Previously, we’ve seen some of the privacy concerns that people could have when they do business on the internet, either as an affiliate or an e-commerce site owner. But what about ways to reduce these privacy risks? There are a few very easy strategies that can be employed by online entrepreneurs and which will allow you to get a better control over what information you give out to your online business partners.

The first thing you would want to consider doing is registering a business that will be used for all your online activities. There are various legal forms that a business can take, such as a sole proprietorship, limited liability company, or a corporation. Rules and regulations regarding business registration will vary depending on the jurisdiction that you reside in, so it would be best if you read up on applicable laws and regulations. By having a registered business, you can receive payments under that name and list it as owner of the websites that you operate. This also has the advantage of making your online operations look a lot more professional.

One of the other privacy issues that arise when you do business online is giving out your home address. But there is an easy and relatively inexpensive solution for this. You can get a PO BOX or a mail forwarding address for about $10 per month. You can either use the post office, a company such as Mail Boxes Etc. or an online company that receives all your mail for you and then forwards it to you. This will allow you to do business online without revealing your home address to your partners, vendors, clients, etc. You also won’t need to pay extra for WHOIS privacy for each domain that you buy, as you can simply use your company name and “virtual” address when you register websites related to your online marketing activities.

Another thing that you need to consider is your phone number. Again, many wouldn’t want to give their personal home or cell phone number out as they don’t want their phone number to end up on dozens of marketing lists and get calls every day soliciting them to buy things. Once again, the solution to this is simple and rather inexpensive.

You can get a cheap cell phone on a prepaid plan and use the number as the contact phone number for your online business. This could be a good solution if you’re not going to be making or receiving a lot of business related calls each month. There are some other solutions as well. You could use a VoIP phone number and phone service that you can get for around $15 per month. There are also services which provide you with fax to email, voice mail, call forwarding, as well as numerous extensions. If you’re looking for a second phone line to use for your business, then you will definitely find a solution online for this.

When it comes to doing business online as an online entrepreneur of any kind (e-commerce site owner, niche site operator, affiliate marketer, etc.) there are some people who have concerns about the privacy and security of their personal information. Of course, there are plenty of online marketers who don’t care too much and actually enjoy sharing the details of their personal life on their marketing related blogs, by plastering pictures of themselves, their family vacation, their pets, their cars (or assorted vehicles that they’re proud of: motorcycles, private airplanes and homemade helicopters, etc).

However, some others may not want to be too open about it and it doesn’t mean that they’re scammers or using unethical marketing methods. Signing up to various online services such as affiliate programs, domain registration, web hosting, etc. often requires sharing personal information in addition to payment and banking details. Unless you use WHOIS Privacy when purchasing a domain, your information (name, address, email, phone) will be visible to anyone that runs a query on a WHOIS search site, plus some WHOIS data aggregators actually make this even simpler, all someone would have to do is to Google the name of your site, or just Google your name and they would usually be able to locate some, if not all of the domains that were registered with your name.

Now some may ask: what is the problem? All legitimate online businesses have a privacy policy, so if you’re not doing anything shady, why hide? There are a couple of perfectly legitimate reasons as to why one may be concerned. Anybody following the news would see that there have been some rather spectacular security breaches in the past few months that targeted several companies that did business online, including, ironically enough, a security consulting firm.

Even though they may have a strongly worded privacy policy (which is often nothing more than a generic “fill in the blanks” template), many small online businesses such as start up affiliate networks or service providers may not have too strong standards of security. Furthermore, you need to remember that when a company you were dealing with goes out of business, their data doesn’t just magically vanish and you don’t really know where it could end up at that point.

There are other perfectly valid reasons to keep online business activities private. Some people who work at a day job may not want their employers to know that they’re running a side business. Webmasters who are involved in building and promoting adult oriented website may not want the entire world to know what kind of online ventures they’re involved with simply by doing a Google search of their name.

With all of this considered, there are some good methods to preserve some privacy and anonymity even as an online entrepreneur. We will see some good strategies on how you can do, no matter what kind of online business your run, in tomorrow’s post.

Are there any more online marketing tips that you should be applying to your business in 2012? Here is a final list of good pieces of advice that you can use to increase the results that you will be getting from your online marketing campaigns. As always, remember that these are just general tips and you can think up of your own online marketing strategies that will help you gain more from your online efforts.

