Article by-Shaw Guerrero

As any experienced businessperson will attest, reputation management is one of the most vital skills a new entrepreneur can acquire. Knowing how to shape the way you are perceived is vital to long-lasting success. The article below is intended to offer some useful pointers to help get the process started for you.

To ensure the trust of your customers, honesty and transparency is key. Don't remove or try to cover up negative posts from your website. Doing this can make it appear to your customers as if you are ignoring their concerns or that you simply don't care about them. Always be upfront about any issues your company might be facing.





One of the primary ways you can manage your reputation is to claim your business brand online and take charge of the content about you. Use either KnowEm.com, UserNameCheck.com or NameChk.com to locate every online instance of your business name popping up. You only need to use one, but any of them can let you know if anyone out there is misrepresenting your business or speaking ill of you.

Be professional when posting on social media sites. Avoid using Internet jargon and slang such as LOL, YW or TY. Be professional at all times. Respond to comments just like you would to your clients in a face to face meeting. Use proper English and proofread all responses before posting them.

Make sure you welcome complaints. Customers may wish to leave bad reviews due to no apologies or follow-ups to issues. Try including a complaint form that is highly visible and easy to use on your website. Respond to online reputation services . They will know that you've heard them and that you're dealing with the issues. This can help you decrease or eliminate negative reviews.

You need to help customers develop realistic expectations along the way. This includes being totally upfront with customers, and when there is a mistake made, you must be willing to handle it correctly. Transparency goes a long way in building a strong reputation.

Blogs are wonderful ways to bolster your online presence and increase your company's reputation. Feature guest bloggers in your industry, offer tips on how to use your products and other information that will help your customers. One of the best strategies is to feature other businesses that compliment your products and services.

Make sure that your personal social networking pages are completely private to everyone except your friends. While this may seem like you are being irrationally mysterious, the result will be negative people having less of your information to run with. Business pages should always be available to everyone that wants to take a look.

Pay attention to the reputation your business has offline. Your offline reputation will make its way into the online world. If negative content on your company becomes a trend, you need to know why. Treat all your clients and customers well and urge the happy ones to leave positive reviews on sites like Yelp.

When you have a growing business, it is inevitable that you come into contact with many more consumers. Sometimes their comments will be negative. You have to address them in the right way.

Get involved with your community. One of the best ways to bolster your company's reputation is to do charitable deeds in your community. By taking the time to give back to your community, you will receive good publicity and will also allow you a chance to talk with a lot of people that you otherwise would never get to talk to.

If your company has a negative review online, do not overreact. One of the worst things a company can do is respond to a negative comment or complaint with anger. Also, do not try to retaliate against whoever posted the complaint. These types of reaction are not going to solve the problem and will only draw more attention to all the negativity.

Personalize each of your responses. Avoid using templates for your responses. Instead, personally write each response as if you were talking to your customer face to face. Your customer will know if you are using templates and will feel as if you do not care about their opinions or business.

When you are online and you know that you want to do something that may ruin your business reputation, you should always use a pseudonym. This will give you someplace to hide so no one knows that it is you. Do not tell anyone about this or you risk the chance of others finding out.

When handling online disputes, be sure to stay calm and avoid sarcasm. Just stick to the facts at hand. If there is some part of the problem that is actually your fault, you should apologize for your part in the problem. Suggest resolving the difficulty off-line through a phone call or e mails. This will help bolster your online reputation and allow you to work more intensively on the problem at hand.

While it is tempting to create profiles and pages on every social networking site available, don't do it if you don't have the time and resources to keep all those pages current. You'll look incompetent, lazy and possibly damage your reputation if a potential customer discovers your poorly managed, out-of-date content.

Having a good reputation as an employer is also good for your business. Your employees are often in the first line of contact with your customers. An employee with a positive attitude about his job shows through in the service that he offers to customers. Therefore, treat your employees well.

Make your business available to customers if you desire to improve your business reputation. Be sure that real people answer your phones and reply to emails. Customers will hate your business if they can't ever reach anyone.

Get familiar with the review sites that are on the web. More and more people are writing reviews about their experiences with a product or service. You never know if a review was written about your company. Do not ignore reviews, but learn from them. reputation score is good way to improve your business.

As stated in the introduction, you have many things on your mind when you are running your business. Your reputation is one of those things. You would not have a business without a good reputation. Follow the useful tips listed above to keep your reputation and business in good standing.