Your reputation is worth building and protecting.

If there was a large group of customers and business leaders in the next room and you had good reason to suspect they were discussing your business, would you want to know? I would. If the discussion was positive you could know what you were doing right and throw gas on that fire. Of a negative nature then you could practice some creative damage control to mitigate the circumstances, then take action to remedy the root problem. But only if you listen in.

That’s called “reputation management” and if you choose to ignore it that won’t alter the fact that your current customers are talking about you online anyway. They’re making recommendations; either to use your services, or to steer clear of them. They’re making assumptions about your business and your industry in their online discussions. It’s happ’nin with or without you.

See what happens in this post, by Matt McGee, to one fairly bone-headed entremanure in California who opened his mouth then did nothing to control the damage except open his yap some more!

In this article on the MarketingProfs website, you’ll find a half-dozen free tools for managing your online reputation. Do it yourself or we can build a program and monitor it for you. Then there’s the question of what to do once you’ve discovered a problem. That’s another post.

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Phillip Crum is the Chief Idea Officer of MarketingMeasure located at 2414 Arbuckle Court Dallas, TX 75229, and is committed to the idea of helping small business owners do a better job of finding their next customer or client. He and his two sons,Tyler and Preston, also own a Sir Speedy Printing franchise and employ those additional capabilities in the overall marketing services menu of offerings. Phillip can be reached at 214-213-7445, or pcrum@MarketingMeasure.com.