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Too many businesses feel they don’t need Reputation Management until they’ve got a problem with negative reviews, or other negative information appearing at the top of the search results.

The big mistake is that businesses often overlook the essential ingredient, which is Reputation Monitoring!  

The reason it’s often overlooked is that people don’t know enough about it. Businesses know they need to leverage Social Media as part of their internet marketing, since all of its insightful statistics are widely spoken about. And then there’s SEO, which is popular for helping business get found online. But Reputation Monitoring, as useful as it is, often gets neglected until there’s a glaring problem and a clear need for a full-fledged reputation management solution to help the crisis.

Reputation Monitoring is like your business’s GPS (navigation system). It can show you the best path to take with your marketing message, lead you to your ideal customers, and help alert you of any potential traffic jam of negative online comments, that could otherwise prevent you from reaching your prospective customers.

If you’re not yet seeing the fabulosity of reputation monitoring, then read on!

7 Marvelous Benefits of Reputation Monitoring:

1. Discover – Listen, learn and discover what people are saying about your business, your brand, your industry online. This allows you to learn more about your customer, what’s important to them, how they think, and their preferences. You get access to real market research without spending the time and money to create a focus group. It can give you an edge over the competition when considering releasing a new product or service.

2. Improve – Monitoring what’s being said about your business allows you to see through the customer’s eyes. It’s a tool that allows you to understand the customer experience and gain the necessary insights to help you improve customer satisfaction.

3.  Influence – You can measure the influence of those who are talking about your business on social media. You can identify the influencers in your industry, and through conversation you can work towards getting on their radar if you’re not already known by them

4.  Save – You can reduce much of the guessing element when it comes to your marketing efforts because you’ll better understand your customer and what marketing message resonates with them. This can save on dollars spent on marketing materials and marketing efforts that aren’t really working. Use the information you’ve gained from monitoring to shape effective marketing messages and utilize the platforms that are most effective for your business.

5.  Listen – You can listen to what people are saying about your competitors on the web. It’s like you’ve got the secret insider information from monitoring what’s being said about them in social media, on review websites, consumer complaint websites, articles etc…

6.  Alert – Reputation monitoring gives you the ability to hear what’s being said early on. It can show you if there’s a day with a negative spike in the conversation, and it can help you see what caused it. This means you can recognize the calm before the storm, and often diffuse it prior to it coming to fruition

7.  Identify – Reputation monitoring can help you Identify new leads, new customers and communities you aren’t yet involved with. It can open new doors of opportunity.

Reputation management is an essential tool. If you’re serious about monitoring it’s wise to know what specifically you want to monitor and what functions are most important to you and your business. If you’re not sure, we can help.

Reputation monitoring  helps our clients better understand their customers, and gives them a better understanding of what’s being said online. It’s also a great way to see potential issues before they become a problem, and see how their online presence compares to the competition. Like my grade-school teacher used to say… “Listening is the beginning of understanding.”

[stextbox id="alert"] P.S. If you haven’t yet grabbed your copy of “The 13 Biggest Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them” be sure to do so, it’s FREE and will help you kick-start your marketing plan! You’ll also get our  monthly Newsletter filled with great marketing tips, current marketing trends and valuable information you can use for your business[/stextbox]