| Reputation management used to be about scanning | | | | good your customer service actually is. |
| newspapers and magazines. However, the world is | | | | So where are people making comments about your |
| changing fast. It's quite likely that your customers spend | | | | business? |
| more time online than they do watching TV. Surfing | | | | - Blogs |
| the Internet, whether for business or pleasure is now | | | | - Twitter |
| the most common pastime in the Western world. | | | | - Social Networks (such as Facebook, Mebo and |
| People socialise online, shop online, do business online; | | | | MySpace) |
| everything. So its important that you track what people | | | | - Social Media Sites (such as the reviews within |
| are saying about you online. | | | | Amazon) |
| You might think that your business maybe too small | | | | - Wikipedia |
| and no one talks about you, or maybe you think that | | | | - Blog Comments |
| you already monitor your website, blog and Twitter | | | | - Message Boards |
| and that's good enough. Well that's where you are | | | | - Forums |
| wrong! People are constantly talking online - | | | | - Consumer Websites |
| sometimes they're talking to you, other times about | | | | - Article sites |
| you. You need to make sure you're monitoring the | | | | - Video Sites (such as YouTube, Moveo) |
| whole of the world wide web for your keywords | | | | - Photo Sites (such as Flickr, Google Picasa) |
| (namely your business name). Only then can you | | | | Monitoring your online brand reputation will allow you to |
| respond to people when they mention you. If someone | | | | gain further understanding of what people think of you |
| makes a negative comment about your company in a | | | | and your products and services. You can view trends |
| forum should have processes in place that would | | | | and find out what is and what isn't popular, and be |
| alerted you to it. Then you'll be able to instantly | | | | made aware of any potential issues. |
| respond to it, fix the situation and show them how | | | | |