Reputation management is a relatively new area within marketing. In a way, it’s similar to digital public relations; it’s the management of a company’s reputation online. There’s also a customer service component to reputation management.

Today’s reputation managers must deal with what customers and other stakeholders publish publicly on social media, blogs, directories, and many other locations online.

A large part of the reputation management function is to monitor and reply to reviews. Company reviews are available on hundreds of sites. The most common places to look for reviews are Yelp, Google Business, Bing, Amazon, and shopping carts.

If a company receives a positive review, thanking the customer in a response is a nice gesture and recognizes their time spent writing the review. It also reassures others that the company is paying attention to customer feedback.

If the review is negative then swift action should be taken to respond and to apologize publicly.  Take the conversation to a private communications channel such as email or direct messaging. Customer service should resolve the issue quickly and satisfactorily.  Posting a follow-up response to ask the client if there is a resolution to the issue is appropriate.

 Companies should monitor more than just customer reviews. Sites like Glassdoor allow employees to post job satisfaction reviews for prospective workers. Companies in industries with chronic talent shortages will want to allocate resources to monitor these sites effectively.

Reputation management is not all about reviews; it’s also about mentions.   A reputation manager should know if your company name, CEO, or brand names are mentioned online.

There are now several apps that perform reputation management monitoring.  You receive quick alerts to reviews or mentions. A very quick free option is to use Google Alerts to scour the web for company name mentions. Many of these apps also help a business garner more reviews and optimize them to improve their reputation.

Whether your business needs to worry about reputation management depends on many factors, but hopefully this overview will give you an idea of what’s possible in this space.