How to Easily Monitor Your Business Reputation and Control Damage

Do you want an easy way to keep track of what people are saying about you online? If you own a business, you need to know what people are saying about it in order to maintain your reputation and control damage. Do they think your products are reliable or unreliable? Do they say your restaurant has good food? What about your service? Your online reputation is as important as the image you project to your customers. You don't want customers leaving negative online reviews without a response from you. Previously you had to search the internet yourself in order to keep track of your company. Now it's easy to keep track of your products, name, and reputation. You can even check in on your competition and see how they are doing. In this eHow, learn a very easy, fast and free method to find out if your business or your competition has been mentioned and what to do if it has been.

When you have been alerted to the fact that your company has been mentioned on the internet, go to the link provided by Google Alerts and see what it is about. Has someone left a review of your product? If it was good, use it in your advertising. If it was bad, address the issue. if you think that something was unfairly posted, do not ignore it. Go to the chat room, message board, blog comment or where ever the original news items came from and respond to the negative review. Speak to the facts and offer solutions. If your company or product was at fault, correct it and then let the readers know how you have solved the problem. If you feel the criticism was unwarranted, an angry tirade will only tarnish your image. Respond to the criticism in a civil manner. Readers can then decide for themselves how to judge your company.

When you sign up for Google Alerts, you will need to specify in the "search terms" box exactly what word or words you want them to keep track of. If you want to keep track of your company's name, or a product that includes more than one word, you need to use parenthesis in your search terms, i.e., "Rock and Roll Cafe." If you are using a person's name be sure to put it in parenthesis or you will get any and all combinations. For example, if your name is John Smith and you don't use "John Smith" as your search term, then any time the words John and Smith appear together on a page, you will get an email notice, even if the John belongs to John Doe and Smith is mentioned with Jane Smith.

One advantage to Google Alerts is that you not only can monitor your company, but your competitor as well. The reason you need to be alerted to your competition is because you will want to note what they are doing to market their product and keep their name in the press. If your competition's marketing strategy is to damage your reputation, you need to be aware and swiftly counteract that. If you are alerted that a conversation about your competitor is happening on a blog, you can go to it and add to the dialogue. Explain how your product or service is better and why. Also you can watch what type of marketing PR or advertising the competition is doing and if it seems to be working, copy it. If they are making mistakes or there are negative reviews written about them, get in on the comments and offer an alternative product...yours!

By keeping ahead of what your competition is doing and by being alerted to how well your company is doing, you can fend off n egative reviews, control damage to your company's reputation, beat the competition, and enhance your image in the public eye.

In order to monitor your business online and find out on a regular basis what people are saying about you, sign up for a free service called "Google Alerts." This service will automatically check blogs, news feeds, video, chat rooms, message boards, or the entire web depending on your preferences, and send you a message whenever something is found. When you register at http://www.google.com/alerts (see link below) you will be asked how often you want to be notified: once a day, once a week, or as it happens. Fill in your email address so they know where to send the information.

Difficulty: Easy