Your Online Reputation

Every customer is now a critic, that is the new reality of business. With blogs, twitter, and websites that allow customers to review your business each and every customer has the power to broadcast their experiences both good and bad. So how do you keep control of the situation, how do you even know what is being said. There isn’t one single answer to that question but the NY Times just released a great article that every small business owner should read entitled, Managing an Online Reputation.

Every customer is now a critic, that is the new reality of business. With blogs, twitter, and websites that allow customers to review your business each and every customer has the power to broadcast their experiences both good and bad. So how do you keep control of the situation, how do you even know what is being said. There isn’t one single answer to that question but the NY Times just released a great article that every small business owner should read entitled, Managing an Online Reputation.

The article provides some quick tips for business owners:

Quick Tips:

• Set up automatic alerts to notify you when your business is mentioned in a review or blog.
• Local search sites are the new Yellow Pages — make sure your business is listed. The more complete your listing, the more likely you are to get good search results.
• Respond to reviews to show readers that you are listening and that you care about customer service.
• Online reviews are a gold mine of business intelligence. Analyze metrics to get a better sense of your customer demographics.
• Don’t write false reviews to puff your business or trash a competitor. You can severely damage your reputation…and look really silly.