• Take Advantage of Different Advertising Opportunities

One thing that you should do at the start of this year is to review the online advertising and marketing methods that you’re using and see if they’re bringing you the success that you wanted. While it’s always a good thing to keep doing what works well, there might be some additional online marketing opportunities that you might want to explore to see if they would fit in well with the type of business that you’re running, as well as your budget and online objectives. For example, you could use social media marketing, video marketing, classified ads sites, media buying, etc. Do some research on the different advertising methods and how they work.

• Create Both Short and Long Term Objectives

It’s important to have goals, but the term of these goals should also be considered. Make some goals for what you hope to do and accomplish now, within the current month. Then make some goals for the rest of the year. How would you want your business to grow? What other opportunities would you want to explore during the year? These are all good examples of what you could include in your long term online marketing plans.

• Don’t Forget to Protect Your Data and Have Backup Plans

Nothing can ruin a business like data loss. While this isn’t a marketing strategy per se, it’s more of a business survival tip and is included here because many small business owners and independent online marketers don’t really do. Remember to make backups of both your local files on your PC, as well as of your business website. Viruses, hacking and equipment failures could have a disastrous effect on any business. Having recent and up to date backups can help minimize the damage and get you back up on your feet faster than ever. Having backup plans doesn’t simply involve protecting data, however. It also means knowing what to do when something unexpected happens. For example, one advertising network that you’re dealing with could go out of business. Or an affiliate network that you’ve been running offers for could go bankrupt and leave its affiliates holding the bag. Have some backup partners and marketing options that you could fall back on if something goes wrong with what you’re currently doing. Being prepared for the unexpected is a very good strategy, whether it’s for online business or any other line of commerce that you may be operating in.

Previously, we’ve seen some good habits that you can establish to start off the year well with your online marketing efforts. Here are some more tips that will help you make the most of your online marketing activities, no matter what line of business you’re operating in.

• Understand Your Audience and Target It Correctly

There are still many businesses which aren’t targeting their audience right when it comes to promoting their products and services online. While advertising on a “general” site can sometimes be profitable, most businesses will get better results with advertising that is targeted towards customers which are more likely to buy their products. If you use search based advertising, then you’re already doing this if you’re targeting the right keywords, meaning keywords which people are likely to search for when they’re interested in buying something that your business sells.

But if you use on-site advertising, such as by buying text ads, pay per click ads, video or banner ads on various websites, then you will need to be more careful as to whether you’re really displaying your ad to the right audience, meaning people who will visit your website because they’re likely to buy your products, as opposed to being simply curious. Many advertising networks now let you choose the sites on which your ads will be displayed. You can also target your advertising to specific geographic areas, such as cities and states, plus also select demographics such as age, gender, income level, etc. By thinking about who your buyers are and targeting the segment of the population that they represent, your ad campaigns will be a lot more likely to be successful.

• Track Your Results on a Consistent Basis

One important advantage that using online marketing brings you is that you can track your results and see how you’re doing, often in real time. However, there are still too many online marketers that aren’t taking full advantage of these tracking capabilities. There are free tools and scripts which you can install on your web server that will tell you exactly where the clicks to your website are coming from, how long a visitor has stayed on your website, which pages they have visited, etc. Since they’re available to you for free, you should definitely take advantage of them.

Many advertising networks also provide you with detailed information about how your ads are doing, such as which ads and keywords get the most clicks, etc. Use these metrics to determine which of your ad groups and advertising methods are performing at their best, so that you can focus on using these, and get rid of or make changes to ads or marketing methods that are simply causing you to waste time or money. Keep tracking how your ads are doing each day and at the end of the month, compare the statistics to see how each ad group has done. This will give you a much clearer picture of what works and what doesn’t work too well for you.

We’ve seen some interesting new trends when it comes to online marketing and the changes that are expected to happen in 2012. Online business model changes, rise in social media advertising, online television, as well as mobile marketing are all things that are expected to take place in 2012. But there are a few other things that are expected to be more important this year. Mainly when it comes to promoting your website through natural search results on Google. Here are some of them:

• Content and Site Design Will Matter More

Google has recently made some changes to their algorithm which penalizes low quality websites that are built for the sole purpose of attracting clicks on search engines. This increases the quality of search results overall, as searchers are now less likely to be directed to a website that has irrelevant content or is just a dumping ground for advertisements. Quality, relevant content will be necessary. As Google is now showing snippets of websites when a user hovers over the search results, having a site that is attractive to the user is also going to be a lot more important. Working on the design elements of your site is thus recommended.

