Online reputation management has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to companies being hurt by negative reviews. About five years ago Dominoes pizza’s online reputation was hurt by an employee who posted a video of them spitting in the food and then selling it to customers.
By the time Dominoes Pizza noticed the video and took action, there were already a few million people views the day after. That is why it is important to keep an eye out on your branded terms on social media as well as on search engines. There are many applications to keep track of specific terms. The more people using these terms on average that is when account managers are notified.
Appropriate action needs to be taken tin order not to get a repeat of what happen to Dominoes and many other brands in the history of social media. With the ubiquity of the Internet, it does not take very long for people to see a certain post online. That is why it is important to have these precautionary steps set up to be sure you are not caught in an online reputation mess.
There are things you can do as a business or an individual to be better prepared for some levels of an online attack. It is somewhat common to get customers to write negative reviews about your company. But be sure to have other positive ones by asking your best customers to take the time to write ones.
Blogging is another great way to get your target audience to know what you are all about and what you represent. In addition, it can help you get placed higher in search engines. It is somewhat of a vicious cycle since the more you post on your blog with your important keywords placed into the text, the more credibility Google gives you so the higher you ranking will be on their search engine. This will lead to more people visiting your site and higher engagement, which Google likes too.
In a perfect world, this would take place but it all depends on the keyword difficulty. If there are a lot of other companies trying to rank for that term, it will be harder to compete. Especially if they have been a top contender for that keyword for many years and they get the bulk of the traffic. It is best to have some kind of knowledge on how online reputation management works.