Search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful tool for managing many aspects of your organization’s online marketing. One of the least use of SEO, but also one of the most important, is online reputation management.
A simple search for your name and keywords associated with your name and products will reveal things about your company that you may not be aware of. There will be things that you can easily fix, while others are harder to resolve, but more often than not, all can be managed. If you’re already doing SEO for your website, then the technique is directly applicable for reputation management. The only major difference is normal SEO is a marketing and sales function. When applied to reputation management, you add public relations (PR) to the team.
Here are few ideas to get started.
- Know what’s out there. Do a thorough search of terms related to your business name, products and services, like you’re doing a keyword analysis. Be sure to pay attention to the blogosphere and social networking sites. These are the places where you’ll find people discussing and sharing their own experiences about your products and services, both positive and negative.
- Know your battlegrounds. You may find sites and blogs where your reputation is being discussed in positive or negative lights, and you’ll also find sites and blogs where there’s no discussion about your name and products at all. These are both valuable sites to get involved in, as your team will need to not only create marketing and PR campaigns to deal with (or take advantage of) the conversations, but also to create presence where there is lacking.
- Know your online social etiquette. Whatever your campaign goals are, you must adhere to proper social networking etiquette and mind your online social manners. Be yourself, be truthful, be honest, be helpful, and above all, be respectful and understanding of the public’s viewpoints. There are many ways to tell your story, and it’s much better to take the join-and-conquer approach instead of going in with your guns blazing.
- Know where the action is. If you can join a discussion to tell your side of the story or to do damage control, by all means do it. This will allow you to head off a problem straight on, or prevent an issue from blowing out of hand. By doing this, you’ll be seen as part of the solution, as you are actively managing your reputation at the same time. Additionally, you’ll leave a trail of written communication representing your company’s viewpoints around the web. This means when these discussions are found in search results, then your company is also found. This is effective SEO at work.
- Know your first rule of SEO: content. Applying other SEO techniques such as writing keyword-rich content in comments, responses, blogs, forums and chat rooms will further help get your story found in relevant search results. Make it a habit, no, a policy, to always be helpful to the group with good and useful information about your company, products, services and industry. Doing this without being and sounding pushy will get your content found by your potential customers.
Actively managing your reputation through SEO and social networking will bring back immediate and measurable benefits. Reputation management should be an ongoing process. Don’t wait until you really have to manage your reputation, but manage it before you need to. Your name, and the reputation tagged to your name, is so important, you need to start managing it with the utmost urgency. After all, if you don’t care about your reputation, why should your customers?
So what are you doing to manage your reputation, online and offline? Whether you have a campaign or plan in place, try adding SEO and social networking to the mix. And don’t forget to share your experience with us in the comment below. We need all the help we can get. Thanks.
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Tags: Public Relations, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Network Marketing
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