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Managing Your Online Reputation
The Sprocket Report
This article has been updated on 3/2/2021 with the article entitled “Do You Know Who Is Talking about You and What They Are Saying?”
Celebrities hire publicists to manage their reputations by enhancing the celebrity’s best traits, downplaying the less attractive ones and monitoring what people are talking about. Your business has an online reputation like any celebrity. But who’s managing it?
We’re a website development company, but the online reputation we’re talking about goes far beyond your website. Information about your business or organization may be showing up all over the internet and if you aren’t keeping an eye on it, your clients could be getting the wrong message.
One way to know when people are talking about you is to set up a Google Alert for your name, both that of the business and your own as well. You’ll be notified by email when you are mentioned on a website or blog post. This is especially useful to follow the reach of a press release or catch the buzz about a new product or event.
But Google Alerts only notify you when something new is posted. You’ll have to Google your business and scroll through the search results to see what has happened in the past.
You’ll probably be surprised to see how many places your organization is listed in a directory of some sort. There are literally dozens of places that post your information. Some listings you created on purpose, like the directory at a chamber of commerce you joined. But others are automatically generated from online sources without your input and may contain outdated or downright wrong information.
Obviously, you want your business to show up all over the internet, but you need to be your own publicist to play up the good stuff and downplay the less good. Start by getting control over each listing so you can correct any mistakes and build up the listing with your logo, photos and additional information to appeal to prospective customers.
The top search engines are all about personalized experience, so making the most of your local citations is key. Google Places for Business, Bing Business Portal and Yahoo Local are the top three places to start. After you get a handle on those, you’ll want to work on your listings at Yelp, FourSquare and Patch.
Next time we’ll give an overview of what you need to do to control your reputation at each of these citation sites, but if you can’t wait to get started, contact us today to talk about how we can help you manage your digital prominence. We’re always happy to help!
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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