How to Effectively Manage Your Company’s Online Reputation

By Jezabel Southard

Posted on August 9, 2013

With the recent explosion of social media and online communication, a company’s online reputation matters more than ever before.  Your organization’s online reputation affects your ability to attract new customers and to retain current ones.  It also affects your ability to attract top candidates to apply for positions within your organization.  In some situations, a poor online reputation or the resulting negative feedback can sour a top employee’s relationship with your company, increasing the chances that your key players will look elsewhere.

How can your company manage its online reputation to give the best impression to both customers and candidates?  Consider the following tips:

  1. Register your username. – Your company’s name should belong to your company.  Register one or more domain names that include your company’s name, and register your company’s name as a username on major social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus.  Tools like Naymz and KnowEm allow you to connect your brand name across platforms and keep track of its use as new social networking tools pop up.
  2. Control your privacy settings. – Every social network has privacy settings that allow you to control what information is available to certain groups of connections on that network and to the public as a whole.  Familiarize yourself with the privacy settings on each of your company’s social media sites, and use them to manage the information that appears about your company and brand on each platform.
  3. Track your online reputation. – Keeping track of what is being said about your company on social networking sites is key to responding quickly to negative information and settling customer complaints.  Set up alerts through Google and Yahoo to track mentions of your company online and use an RSS reader to keep all these alerts in one convenient place, or use a service designed especially for tracking online reputation, like Social Mention, Trackur, or BoardReader.
  4. Get involved.Social media does more than merely allow you to track your online reputation: it also allows you to build the reputation you want your company to have.  Use social media to initiate conversations, build groups, post news and updates, and more.  Using the “community” aspect of social media also connects you to top talent in your industry or field, building an audience of potential candidates whenever you need to fill a crucial position.

Your company’s online presence is often reviewed by job candidates who are considering employment at your company. A strong online presence and an effective hiring strategy will help you attract top candidates! At TERRA Staffing, our experienced staffing partners can help you find and keep great talent.  Contact us today to learn more!

Categories: HR and Management Advice

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Related Posts