12 Surefire Ways to Protect Your Reputation

www.losangeleswebstrategies.com

What is online reputation management?
ORM is …
The process of proactively using
tools, processes, and systems to be aware of
and influence the conversation that is taking
place about you and your business online

What are the stakes?
Short answer:
Everyone is online, and everyone has an opinion!

Look who’s talking (about you)
• Customers
• Prospects
• Competitors
• Disgruntled employees
• Ex spouses
• Former business
partners, investors
• Trolls (the permanently
aggrieved)

Reviews now at the center of search

Today, an unhappy customer
will tell thousands of their
“closest strangers” on the
Internet.

74% of U.S. consumers choose to do
business based on online feedback
Source: Society for Communications Research

59% of U.S. consumers use social sites
to vent about customer care frustrations

72% of U.S. consumers research
companies through social channels
before making purchases

12 Surefire Ways to
Protect Your Reputation
(While Promoting Your Business)

Effective ORM should:
• Be proactive and reactive
– Ideally 90% proactive
• Combine marketing, SEO, public
relations, branding, sales, and customer
service
• Cut across ALL core business functions

Five core principals of ORM
1. Listen to what your customers are saying
2. Contribute to the conversation
3. Delight customers by exceeding expectations
4. Collect feedback, referrals, & testimonials
5. Plan how you will respond before you need to

LISTEN
To what your customers are saying.

1. Set up Google Alerts
Get email updates on the
latest relevant Google
results on your
name, company or
industry keywords

2. Monitor social media sites, blogs and
forums
Tools of the trade:
– Google Reader
– TweetDeck
– Hoot Suite
– Social Mention

CONTRIBUTE
To the conversation in a meaningful way.

Why do you need to contribute?
• You can’t control what people say about your
company BUT …
• You can make sure you’re adding enough to the
conversation to ensure that the ratio of positive
to negative is in your favor!
• THIS IS IMPORTANT!

3. Set up profiles in all of your key
directories and networks
• Google+ Local
*important*
• Yelp
• Trip Advisor
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

4. Start blogging!
• Add social media
sharing buttons
• Post on subjects that
will help your clients
and prospects
• Use posts to populate a
monthly newsletter
Business blogging
leads to 55% more
website visitors
Source: Hubspot

5. Make educational videos and post
them to YouTube
Any given video stands
about a 50x better chance of
appearing on the first page
of results than any given
text page in the index.
Source: Forrester

DELIGHT
Your customers and be easy to work with.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon:
“If you do build a great
experience, customers tell each
other about that. Word of mouth is
very powerful.”

6. Promote remarkable customer service
• Create a service culture
• Happy employees = happy customers
• Establish metrics (and rewards) that promote a good
customer experience
• Encourage all employees to collect testimonials
• Share client praise with your team

7. Start using the Net Promoter Score
• Monitor customer
satisfaction
• Identify ratio of
detractors to promoters
Promoters Detractors NPS

8. Say thank you
• Edible Arrangements
• Postagram
(cool iOS app!)
• Handwritten notes …
$0.45 = customer for life
(OFF THE CHARTS ROI)

COLLECT
Customer feedback, referrals & testimonials

9. Use free or paid survey tools to collect
client feedback
• Survey Gizmo
• Survey Monkey

10. Set up channels for receiving
voluntary feedback
Use these places (and others) to collect unsolicited
feedback:
• Email signature
• Web forms
• Invoices / receipts
• Newsletters

PLAN
Processes > improvisation

11. Develop a process for responding to
negative buzz (before you need it)
• Listen
• Decide whether to
engage
• Apologize
• Affirm
• Take it offline
• Move on
• Reflect
• Act

12. Build a referral system
• Collecting referrals
should be an ACTIVE
and METHODICAL
process
• Consider creating a
referral reward system

Big takeaway?
You can’t control what people say about your company.
But you CAN exercise some control over the larger
conversational context that they say it in.
Proactive ORM is all about making sure you’re adding
enough to the conversation to ensure that the ratio of
positive to negative is in your favor.

What can we do?
Reputations take years to build. But they can
be damaged in minutes ...
We offer highly specialized ORM services to
help you protect and grow the business you’ve
worked so hard to build.

We’d love to help.
Just get in touch!

We’d love to help.
• Just get in touch!
(213) 607-9100

12 Surefire Ways to Protect Your Reputation

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