improve your business's perception through reputation management.

The Reputation Growth Accelerator program makes tracking what customers say about your business easy. After scanning over a dozen review sites, the program takes the most frequently used keywords to describe your business and creates a word map highlighting them.

Other less obvious benefits of online reputation management may be reducing marketing costs. Once you have learned how to interact with your customers online, you can reduce your ad budget because more customers will be coming to you organically. You may also be able to identify gaps in your customers' knowledge regarding a particular product or campaign and take the following steps that you need to address them. A well-run online reputation management campaign can differentiate between customers wanting to do business with you or choosing your competitor.

Online reputation management is crucial for your company’s image, but there are also many rewards that your company may reap when you do it right. The positive impact of managing your reputation may even surprise you.

The information in this post is merely the tip of the iceberg. Your reputation spans further than Google reviews or facebook comments. Which is why it is critical to create the narrative for your business. I have created a free guide to help manage your business reputation across various channels. Click here to download it today.