With so many social media channels available to business owners today, it’s easier than ever before to harm your online reputation.

Just one misplaced tweet or online forum rant can undo a lot of good work. So, if you have inadvertently damaged your reputation online, how do you go about fixing it?

Apologise

If you’ve mad an obvious faux pas such as criticising a customer or supplier on Twitter, then despite your opinions, you should apologise publicly too.

We’re all human and prone to making mistakes. If you happen to make a bad one in the public domain then you should put it right by apologising in the same way.

Take criticism on the chin

When you have handled a situation badly online and people pick up on it, the worst thing you can do is to stay mad and react. People will have their opinions on what you’ve done whether it was poor customer service or not honouring a competition prize, but you need to rise above the critics.

Reacting badly to criticism will just result in you digging a bigger hole for yourself.

Ride out the storm

If you’re a small business owner the chances are any online storm you manage to create by mistake is likely to blow over quickly. Once you’ve apologised to anyone you’ve offended you’ll probably find that if you just go back to business as usual, people will soon forget about what you’ve said or done. As the saying goes “today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappers”.

Be proactive

When your reputation has taken a hit, one of the best things you can do is be proactive. For example, you may have written a blog post that people took offence at. Rather than leaving that as the last post on your blog for people to see, write some posts with a positive spin – perhaps about a local community event you sponsored or a new client you’ve secured.

The more positive things you can fill your website and the search engines with the better. That way when people search for your name or your business online, they’re likely only to find the good things on page 1 of the results.

If you liked this article you should also read: Have you Googled yourself today? 

Image credit: omaromar  (license)                      

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2012 at 8:07 am and is filed under Online Reputation Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.