• Google + Will Matter More For SEO

While there is some debate as to whether Google + will ever have any relevance as a personal social network and few people now expect it to be a serious rival to Facebook, it looks like Google + will matter to business users a lot more. This is because Google + results will also be indexed in search engine results and will be given a high degree of relevance, just like YouTube videos are shown in search results. Whether or not you believe Google + will be important in your online marketing strategy overall, it would be a very good idea to have an account on the network.

• Rating, Review and Consumer Opinion Sites Will Become Very Important

While these sites have existed for more than 15 years now, review websites are going to get more relevance in search results. Already, we can see results for comments left about a certain business appearing near the top of search results when that business name is searched for on Google. For business owners, this means two things. First, offering a quality product or service, which will avoid consumers complaining about them on these sites. Second, monitoring search results for their business name, associated keywords as well as entries regarding them on review and opinion websites. Many of these sites give the chance for business owners to respond to any comments, both positive and negative. This will give potential customers that are checking out your business a good feeling that you care about their opinions and that you want to help them resolve any issues that they may have. This applies to any business that targets the consumer market, whether online or offline. Review websites for Business to Business companies, while not as popular, still exist and should be paid attention to as well if this is the line of business in which you operate in.

As we look at the changes that are expected to take place in 2012, there are a couple more things that online entrepreneurs can expect during the 2012 year. It would be a good idea to review these changes and see if there is something that you can do for your online business which would make it more competitive, as well as take advantage of some of the marketing methods that are expected to get a high degree of popularity in 2012.

• Mobile Based Marketing Solutions Will be More Popular

There is now an increase in the use of smart phones, as well as other mobile devices such as tablet computers. People who use these devices use them for a lot more than just communicating with their friends or playing Angry Birds… this is why online marketers have noticed them and are taking steps to profit from the rise in mobile device use around the world. Websites that are specifically targeted to mobile users are going to be built in much higher numbers. Applications of various kinds that run on these devices will also go up. Mobile based payment and transaction solutions, which are already seen in action, are expected to grow in 2012. We can now see some physical merchants experimenting with mobile payments, as well as mobile coupons. If you’re selling anything online, or even if you own a physical business, inform yourself more about the potential that mobile marketing can have for you. Many advertising networks such as Google AdWords are now letting their clients target mobile device users.

• Online TV and Video Use Will Go Up

Online video isn’t exactly anything new and it has been a few years that video sharing websites such as YouTube have been in existence. What might change, however, is that an increased amount of commercial programming, such as live television as well as online video rentals, is going to occur in the next year. Many communications companies have implemented or are thinking of implementing IPTV, which is like regular television, but delivered over an broadband internet connection instead. It’s a bit too early to say whether IPTV is going to become a serious challenger to the currently used cable and satellite systems. It probably won’t take over completely in 2012, but this doesn’t mean that online video and television should be ignored by marketers and advertisers.

Websites that deliver video content, whether it is pre recorded videos, or live television streaming, offer some interesting advertising opportunities for marketers everywhere. This ranges from playing video ads before, during or after content has been played, to including text or graphic advertisements on the site itself. As more TV’s that are sold include internet functionality, combining traditional internet advertising with video advertisements will be something that is expected to be on the increase during the 2012 year. This means that online video will offer increased advertising opportunities, even for marketers that don’t have a huge online advertising budget.

A new year has arrived and now would be the time to review how you do your online marketing and maybe make some changes for the coming year. It’s important to know that online marketing is an industry where change happens often. This is exactly the reason why online entrepreneurs need to adapt to the changing climate and review their strategies. Many are wondering about how the landscape of online marketing is going to change during this year. It should be known that changes aren’t usually drastic and take a few months to take effect. Here are some things that can be expected to happen during the year:

• Some E-Commerce Sites will Change their Business Models

2011 saw the rise of daily deal websites such as Groupon. There have also been many other sites that followed the same business model, some were targeted towards specific geographic areas, while others were centered around a specific line of product or services. The issue with these sites is that many merchants didn’t get the results that they wanted from them. Instead of getting customers that would be loyal and be willing to spend more at their business, they ended up with many freebie and discount seekers, which simply meant a net loss for them. As such, starting a daily deal website in 2012 is not really a good idea.

