Our recent Designing Strategies newsletter issue covered guarding and protecting your company brand online. The need for protecting your online reputation assumes, of course, your company has a web site or other form of online presence. In today’s world, the Internet is where customers look for you. An active online presence is a major part of your branding efforts. It may sound drastic, but you need to protect your online reputation at all costs.
Far too many small businesses, especially those in the retail arena, still have not created a website. Many don’t have a blog to present their company either. Their reputation, branding and success are left open to the world for damage or destruction.
I ran across one such company on Manta that listed just the basics: name, address and phone number. No email address, no website, no hours of operation. You know, the kind of things people look for when they want to spend money. It’s nice to be on sites like Manta without any cost or work involved, but is that all you think people want to know about your firm for a business relationship? Name, address and phone number just isn’t enough.
The Good, Bad and Ugly of Online Reputations
Let’s start with the Bad part first. If it wasn’t bad enough that there was so little information about that company, there was even more. There was a scathing review by a potential customer who decided not to become their customer and was upset enough to tell the world why.
The good news is the business owner found the negative comment and responded. That is the sum total of the Good in this situation. They completely missed the opportunity to tell the world more about what they have to offer by adding more useful information on that free site. Not one more piece of information was added to that basic listing. It would have cost nothing – zip, zilch, nada. The time involved to add more information to influence prospects would have taken less than half an hour.
The Ugly is the company took the time to respond. Unfortunately, they took a defensive posture in responding. A disgruntled consumer had been looking for their services for what sounded like a sizeable project. They were upset that the company had a typical 9-5 business schedule, five days a week. No evenings, no weekend hours. Not that replying was bad, but the manner and tone they took in doing so added yet one more bit of unfavorable information to influence other future customers. It is important to manage and protect your online reputation. Once bad news is out there about you, it is very difficult to remove.
Protect YOUR Online Reputation
Customers are always right, even when they are wrong. Like it or not, that’s how the business world rolls. How much effort would it have taken to kill this person with kindness? A brief apology that they were sorry their business didn’t turn out to be the best for the customer’s needs would have been far superior to returning tit for tat the negative attitude. When the next potential customer finds them at this site on the Internet, will they be interested in doing business with someone who will likely treat them shabbily as well? My money’s on the no way chances. We only get one chance to make an impression, so why not make it a good impression? This goes for in-person encounters as well as your online reputation.
Everything is very open with a precise description of the challenges.
It was truly informative. Your website is very helpful. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you found the article useful. While the Internet may be a big, wonderful concept, we can never expend too much time or energy protecting our brand or reputation in cyberspace.