A Strong Defense is Always Your Best Offense

There is much more to Reputation Management then simply just repairing and providing your company with positive search results. A lot goes into securing your information so that you are protected from any type of negative review that you once had or any that might try to come up at any point in the near future.

Online Reputation Management firms all have privacy policies that give very detailed descriptions on how they deal with your information why the do things a certain way and who is allowed to view your information. This is done to protect you from any spam related sites that may latch onto your information and begin to infiltrate your system with junk mail and all sorts of garbage. Privacy policies also help keep track of the sites you visit and sites you have previously visited, this is done using cookies which is there to keep track of your activity on the web. Having cookies available to you when dealing with Reputation Management online is very beneficial because it allows for them to be able to provide information about certain sites that may be harmful to you and your Online Reputation. With cookies you do have the option of denying access to your information which means your information won't be tracked but in some instances that may be doing more harm than good and also limits how much access your online Reputation Management gives you. When unknown sources try to gain access to your information if your privacy is properly protected by your Reputation Management firm you can rest easy knowing that unless authorized they won't be able to give out your information. This is probably one of the top two reasons it's important to have a Reputation Management firm monitor your websites, as a business owner you are not aware of what outside sources are legitimate and who is really just dealing with junk mail or malicious content. If you happen to get involved with one of these malicious sites you are putting your company’s reputation in jeopardy because you are now affiliated with that site, and now have a negative reputation among various people who visit your site as a company that either delivers spam or can pass a virus onto their system. I don't have to tell you what that means from a financial standpoint just look at your balance sheets.

Privacy policies are there to protect everyone who engages on any type of internet activity. When you combine that along with ReputationManagement you are giving yourself the best opportunity for your business to be successful for not just the short run but most importantly the long run.

Strategy Tips on How to Generate Online Reviews

Strategy Tips on How to Generate Online Reviews

It is very important in today's business world that you receive positive online reviews in order for your business to strive and continue to succeed. Statistics have proven that customers are very hesitant to do business with a company that has a plethora of negative reviews; however, on the other hand, customers tend to not trust a business when there are no reviews pertaining to that business. Positive or negative reviews are important to the brand, but obviously you would want your business to be receiving a lot more positive reviews than negative ones. If you are not doing so already, it is extremely important for you to have online positive reviews. Logically you cannot force someone to write positive reviews, however these helpful strategies will help towards building those positive listings you will need for your business reputation.

Offering Remarkable Experiences

It is very common to hear businesses say that they offer great customer experience, and have a very friendly staff; however, that is not what earns positive reviews. Your staff should give the client a very satisfying experience that he/she will find remarkable and worth writing a review on.

Thinking in the Long Run

Going after great scores on Yelp and other sites where reviews are made is not enough in order for you to continue receiving positive reviews. You should find all the possible means that will make your clients happy. This should not be for the short run but an overall satisfaction that will be ongoing.

Training is the Starting Point

A great consumer experience all begins with the staff that you have on board. Having a  friendly and knowledgeable staff is extremely important because it ties in with the client's experience. Here at Centel Media™we make sure that our staff is knowledgeable about the services that we offer. Usually bad experiences happen when the staff at a certain business does not have the information or resources in order to better help their clients. You want to make sure you explain to your team members how important it is to give a client a remarkable customer experience.

Just Ask

All the tips and strategies above are necessary in order to receive positive reviews; however, it is not enough. It is also necessary to ask your client to write a  good review and describe the overall customer experience that he/she received. Training your staff members to ask for these positive reviews is also a must because you need to go out of your way in order to receive these review. Post links on your website and make sure that you let the customer know that you want this positive review!

How I See You

How we see each other is very different from the thousands of people we see everyday on the street getting to where we have to go. Those are thousands of opinions and thousands of impressions all different from one another which makes the situation even more unique. Now lets take those thousands of opinions and put it into Google and click search, that number goes from thousands to the upper hundreds of millions. When you take all those results you should know you are more than likely going to find more than one bad review or negative comment that may be true or not depending on who you speak to, but this adds to the uniqueness of the internet all results won't be positive.

