This is the prime reason why every business should sustain a good online reputation on a regular basis. A strong online reputation helps to keep a hold on the continual flow of customers. Although it might be difficult to build an online reputation in your beginning years, but as the business grows it becomes relatively easier to gain reputation online.

An online reputation is imperative for the success of every business. People are more likely to purchase products or services from the company they can believe in. With the increasing amount of competition and augment of new players in the league, it is essential for small businesses to build a successful online reputation that creates trust between the business and its customers. Here are some effective ways that can help small business or company to build reputation online:

• Create a professional Web site
With the advancement in tools and technologies, it has become quite easier to create a Web site for your business needs. Even a simple yet professional website can influence customers for availing your services. A professional Website can include a description of your expertise and experience along with your resume, awards, published articles and other recognition. A website is a digital medium to demonstrate your skills and competence in front of your customers.

• Buy your name
Hosting your blog or website with your own domain name is an effective way to build a positive online reputation. With domain formation becoming increasing unobtainable, now is the time to start owning your name. You must consider buying a name that explains your area of proficiency, such as Insurance Consultant.com, Color Forecasting Consultant.com and Product Marketing Consultant.com etc. These category-specific names help in establishing a professional brand.

• Display complete information
You must exhibit your full name and contact information on your website. Anyone who visits the site would like to know the person behind it along with the service offered. Display your full name with a picture, your company name and contact information within the website. Besides providing email id, you must also give your telephone number on the site as many people prefer to call rather than email. Providing complete information on the site ensures authenticity of the company and also builds trust between the company and customer.

• Refined customer service
To build a solid online reputation, it is important to be courteous and genuine to your customers. Always be polite and respond to all their queries and suggestions well in time. A good company must be able to satisfy all the doubts and concerns of clients at the earliest.

• Write about your business
Writing articles about your business and posting them on the website has been a very productive way to create trust and loyalty. Publish information that is easy to read and related with your field of expertise. This help in saving a lot of time for people who wish to find quality information with the least delay.

• Keep updated with online profiles
Online profiles are an effective way for people to find you. You must be able to deliver a quality profile to build online reputation with your customers. A profile that has not been disposed to indicates the absence of follow through. If you have a busy schedule, create only a few online profiles that can be regularly updated.

• Create online content
The media is in continual need of a good content. You must consider writing for industry newsletter or a trade publication and post the article on your website. You may even consider writing a guest post on a blogger’s site as this will help in drawing back the links and will also establish you as a professional in the field.

Articles and press releases are a great way to enhance your brand exposure. By publishing content regularly on the site, you create a better chance of flushing down the negative search results. Press releases and articles are likely to rank very well as search engines long for fresh and relevant content. Give time to publish quality content regularly on the website to keep control of your reputation online.

• Create Social Networking Accounts
Social networking is the latest craze for sharing your opinions, ideas, and comments through World Wide Web. Today, social networking is being utilized by many online businesses to enlarge their Web coverage and also to build a solid online reputation that will provide a positive foundation. Social networking sites are not only a great way to connect with people but they can also be used to flush away the negative search results. By creating profiles on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Digg you would be able to influence the target audience while they search for your name.

You can make it interesting by putting games, blogs, interesting backgrounds, music, videos and so on. The more interesting it appears to the masses; more they would be drawn to invite their friend on the site. Social networking is an effective way to make a benefit your online presence.

• Create a fast loading site
Create a clean, passable, and fast loading web site for the users. You must remember that you only have 15-20 seconds to grab the attention of visitors on your site. If your site is slow and takes time in loading, the visitor will immediately shift to the other available sites. Create a web-focused design that is light and easy to interpret. Do not try to impress them greatly with flashy and heavy designs. For the most part, visitors are simply searching for targeted information.

• Be an active web participant
You must actively participate in online forums by giving away testimonials, asking questions, providing quality advice and being courteous. People will get interested in visiting your site when they frequently see you helping others in the forum. Leave your site’s link at the bottom of every post so that people can get back to you.

The most important thing you must remember about building an online reputation is that it requires commitment. Analyze the need of your target audience and respond accordingly. Loyalty and commitment would lead you long way to build a strong online reputation.

