Online Reputation Reviews are constantly keeping an eye out for what people are saying about your business or service. It means being in the loop about people’s thoughts and opinions as they form them. In this day and age, people are very vocal. They will talk about a business whether they love or hate it. Unfortunately, people tend to pay more attention to the bad than the good. Therefore, it’s key to constantly be keeping an eye on any mention of your business across the internet.

According to Entrepreneur, the key to online reputation management is constantly checking social media. Social media has now become the place that people go to when they want to vent or rave about something. It’s so important to be always scanning social media for posts and mentions of the name of your business. This way damage control can be done if it’s negative. A business or service should always respond to what customers are saying. If someone gives a compliment on Facebook or Twitter then a business should hit the like button. If someone has something negative to say, a business should respond accordingly. This shows people that a business cares. Ignoring it is the worst choice a business can make.

There are an increasing amount of social media sites and therefore it’s key to always be on top of the latest ones. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the big three. They contain search bars so that makes it easy to search for what’s being said about your business. According to Entrepreneur, there are a couple of different tools that a business can use that helps to alert them when someone mentions their service. This is an easy way to stay on top of managing their reputation.

Overall, social media actually makes online reputation management easier. This is because everything is written out in the open. It’s not like word of mouth where things were harder to track down because there was no digital footprint. Social media also gives businesses a chance to make it right if there happens to be an angry customer.

In today’s internet and social-media focused world, managing both your personal reputation and the reputation of your brand in the eyes of the online community are incredibly important. The internet as described by online reputation reviews is an echo chamber–especially when it comes to negativity–so it is important to make sure that you can counteract this amplifying affect with as much positivism as possible. You know the old saying, “it takes a million compliments to build you up, but only one insult to send you crashing down.” So, what are the best ways to keep your reputation positive?
According to an article at Customer Think, there are 2 simple techniques that you can use to help keep your business’ reputation above the water. The first is to take preventative measures. Take steps, both personally and in your business structure, to build up a positive reputation before anything happens to sully it! Reach out to unhappy customers, make sure that the positive effects of your business are well-known and reported on, and–of course–make certain that your employees know the proper attitude and conduct that they should have to represent the business. All of this will help to generate positive buzz and give you a head start for the next technique.

The second way to keep your reputation positive is to respond to negativity by flooding the news outlets and search engines with positivity. Most consumers won’t look past the first page of search results when they’re looking up your company, so if you can create enough positivity to knock negative results off of the first page it will significantly improve your company’s reputation! Of course, this technique isn’t foolproof, and it will take a lot more work to knock the negativity off the first page when an irate customer is searching specifically for negative news.

The most important thing in reputation management is positivity, both in action and reaction. The internet is an echo chamber after all, and if you react negatively to or act negatively toward customers it will just amplify the negativity and make it more likely that it will generate more negative news, so stay positive, both personally and professionally!