When the results tend to bring up malicious rumors and damaging information thats when it becomes a problem. No matter if you are a regular person or someone running for some kind of office these results tend to give bad impressions to people who never met you but this is the only way of them knowing you. To a business positive Reputation Management can be the difference of a positive quarterly earning to one that came up short due to some false information being said about you online. It is imperative for a company to also look good on Social Media. Overlooking that will doom you from the start you'll drive away customers before you've had the chance to say hello. As we can see Reputation Management covers all steps when it comes to representing you online.

While there are many ways to alert you anytime something is being said about you, in my opinion none are as effective as hiring a Reputation Management firm to fully take on those responsibilities for you. It can be a daunting task to try and run a business and try to manage your company's reputation online as well as dealing with Social Media. Yes you can take progressive and preventive steps to help manage your online profile but with technology always expanding you will find yourself getting negative reports from places you have never even done business in before. Of course the best way to avoid this is not to get caught in any compromising situations, don't get arrested for any crime and please don't post pictures of a drunken escapade. While you may think it was cool your future employer doesn't and as we have learned recently the love you are looking for online won't either. But we all are human and mistakes will be made but how we move on from them is telling about our character and hopefully we learn from them.

Foundation Built To Last

Without a solid foundation anything built within time is bound to fall leaving you right where you were before you began the process of building, square one. Anything that isn't carefully researched or supported by facts can be just as damaging as a weak foundation. Both are going to produce similar results and can be avoided by researching and developing a strong foundation that makes it nearly impossible to take you down with just one blow.

All big companies need a rugged system to play the role of enforcer making sure that whatever is being said about you is up to your standards giving the most honest reviews possible. These enforcers are given the task to search the internet far and wide going places that only few search engines would care to, but that's the job of the enforcer to do the job no one wants. There is nothing beautiful about it there will be no parties or any celebrations for you. There is none needed though in all honesty your satisfaction comes from knowing that you are the foundation of your company, ensuring that as long as you are working that it will continue to thrive, prosper and out due all rivals. The stronger your hub the more successful your company is because it has done its fair share of researching targeted areas that were sensitive to your company and have now turned those into strengths. We can't forget Social Media and its presence but your team has you covered and has made sure you are properly represented from Facebook to Twitter, less time spent on these task means more time to spend on other profit increasing projects.

A company that wants to survive and eventually expand has to invest in a good R&D team or as I call them enforcers. What they mean to your company cannot be understated or undervalued. Having them doing proper research is beneficial to you because it makes sure everyones hard work is not going to waste. If your marketing, promotion and other parts of your business are intact but you have a bad online reputation it overrides everything that you have built so far. You have nothing to support you if you are faced with negative reports online, false rumors being spread about you on Social Media or any Reputation Management situation. What a great R&D team does for you is gives you a piece of mind knowing you can go full speed ahead with your company because you know your foundation is solid and won't crumble under pressure.

Google Has Your Back

The tech world can be a world full of opportunity and hope. Dreams become reality and can further expand than one could have ever imagined linking you with people from all over the world and who come from different walks of life. It can also be a cruel world one where there are countless amounts of people looking to take advantage of you and your company. While there isn't much to do to get rid of those that are up to no good, search engines are now providing ways to protect yourself from them.

Google is first in line when it comes to protecting your company's online reputation and makes sure that you are getting the most out of the products it uses. As the world moves forward and people begin to become more tech savvy there are a few people who choose to use their knowledge for bad rather than putting it to better use. Hackers, spam and all things malicious on the internet can destroy a company just for the fun of it not taking into account all the hard work that you put into building your brand. As a business owner one way to avoid this ever happening to you is making sure you are always updated with the newest software so that it makes it harder for your company to be breached for someone’s amusement. With Google now using Penguin 2.0 it becomes even harder to tamper with your company online. Search engines need to update every so often to keep hackers and spam related sites from getting too much of a strangle hold of your online reputation which will make it even harder to change once given the resources to. Preparing for the change to Penguin 2.0 ahead of time gives you an advantage over your rivals as you will have already gone through the process of system wide change and can quickly get back to business.

