Now that you’re monitoring your online reputation with your new snazzy tools, can you remember that interior designer from Tucson who had the bad review written about her?  In my first post of the online reputation management series, I spoke of a designer that was raked over the coals (possibly deservedly or possibly not) for being unprofessional and inept.

If someone says something negative about your business online, what should you do?

Let’s face it, if you are a retail business or a company that gets a lot of traffic, you will probably get some bad reviews.  However, WHENEVER POSSIBLE, be sure to respond to those reviews or mentions.  A bad situation can actually be turned 180 degrees with offering a solution or offering to help.

Here are a few things to know about bad reviews online:

1. The writer may feel like they can hide behind a computer screen and when you publicly ask them how you can help make it better, they will back down and be sheepish.  You will also come across as looking good because your answer will be paired with their criticism.  For future onlookers, you will look like you tried to find a solution and that’s all most people want.
2. You may have legitimately done a very bad job and then you need to apologize and let them know that they are right.  Then be sure to list what you are going to do to make it better.
3. Go on the PR offensive.  Typically, there are plenty of people/clients out there thrilled with your service.  If the only person that has ever written about you online wrote something negative, appeal to your happy customers and clients, asking for their honest reviews.  Most of them will be glad to oblige and 5 positive reviews will quickly drown the negative.

In the very rare cases of libelous material, respond to the writer privately and ask them to take the material down.  If they don’t, figure out if you want to consult an attorney.  This happens very, very rarely so don’t lie awake thinking about it at night.

As the second of three parts on managing and monitoring your online reputation, we’ll take a look at the tools you will need to monitor a small business’s online mentions. Larger businesses may want to invest in more robust dashboards and tools, like Radian6, but smaller businesses can get most of what they need from these free tools.

What should you be monitoring?

• Your business name (and any misspellings and iterations)
• Your name and all of your key employees’ names
• Names of any of your products

What tools can you use to monitor these?

Twitter Search. Enter the list above in the keywords. For each keyword, create an RSS feed that either feeds daily to your Google Reader (or similar) or to your email.

Google Alerts. Just like Twitter search, enter your keywords and create an RSS feed for each word or phrase.

Icerocket.com. Monitor keywords and information per the type of social site or online tool.

Socialmention.com. This is much like Google Alerts but it tends to pick up more that is posted in forums, as comments on blogs, etc.

You can also create a reputation management dashboard using Netvibes.com.

While many of these tools will yield the same results, there is no “perfect” tool yet. We recommend having RSS feeds from all of them to ensure that you’re not missing anything. If you’re a relatively small business, chances are there will be few people talking about you online. In fact, chances are there will probably be more people talking about you positively and then you want to thank them for their praise. If you’re someone like Delta or another airline, you will need a lot more than this blog post to help you.

Our next post in the three part series will be about what to do if you find a bad review online.

You might have heard mentions of our sibling company, OttoPilot Media, through the Twitter grapevine, but perhaps you’re wondering what OttoPilot Media is all about.  Make sure your tray tables are in the upright position– here’s the rundown:

In short, OttoPilot Media helps fly your business to a higher level through non-traditional marketing… but that’s more than just a catchy tag-line.  We work with companies to determine which social media platforms will be best for what they want to achieve.  Once that’s defined, we enhance and customize the necessary tools (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, and more) so each social media platform accurately reflects the brand or business.  We want our clients to look like the experienced pilots they are.

Plus, we take care of the hard part: effectively managing these platforms.  Signing up, refueling and applying a fresh coat of paint to these social media accounts isn’t enough– so we generate content, schedule posts and tweets, and make sure you’re always up-to-date, knowledgeable, and engaged with your online communities. You won’t have to worry about a thing– it’s like sitting in first class all the time!

Now, we all know that if a pilot got distracted while flying, the results wouldn’t be too favorable.  To avoid this, we stay focused and alert while your company runs on its familiar schedule (we know that can be a big distraction)– in order to deliver the best in-flight service and turbulence-free ride for you and your clients.

Moreover, we are specialists when it comes to helping our clients develop ideas and get people talking about their brand (and saying good things, of course).  We work with companies to define a manageable flight plan, and then implement our revolutionary tools  (i.e non-traditional marketing) to ensure our clients are visible across online platforms, and consistently sharing their unique brand with others.

Are the skies a little clearer now?  We hope you’ll get in touch to learn more about how OttoPilot Media can help your business fly to new heights!

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