The DOs & DON'Ts of Online Reputation Management
Online reputation management is about ensuring the information people find online about you or your brand is correct and up-to-date. This is done through two primary actions: (a) monitoring mentions of your brand (or mentions of relevant personnel) across the web and social media, and (b) taking steps as necessary to ensure accurate information is prominent in search.
Alas, online reputation management has developed a bad, well, reputation because it's often associated with unethical practices like sockpuppetry, SEO hacking, and assorted legal threats. The truth is that these practices are not only wrong, they're also ineffective. The best way to demonstrate a positive reputation is to earn one, and the best way to do that is to be honest and transparent with your customers and employees.
So without further ado, here are our DOs and DON'Ts for online reputation management. Many of these tips apply to community management efforts as well. After all, your engagements back-and-forth with users on social are just as prominent a part of your digital footprint as your website, YouTube videos, or media coverage.
Don’t Argue with customers
We get it. You're in the right and some angry customer on the internet is completely, irrefutably, wrong. And if there were an internet judge and jury, you would have an open-and-shut case.
Unfortunately, there is no such justice system on the internet, and the only jury you'll find is other customers, who probably aren't sure what to make of your back-and-forth with a Twitter user in Topeka about shipping rates.
Do take conversations offline
People can be quite direct when voicing complaints on social media, and sometimes that directness veers into anger and obnoxiousness. Per our advice above, you should avoid getting drawn into back-and-forth arguments, especially with customers. Instead, try to take heated conversations offline by offering your email address or phone number or at least inviting them to direct message you. Make it clear, though, that you do intend to directly address the complaint. That will signal to other users that you take customer service seriously and are trying to handle the issue.
PRO TIP: If you're in hospitality and somebody posts a complaint about service charges to your Facebook page, you could try responding with a message like this:
Hi [customer name], we're sorry to hear that you're having this problem. Can you please email us at feedback@company.com so we can figure out what's going on? You can also reach us by phone at [insert your number here].
A response like this demonstrates you're taking the complaint seriously—but you also want to avoid promising to take a certain action (like waiving a service charge) until you've had a chance to investigate the matter.
Don’t ignore critical posts
Everyone knows the first rule of the internet, right? Never (ever ever ever ever) read the comments.
So why, then, are we telling you not to ignore negative posts from randos? Well, the internet's first and best rule is great for the majority of individual netizens, but when you represent a brand or business you should definitely be reading anything and everything posted online about your product, service, or operation.
The reason for this is twofold:
If you can see it, then any other user searching for your brand can as well. It's important to know what's out there, especially if these comments are surfacing prominently on social or on sites listed on the first page of search results.
If somebody is complaining about a problem they're having, then you have to consider that the issue they're raising might be legitimate—and one that other customers may be thinking privately.
Now, conversely, you don't want to obsess over each and every critical post either. You can't please everybody, after all. But you should strive to give every complaint a fair hearing.
Here's a great example of what we mean: If you've ever run a restaurant or food cart, you've inevitably read reviews of your food on social and especially on Yelp. People are picky eaters and will complain about the weirdest things ("the mashed potatoes just weren't as good as grandma's"), and if the majority of your reviews are positive and you're confident that your food is excellent, you probably have nothing to worry about. But if people are making the same complaints repeatedly ("the mashed potatoes are too salty"), then that's something you need to take seriously.
Do actively engage with negative reviews
If you have the bandwidth to do so, you should not only read but respond to posts (both positive and negative) on Amazon, eBay, Yelp, Glassdoor, Indeed, and any other site featuring user-generated reviews.
You're not necessarily going to win over critics this way, but you're going to demonstrate to other potential customers—and to potential investors, employees, etc.— that you take complaints seriously. And by offering to take conversations offline, you'll signal that you're responsive without overcommitting yourself.
PRO TIP: Here's an example of how to respond to a critical review. Let's say somebody posts the following negative comment about your company to Glassdoor:
Pros: Plenty of parking!
Cons: This company is reeling and management is just making things worse. Meetings are extended blame games and the work environment is absolutely toxic.
Ouch, right? You might be tempted to fire off a response strongly refuting some of these claims, but that would be a big mistake. Instead, try to acknowledge concerns (people want to be heard) without conceding guilt, then provide an email to continue the conversation:
Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback. We are sorry to hear about your negative work experience and would like to hear further details, as we take claims like this very seriously. Please email us at feedback@example.com. All messages will be treated confidentially.
The approach here shouldn't just be to deflect, of course. If employees believe your work environment has become toxic, that is absolutely something you should look into. But by responding promptly to posts like this, you're at minimum demonstrating that your company takes its reputation seriously.
Don’t try your hand at sock-puppetry
Sockpuppetry is creating fake online accounts for some deceptive purpose, whether supporting radical political views on Twitter (You: "Let's start a cryptocurrency political party!" Your suckpuppet: "What a great idea! You should totally be the leader!" Your other suckpuppet: "You've already earned the vote of *this* stay-at-home mom, Mr. Handsome.") or promoting your products or services on review sites ("★★★★: I thought you could only get multivitamins like this in Mexico").
It's easy to understand the appeal of sockpuppetry. When you have a new business, you want to create buzz about it any way you can. That's why restaurants, for instance, resort to purchasing positive Yelp reviews. (And why fraudulent reviews from fake accounts are rampant on Amazon, despite the company's repeated efforts to crack down on the practice.)