Usually people confuse reputation for image or branding. Both the terminologies have a vast difference. When an image is targeted the process and the effect of transmission is called reputation. The communication of an evaluation without the evaluator being specified is called reputation transmission. Reputation is social, believed and meta-evaluation.
Reputation is dependent on three inter related objects.
1. Cognitive representation: This is a believed evaluation. This could be the image of someone or some organisation. This representation and evaluation consists of a communicated evaluation.
2. Object of the population: the most common example of this is propagating evaluation that is believed upon.
3. Emergent Objective property at the level of the agent. Reputation is very dynamic. Reputation can change. The reputation is the result of multilevel bidirectional process.

The definition of reputation management can differ along with the situations that the company faces. Reputation Management is managing the reputation of a large company or a medium sized company or small company. The reputation management is also dependent on life of the company, whether it has just started or in the growth phase of lag phase of its life cycle. The three types of reputation management are as follows.
• Preparatory: When the reputation management is need in the pre-establishment stages of any organisation it is called preparatory reputation management. Usually preparatory reputation management is considered a precautionary measure.
• Building: The term Building Reputation Management is used when the company is in the starting phase of its life cycle or the company has just started. The objective of this is to maintain the present reputation and take corrective measures and precautions if needed because the company needs to first survive and then grow as time progresses. This reputation management is also called introductory reputation management.
• Incremental: When the organisation is in the growth phase of the life cycle then the incremental reputation management becomes necessary.
• Maintenance: When the company wants to maintain the good reputation that it has created in the public, the reputation management is called Maintenance Reputation Management. This sort of reputation management is for the companies that are already in the growth and maturity phase of their life cycle. In short these companies are well established and already have a good reputation. This reputation management is also called Experiential Reputation Management.
• Recovery: The Recovery Reputation Management is just like disaster management. This sort of reputation management is carried out when the company has already got a bad reputation in the market and wants to correct the situation by amending the mistakes. In this exercise the good marketing and self promotion techniques are used to hide the bad reputation of the company. This type of reputation management is usually needed in the decline stage of the organisation. This is also called Perspective Reputation Management.

Reputation has four faces. It could be excellent, good, bad or even ugly.

1. Excellent: This means that the organisation holds the pinnacle place with reference to assessment of the reputation. This means that
• the company is the best of corporate governance,
• the product or service is of high quality,
• the company has strong corporate compliance
• it has strong corporate compliance
• the brand values are strong,
• the risk can be anticipated and managed properly
• the relations with all those associated is without major friction,
• contractual agreements are fulfilled
• there is effective communication,
• the vision, strategy and plan are clear , transparent and
• the company is trustworthy.
2. Good: The organisations tagged to have good reputation are net to those considered excellent just because they fall short of being the best at one or two of the above mentioned key issues.
3. Bad: When a company or a person causes a breach of trust then usually it is labelled to be of bad reputation. There are many organisations in this category.
4. Ugly: When the reputation is worst and pathetic it is tagged as ugly. High level of deception and perfidy that can ruin an organization or individual is tagged as ugly.
Following are the key issues to be taken into consideration for reputation management.
• All the issues that affect the reputation should be identified and listed
• Each issues should be analysed for its present, past and possible future affects on the reputation of the organisation
• The change strategy has to be formulated to keep the effect of every issue in control
• The strategy formulated for reputation management has to be put into implementation
• The feedback of the affect has to be evaluated.

In this age of internet marketing, the tools for reputation management are different. Once a company’s or a product’s reputation is spoiled on the internet, no matter how much effort you put into reputation management , be sure it will take at least 3 months for the results to be seen.
Some of the tools for online reputation management are as follows
• Blogging: Daily updating of the blog is required. More the positive matter about your product and company in the blogs more is the correction in the reputation.
• Directory Listings: Optimised key words should be used for listing a website in the directories. When your website is listed on the first page of any search engine, it is usually going to bring business to you.
• Direct Reviews: There are websites where a person can write his /her review about any product or company. Hire someone to write good reviews of the product or company on the websites. This will build the reputation of the product or the company.
• Online Publicity: the reputation can be managed by writing articles as well as by banners.
• Social net working: The pages can be positioned on different website to enhance the reputation.