The change to Penguin 2.0 shouldn't be a major change if you are used to using Google products but if not you might want to consider the change. Penguin 2.0 can only have a positive impact on your company by making it more secure using Google's upgraded algorithm. The impact of not using it can be severe and hold your company back as you watch others make profit and continue to expand. The key to success is there it’s up to you to use it.

A Long Road Ahead

At some point in time we have found ourselves in an awkward situation having to come up with the best explanation to dig ourselves out of that hole. While explaining may be the easy part to some the universally hard part is whether or not those we are explaining ourselves to choose to believe us. How we are looked at amongst our peers holds major weight with us and to some people how they are viewed is the only thing in life they have that's precious to them, sad but true.

In business you always want to be the company that others admire, envy and desire to be. In order to stay atop that mountain you must have all aspects of your business in check. But as we all know nothing in life is perfect and few things are guaranteed. Eventually you will come across some unsatisfied customer and you will definitely have few rivals as friends that is just the nature of business competition. The customer can have a more damaging impact on your company than any rival could. Any infraction that occurs with a customer can hopefully be forgiven with proper press and time of course, but dealing with the internet keep in mind that it won't go away....ever!!! As a business your best bet is to take advantage of any Online Reputation Management available to you. Just letting things die down is not a sound strategy and in some cases has done much more harm than good. Some things are out of your control and if not acted on immediately can snowball into a bigger disaster than it started out as.

Reputation Management can not only help with just online searches but dealing with Social Media as well. Living in a global society you'd be surprised how much of an impact you can have on a country all the way across the world. If you choose not to properly deal with your issues at home when you go abroad they will be even bigger because of the image you have given your brand as one who doesn't care about it's customer. Dealing with any issue head on is always the best way to approach any customer related situation. After all customers talk and when the negative words get out about your company you will most certainly suffer the consequences. While the negative press won't go away automatically the effort you show in making sure you're providing the best service possible can only benefit you in the long run and after all the long run tells more than the short run.

Lost In Space

The power of Social Media can be used for good or evil depending on the situation. The good we are in constant connection with our friends and family updating them on every detail of our lives. As good as that is there is also a bad side to Social Media connection, more recently many people have gotten caught up in sexting or having personal messages end up in the hands of the wrong person and find them on some gossip site or underground website.

What these actions have exposed is the loose restrictions that Social Media operates under. Yes they do ban lewd or obscene content but not all is caught, and when that happens it leads to much controversy about how much of a role Social Media plays in our lives and are we in fact indulging in it too much. More often than not teenagers are the victims of this action. They become victims of their own immaturity and poor judgment when it comes to Social Media. Having thousands of friends on any Social Media network is a wonderful thing but the moment you find yourself caught up in any scandal or the wrong picture gets out believe that those thousands of friends will get the picture. The fact that a teen would take or even trust anyone with this kind of content is very troubling and shows a flaw in the relationship between them and their parents.

Parents should oversee any activity that their child participates in when it comes to Social Media. They cannot leave it up to Social Media moderators to protect their children from the creeps that scour the internet looking for easy targets to get caught up. Educating your child on the pitfalls of Social Media is imperative and in today's society has become a lesson plan in parenting. Proper education can be the difference between your child falling for some scam and them not falling for one. They have to know that what they do will follow them all over, the internet doesn't totally discard your dirty work and all it takes is a couple clicks to find any picture you thought was long forgotten about. Our reputations never leave us whether it’s in person or online and when something like sexting tarnishes that it takes years of hard work to repair our reputations because this type of damage can spread globally and impact you in ways you didn't think could. Preparation and education are two of the best ways to avoid these pitfalls.