Sockpuppetry is a really bad idea for countless reasons, but here are the most important ones:
People are pretty good at spotting BS, including fake reviews that offer unadulterated puffery. Think of all the times you've skimmed through Amazon product reviews. Which reviews actually influenced your buying decision? Probably the ones that provided detailed assessments of both pros and cons.
Algorithms and site administrators are also getting better at flagging these kinds of posts—generally from new accounts with no prior activity—and either deleting them or at least hiding them from readers.
Whatever short-term gains might come from sockpuppetry will quickly be undone by the bad PR you'll get when your shenanigans are eventually uncovered.
Also worth noting: the FTC considers false reviews to be a form of deceptive marketing, so in the most extreme cases there could be legal repercussions.
Do encourage honest reviews from real customers
The most valuable part of social media for brands and businesses—and we're obviously excluding cat memes from this conversation so we don't get distracted—is that you can listen to feedback from real customers instead of focus group facsimiles. There's clear value in finding out exactly what people with direct experience using your product or service think about it.
The best way to generate this kind of useful feedback is to encourage customers (or employees, members of the public, etc.) to leave honest and even critical feedback. There's a selfish component to this as well. If you just sit back passively and wait for feedback, you're probably going to see a disproportionate amount of negative posts.
The reason why is simple human nature. Think about it: when was the last time you left an unprompted review? Probably after you had a negative experience. Nothing drives people to post impassioned diatribes like (perceived) poor customer service!
That's why services that effectively rely on crowdsourced ratings like Uber and AirBnB almost force users to provide a score after every ride, stay, etc. (This system works for riders and guests as well. One impassioned plea to pppplllllleeeeeaaaassseee detour through the Taco Bell drive-thru before it closes shouldn't be enough to ruin your reputation permanently!!)
PRO TIP: Make it a point to ask buyers to leave you a review on Amazon, employees to leave reviews on Glassdoor, diners to post on Yelp, etc. You'll probably get a mix of positive and critical assessments, and that's exactly what you want.
Don’t try to cheat with black hat SEO techniques
If you've read this far into a blog post about online marketing tips, you probably know that SEO (search engine optimization) refers to a set of techniques for getting certain websites or web pages to the top of search results, particularly Google search results. SEO is thus closely related to reputation management, as it obviously benefits you to control (to whatever extent possible) the type of results that show up when users search for your brand.
SEO is great and should be a key component of your efforts to optimize your web presence. But black hat SEO—meaning techniques that attempt to fool algorithms into ranking pages higher—should be avoided at all costs. Of course, black hat practitioners don't go around referring to their services as "black hat SEO," but the tricks of the trade are fairly recognizable, including:
Keyword stuffing: Jamming as many SEO keywords onto a page as possible, even at the expense of readability. Keywords can also be masked with code so that they don't appear to the reader.
Link farming: Leveraging a cultivated set of websites that all link to one another to improve Google PageRank.
Content cloaking: Showing one type of content to search engine spiders and another to users.
These types of duplicitous SEO tactics can get your website deindexed by Google and other search engines. And even legal black hat techniques (like churning out loads of SEO content with little value) are a bad look, as they reflect poorly on your brand.
Do optimize your digital presence
Black hat SEO = bad. But honest SEO = good. Really good, even! Getting your website listed as high as possible is perhaps the most consequential type of reputation management, as you want the messaging you use to describe your brand or organization to be the first thing customers (especially first-time customers) see after they search for you.
Effective "white hat" SEO techniques that everyone should use include:
Posting quality articles: Write for readers, not search-engine spiders. You want to create content that people will genuinely find useful, and maybe even share with their social networks.
Generating earned media: Getting major outlets to link back to your site as part of coverage about your brand or business can be a major SEO boost.
Using unobtrusive optimization: It's common sense, not black hat trickery, to use keyword-rich page titles and metadata. This kind of optimization is low-hanging fruit that shouldn't be overlooked.
These techniques can help with your Google ranking, but your optimization efforts shouldn't stop with search results. There are easy ways to improve your presence on sites like Amazon, Yelp, and even Glassdoor. In general, any time a prominent site creates a profile for your brand or business, you should claim it and take whatever steps are possible to improve how you appear.
PRO TIP: Did you know that Facebook and Google Places automatically generate listings for businesses with physical addresses? Have you checked to see if you have such a listing, and if so what kind of things customers may have posted there about your brand?
Don’t get caught flat-footed
Do Implement a strategy for managing your online reputation
Per the Facebook and Google Places example above, it's important to keep tabs on your digital presence so that you don't miss something important. The best way to do this is to create and initiate a strategy to manage your online reputation. Ideally, these efforts will run alongside your marketing strategy and become integrated into your overall business plan. Again, reputation isn't about short-time traffic boosts or fleeting positive posts. You want to develop and maintain a positive digital footprint that reflects your brand's strengths and stature.
We tried to cover the basics with this post, but reputation management is a big topic and implementing an effective strategy means becoming familiar with each and every platform or site where you have a presence. If you have comments or questions about any of these suggestions, please send us an email or tag us on social. We're also happy to discuss how we can help your organization with online reputation issues, whether on social media, Wikipedia, or Glassdoor.
