Using Links for Online Reputation Management

by Angela Moore on January 7, 2008

If you don’t know who is linking to you, how do you know what they are saying? Whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral, people are talking about you if they know you are there. This is where the rest of link acquisition comes in.  There are several avenues that you can use links for monitoring your business’s online reputation. 

  1. Social media – what are people talking about in your industry. The Cluetrain Manifesto is articulate in describing the internet as what it truly is: a conversation. Get into some of these online gathering places and find out what people are saying and, more importantly, what they care about. Do a search on your company name and some names of popular social media networks to see if they are talking about you. What are they saying? Do they hate your customer service? Love your products but hate how long it takes to reach them? Find out by longing on.
  2. Local search reviews – This is another way to find out what people really think. The anonymity of the internet allows people to speak their minds freely and give honest feedback and opinions. What did they think of dealing with your company the last time they bought something from you or used your service?
  3. Blogs – Hunting through popular blogs in your industry will give you another avenue of peeking into the ever-elusive mind of the consumer. Try running a search on your name and the word ‘blog’ to see if anyone is blogging about you.

 Once you find out what people are saying, what do you do with it? 

  1. Don’t ignore it. People hate to be ignored. They want to know their concerns and thoughts have validity (and they do). This doesn’t mean you need to get accounts at all of the major social media spots and address every comment they post. But look at your internal structure, your customer service process, your shipping solutions; is there anything you can do to make things easier on your customers, both existing and future?
  2. Make the changes. Equally important to identifying the problems and solutions is the actual follow through on fixing the problem. Keep checking the progress (and the social media outlets) to see if it’s working.
  3. Be available. Participate if you feel it’s important, but users beware! You can open yourself up to a whole bunch more problems if you do this. If you do decide to start talking, prepare yourself for what may be coming next.