For those interested in promoting savings and deals, a return to more “classic” methods is expected to happen. Websites that would offer both printable and online coupons are expected to get more popularity. Also, websites which offer merchandise by a subscription model, such as book clubs and other sellers of items that consumers buy regularly are expected to grow, due to the fact that they can be quite profitable for the owners and also mean good savings for their subscribers.

• Social Media Marketing Will Rise Up and New Methods Will Become Popular

It probably won’t surprise anyone involved in the online marketing and advertising industries that social media marketing will get a lot of attention in 2012. New advertisers are expected to appear on social networking websites, including smaller businesses. Many small business owners, which are looking for targeted advertising options are going to consider advertising on social networking sites such as Facebook in order to get the customers that they need to keep their business running successfully. Another thing that attracts small businesses is that social media advertising can be less expensive than paid search advertising while remaining just as profitable if done correctly.

Social networking sites are considering new ad placement strategies, such as including ads in the middle of users news feeds. Also, advertising inside social media apps, such as games, dating plugins and other applications is expected to get some more attention from those who use social media to advertise. With all of this considered, if you don’t currently run social media ads, now would be a nice time to start doing so.

If you want to succeed when running an e-commerce site, you should be aware of the fact that there are certain periods of the year that will be busier than others, both for online businesses and retail stores alike. The Christmas holiday shopping season is definitely the most popular, but there is also the Black Friday shopping holiday, as well as Boxing Day which is observed in certain countries. No matter what the holiday is, there are periods of time when people will be more inclined to buy certain items. Yet, numbers show that an increasing amount of people are doing their shopping online for these occasions. Here are some of the elements that draw people to online shopping and what you, as en e-commerce site owner, could do in order to capitalize on them and use them to your advantage in your advertising materials.

• No Crowds

When you shop online, there is no need to have to navigate through crowded shopping malls to find what you are looking for and then stand in line for half an hour just to check out. Some people don’t mind the crowds and view them as part of the shopping atmosphere during the holidays. But many others hate them and would rather do their shopping in a more comfortable environment. This crowded atmosphere can reach extremes, as you can see when reading news after Black Friday. Incidents of people being trampled, as well as verbal and physical violence, sometimes involving weapons, are not at all surprising anymore.

Presenting your website as a more comfortable and convenient shopping experience in your advertising materials will seek to attract people that just want to buy things for the holidays without too much hassle.

• Products are easier to find

Online, there is no need to hop from store to store in search of a certain item or category of items. All that’s needed is a simple search in Google to find a website that will sell what your customers are looking for. This saves your shoppers a lot of time.

To profit from this, make sure your items are well categorized on your site. Also, be sure to target the right keywords in your SEO efforts. Do an analysis of what your buyers will be searching for when shopping and place additional emphasis on keywords that are more likely to bring you productive traffic. Remember that those searching for specific keywords are more likely to already have made up their mind about what they want and are now looking for a place to buy it. So someone looking for “Apple MacBook Air Refurbished” is more likely to buy them a searcher typing in “computer” in Google.

Participating in online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon are also good ways to get more sales, as the traffic is already present on these sites and people frequent online marketplaces with one main goal: to buy a product that they need. These can help you get sales in addition to those you would make on your main site.

During the holiday shopping season, it is important that you make some additional promotions on your online merchandise for your website visitors. When shopping during the holidays, everyone wants to save money, so retailers often respond to that by giving discounts on some or all of their merchandise for sale. This applies both to e-commerce sites and brick and mortar businesses. But in addition to lowering the price of your items for sale, there are many other things that you can do to make your online shopping site more attractive to visitors during this upcoming holiday shopping season. Remember that creativity is always a good thing in the online world and if you have many competitors in your niche, making your site and your holiday promotions stand out from the rest will definitely put you at a strong advantage. Here are some examples of things you may offer to your buyers:

• Free Gift Wrapping

Many people who buy holiday gifts online have them shipped directly to the recipient. This is definitely a good idea if that recipient doesn’t live in the same area. Offering to gift wrap the items for free is a good service that you can give to the buyers on your website.

