A few reasons why an organization cannot afford to ignore reputation management

A recent study report says that there has been a steep increase in the demand for public relations professionals because employers give more importance to communication and reputation management in their day to day business operations. No matter whether you are a non profit group or a big business organization, reputation management do matters to spread your core values and to promote the brand image. Having a reputation management plan will protect your company's name and good will in the event of negative comments and bad press.
Some of the key reasons why any successful company needs reputation management would include:

To ensure good publicity. Companies that want to grow should have positive publicity to attract more customers and thereby increase sales. From online forums to mass communication media like newspapers and TV ads there is a gamut of reputation management tools that would help you to be in the news. Publicity will make your organization better known in the business circles and would attract more traffic and sales.

For Brand building: Public relations go a long way in brand building and it is a proven method for launching new products and for opening new markets. By promoting your brand aggressively you will be put ahead in the race. A strong brand image will make sure that your company comes at the top search engine results, which in turn will have a bearing in the sales and traffic of your sites.

To lessen the impact of negative publicity : No organization is safe from being hit with online slander, which could be an assault launched by your competitor or fury unleashed by an unhappy customer. Remember how the Domino’s sales nose dived soon after the unauthorized YouTube video popped up with images of a few employees doing weird things to a customer’s pizza!

Having a reputation management plan in place would mean that you will be in a better position to tackle the onslaught of the negative posts and slander. It will serve as a handy shock absorber in the hours of crisis and will put you back in the game faster.

Reputation management- the dual edged weapon that protects your repute and salvage you from crisis

Reputation management not only helps you to keep up your brand image and online presence but also forms part of your crisis management strategy. The negative posts and forum postings about your business online are warning signals that you need to get things in order to retain your position. By ignoring these facts and playing a proverbial ostrich, you will only by inviting more trouble.

As with any element of business management, the mode and time of response play a crucial role in ensuring the reputation of your business and to turn it into a positive tide. Setting alerts is the smartest way to measure the pulse of things being told about you in the online space. Never ignore creeping crises and negative rumours about your business, even if that means slander or orchestrated smearing campaigns unleashed by your business rivals. Positive comments could be used in your marketing and are great tools to gauge your popularity and to keep an aye on the competition.

Negative comments are not something that you should run away from and there are lots of ways to respond and tackle these. Do not waste time in the hope that it will go away with time as whatever posted in the internet remains there forever and these will come back to haunt and tease you unless you root these out diligently.

If the comments are on blogs that allow comments, make sure that these are not bogus and try to respond to the genuine comments. Never belittle anybody who has made comments. By engaging with the unhappy customers in this way, you will have the opportunity to clear any misunderstandings that they might have and and even to gain new customers. Market studies show that many customers who complain turn out to be the most valuable customers if you win them back in time.

So, keeping an eye on what others are doing online and comparing it what you are doing would be a great way to get started in reputation management,. It is a meticulous exercise that requires patience and time and there are many professional reputation management agencies that will relieve you of the hassles of reputation management.