5 Tips for Reputation Management

Whether or not you’ll admit it, chances are you’ve Googled yourself in the past year or two. Maybe you did it out of vanity, or maybe you were just curious to see what’s being said on the web about you. No matter the reason, it’s a good idea to know how your personal brand shows up online to others – especially for active job seekers. By the same token, it’s just as important, if not more, to know where your corporate brand ranks online. This is called reputation management.

Sure, there was a similar service offered back in the golden olden days (actually not so long ago) where public relations firms would provide clippings from publications that ran stories, features and advertising about your brand. In the digital age, getting started with reputation management can be done simply by entering your company name or variations into your favorite search engine and seeing what comes up.  

Reputation Management can help you identify issues you may not have known about otherwise, such as complaints on customer review sites like Yelp.com and forum discussions on consumer watchdog sites. While you can’t necessarily remove these types of negative posts, you can address the issues that sparked them, and take proactive steps to push down the negative results and ensure that you control the first two pages of Google.

      Here are five tips for online reputation management:

1. Determine what keywords resonate with consumers and focus on those terms.
2. Decide if you are going to address the negative reviews and how to respond.
3. Create great web content, such as active social media networks, informative websites and popular blogs.
4. Take steps to improve the problems that sparked the negativity in the first place and ask customers to leave a review when they’ve had a positive experience.
5. Measure the results against a baseline and work toward a goal.   

Don’t let this short list fool you – reputation management can be challenging, especially when someone high up in your company also has a reputation management issue, which can happen all too often. The key is to be proactive and monitor the search engines regularly. If you do have a problem with reputation management, you may even want to consider hiring a professional or agency to help you with a strategy and execution. Consorte Marketing recently put together this infographic on reputation management that includes additional tips.  

Consorte Marketing Infographic on Reputation Management

Has your company experienced backlash from negative reviews online? How did you deal with it?

Google’s High-Priced Keywords

We all have certain keywords that we bid on but feel are overpriced. We get that sour puckered face every time we are forced to bid a little higher. For the sake of making all of us feel a little bit better for this Labor Day weekend I did research on some of Google’s most expensive keywords. Keep in mind that these big amounts can change quickly and you might see a different amount than what I’m going to show you below. Are you ready to feel better about your keyword bid amounts?

• $223.07 no win no fee accident claims
• $197.98 national accident helpline
• $157.01 swiftcover car insurance
• $113.14 mesothelioma attorney utah
• $92.55 secured loans
• $88.57 direct insurance
• $65.33 online schools
• $53.95 accident injury lawyers
• $53.45 mortgage refinance
• $43.11 asbestos cancer

Can you believe somebody’s willing to pay $223.07 per click for a keyword? For their sake, I hope they’re getting a decent cost per conversion. I told you it was going to work friends, you’re already feeling better about your bids. If you know of any keywords that are more expensive than $223.07, let me know in the comments below.

Resurrecting Old Keywords

Through the evolution of a pay per click campaign, many keywords and ads will be removed for various reasons, including poor click through rate, poor conversion rate, etc. Of course, I hope you paused these keywords and ads rather than deleting or editing them so they retain their historical data (click through rate, conversion rate, etc). Paused keywords and ads are often forgotten and new variations are more likely added to campaigns over the course of time. Some of those ads and keywords that did not work out well in the past, however, may work out now.

Lets say at some point you found your ad copy to convert poorly. Therefore, you paused the ad and replaced it with a new one. Later down the road, you have found that a new landing page is causing your campaign to convert much better. You may have some old paused ads that are actually very good, but rather than going through your old ads, you forget about them. For this reason, it is beneficial to go through paused ads and keywords from time to time and see if they are worth resurrecting.

It may not only be the case that a new landing page gives new opportunity to old phrases and ads. Changes in the market can also have an effect on performance. So before you decide to add a bunch of new keywords and ads to your campaign, go through your paused ones and see if there may be some that are now more relevant.