Online reputation risk is a grave issue for many business houses today and not all of them know how to tackle it well.
Remember that reputation risk has less to do with your corporate communications team and handling it calls for special expertise.
In today’s hyper-connected world, where internet escalates issues instantaneously, you have to be more sensitive to reputation risk.
It seems that nearly every business is prone to a reputation oversight and thus has to be continually aware of reputational risks. When a crisis strikes, even some of otherwise well-equipped organizations have realized that they overlooked reputation as a performance indicator.
In the present age of the internet, if you haven’t considered how you should manage your online reputation, you have a crisis waiting to occur.
Please be aware of the speed at which information travels online making handling reputation problems, after they happen, a grave risk.
Surveys have shown that nearly 75% of people say they trust the information posted by total strangers online. More interestingly, neatly 80 percent of consumers have changed their mind about purchasing subsequent to reading a negative review online.
These statistics mean you need to be proactive when it comes to managing your online reputation and should not wait for problems to occur. Develop in advance an action plan for dealing with negative reviews.
You should be continually aware of what is being said about you online. You should use tools like Google Alert so that you can easily come to know if any mention of your brand/products is made online.
You must also conduct a manual Google search twice a month to see what results show up. Most of the time it’ll be your web pages, social media entries, web profiles and other useful entries. This is a robust way to be proactive and have some semblance of control over your online reputation.
Make sure to look beyond the first page of search results especially if they are being read widely. Deal with negative comments ASAP. Never ever ignore adverse reviews. Contact the person that had posted the negative comments and remedy the situation immediately.
The longer you allow unflattering comments to continue online, the greater the risk to your reputation.
Resolving the problem before the bad comments spread on the internet will save future business losses.
Remember that it is only 1% of the consumers that make annoying comments but they can influence the other 99%. Don’t give them that opportunity.