• Free Shipping

One of the things that turns people off from shopping online for the holidays is the shipping fees. But some e-commerce sites have responded to this by offering free shipping on some or all of their items. To do this, you would just need to calculate the cost of shipping certain items to see if it would be still profitable for you to sell the item and offer free shipping. Consider offering free shipping on certain orders, such as those over $100. Take a look at the rates offered by shipping carriers to see if you can get cheaper shipping rates based on the volume of packages that you send out every day.

• Loyalty Offers for Existing Customers

If a buyer purchases something from you, consider sending them a discount code in their email which is valid for a certain percentage off their next order. While this is more complicated to integrate into a site, you could also set up a points based rewards program, where shoppers could earn points and exchange them for discounts on your merchandise.

• Deeper Discounts for the First Buyers

You could offer an even better discount offer than what you currently have for, say, the first 10 buyers of an item. This can help you sell one of your items that is not too popular. If the price is low enough, it can also serve as promoting an impulse buy, especially if it is something small and relatively inexpensive.

These are all some great examples of offers that you can make for your website visitors during the busy shopping season. But of course, the key element is creativity. If you believe that something else will work well with your audience, then don’t hesitate to try it on your website!

If you are an online entrepreneur or marketer, then you will probably be doing most of your work online. To get online, you will probably use a PC, or maybe another device such as a laptop, netbook, tablet or a smart phone. There has been a lot of talk lately about cloud computing and the benefits that it can bring to business users. However, is it time to switch to cloud based applications yet?

When we are talking about cloud computing, one should know what exactly this concept means. It is actually quite simple to understand. It means that your applications are running on a remote server online (on the “cloud”), as well as the majority of your files can be saved remotely. This has the advantage that your files will be accessible from anywhere and that your programs are actually running on the server, you are merely viewing them on your PC or other device.

One mobile computing device that has caused a lot of talk in the IT industry lately is the Google Chromebook. It is basically a netbook, a smaller version of a laptop, that runs on the Google Chrome OS. With it, all applications are hosted on Google’s cloud servers. Therefore, to do anything useful with it (except play Angry Birds, which can be downloaded to it and runs locally), you need to be online.

Now the problem is that the current set of applications available is quite limited. It is mostly designed for business users that want to browse the web, check their email and remotely connect to another server or use a remote desktop tool on a regular PC.

Now since most applications that are used by internet marketers, such as SEO tools, web design applications, graphics tools for creating logos and ads, etc. will not run on the Google Chrome OS, we can see that the device is quite useless for most online marketers.

There is also the issue of price. It is much more expensive than other netbooks, without bringing in any features that are significantly superior to them. Sure, the Google Chrome OS may be a simple interface if all you need to do is browse, but if you really love it, then there is another way to get it without needing to spend almost $500 on the Chromebook. There is actually an open source version of the same OS made by Google called the Chromium OS, which can be downloaded for free and installed on any desktop, laptop or netbook computer.

Many online marketers would find that getting a netbook would be an excellent way to catch up on work while outside their home, thanks to a very portable mini laptop. However currently, it would seem that the Chromebook does not really have anything that outperforms some of the other netbooks on the market today, which run Windows or Linux and sell as low as $150.

Previously, we have explored some ways that you can make some money off Craigslist by promoting an e-commerce site that you own, as well as providing services. These are some great uses of this free classified ads site. However, there are some other ways that you can use it to your advantage as an online entrepreneur. Here are some more ideas:

• Find Temporary Staff to Help You With Your Projects

While you can definitely do this on internet marketing forums, you can also use Craigslist to build up your virtual team of staff members. There are a few advantages of doing so: first of all, the people who respond to your ad will usually have a genuine interest in earning a bit of money for small, part time jobs and will be less likely to be scammers. By getting some staff members on Craigslist, you will also be “creating jobs” for your local city, even if they are just temporary positions. Also, since these people are local, you are far more likely to find people who understand and can write in proper English, as they will be located in your city.

Let’s say you need some regular blog posts for your business blog. You can hire someone and pay them $10 a day or so to create 2 or 3 blog posts for you. Or, if you need someone who can create simple web pages cheaply, you can hire a web designer for $10 to $15 an hour, instead of paying a professional design firm 10 times that amount. There are many unemployed people or students who are looking for part time job opportunities on Craigslist and who would be quite happy to find a legitimate opportunity to work from home and earn a few extra dollars.

