Did you know that 90% of consumers do online research for assurance of a company’s brand or the products that they are interested in buying? Social media, internet forums and online review websites have given consumers a lot of power. With a single Tweet, a person is able to give love to a brand that they like or to hate on a brand that they don’t like. This presents companies with opportunities – but it can also be a curse.

Managing your online reputation matters more than ever. Here are a few strategies to manage your brand reputation online:

Set up Google Alerts

Login to your Google account and go to https://www.google.ca/alerts to set up alerts for brand names, people’s names and product names that you want to monitor online. You can choose that Google notifies you daily, weekly or fortnightly about any mentions of your product online.

Google will also show you a URL of where the brand or product was mentioned. You can then choose to respond to comments, queries or reviews about your product online accordingly.

Social listening

Hootsuite and TweetDeck can be used for social listening strategies. In today’s consumer-driven economy, people expect the same type of customer service on social media that they would get from face-to-face interactions in a store.

Not every business owner can afford to spend hours a day responding to comments and queries on Twitter and Facebook (and your business may not even have this level of online interaction). The general rule of thumb is to try to respond to comments on social media within 3 hours. Consider hiring a social media manager or training an in-house employee to check these platforms every few hours.

There are a number of other strategies and tools, such as Google reviews and online PR, which can be used to help you with your online reputation management strategy. Contact our digital marketing agency for more information today.