But unfortunately, there are plenty of people who are still spamming MLM offers or some other scam programs on Craigslist. For these reasons, avoid using the words “make money online” or “work from home” in your ad. It will often be seen as spam/scam by viewers and will be flagged down rather quickly. Be as descriptive and professional as possible to avoid this.

Here is an example of a bad ad:

Make money online! Looking for people who can work from home today! Email Bob for more details.

Here is a better one:

We are an online advertising firm looking to hire 2 workers for the creation of promotional content. Must have excellent written English skills. Knowledge of web hosting industry is an asset. Contact Bob @ Acme Inc. if you are interested in this position.

Many people ask if you can still use Craiglist for affiliate offers. The answer is yes, but there are a few things that you should do and other things to be avoided if you want to see any kind of results from this. We will take a look at other uses of Craiglist for online marketing tomorrow.

Some recent security breaches such as the whole LulzSec affair have been reported in the media, where groups of hackers have targeted companies such as Sony, as well as agencies of both the British and American governments. Many online business owners are wondering what they can do to keep from becoming a target of hacking attacks. Here are some things you can do:

• Make a risk assessment

This basically depends on how big and popular your website is. There is little prestige for a hacker group to attack a website of a small business which contains no sensitive information. However, this doesn’t mean that you should not take any precautions and there are still some reasons as to why you may get hacked, which brings us to the next point:

• Avoid making people angry

Obviously, don’t go on “underground” websites and start taunting hackers. But also, you should know that certain hacking attacks have been motivated by revenge against businesses who are alleged to have engaged in disloyal competition, intentionally sold poor quality products, or otherwise ripped off their customers or business partners. So in other words, try hard not to make anyone angry at you.

• Use security measures, such as encrypting your customer information database

While no e-commerce or content management system is completely secure, they all have security features either built in, or available as external plugins. Learn what they are, how they work and what they do. And don’t forget to PUT THEM TO USE! Also, avoid systems which store sensitive info, such as customer details in plain text without any encryption.

• Secure your own computer as well

Make sure that any computer you use as part of running and administering your website or online business is free of malware, such as trojans and keyloggers. Quality anti virus and anti malware programs exist and there are some excellent ones, such as AVG, which are completely free. Therefore, there is no reason for you not to use them, as they are FREE!

• Exercise common sense

This is quite simple to do… but yet a lot of people fail and fail hard here. Don’t use “password” as a password for your web hosting account. Don’t leave the passwords at the default password for the system you are using either. Don’t open attachments in emails if you have the slightest suspicion it may not be a legit file. And if you have to visit “naughty” websites or download pirated software… at least don’t do it on a PC you use for your business, as these are also a popular source of viruses and malware.

• Get a security analysis of your site done

There are many online security firms that can do a complete security analysis of your website for a very low cost. They can point out any security vulnerabilities that your website has and then tell you which actions you should take to plug these holes.

Now that we have seen the importance of taking care of your online reputation and the way to respond to negative information, here are some more best practices to consider in order to make the job a lot easier for you and even prevent negative things about your business from being posted online in the first place.

• Make your contact information easy to find

On your website, make your contact information such as your email address and phone number easy to locate. Avoid simply putting up a “contact us” form and give your customers various options to get in touch with you. While this may seem obvious, many online complaints about e-commerce sites are based around the fact that the contact information for a site operator is difficult to find on the site or is hidden somewhere in the terms and conditions.

• Respond to inquiries rapidly

If you receive an email concerning a problem and you do not have time to look into the issue right away, inform the customer of this and let them know a realistic time frame regarding when you will be getting back to them. If you don’t understand what the specific problem is, ask them for more clarifications. Avoid using “scripted” emails or automatic responses, as these often give the message that you don’t care and do not want to provide personalized service. People will feel a lot more comfortable knowing that there is an actual human being that has read their message and is truly going to resolve the matter at hand.

• Participate in industry forums

There are plenty of discussion forums online in various niches. Create an account on them and announce your presence to other members. That way, if someone is not satisfied of your customer service, they can contact you on the forum to resolve the issue, rather than making a public post about it. Furthermore, being present on online forums can give you the opportunity to interact with current and potential customers as well as business partners who might be posting questions related to your company.

• Be present in social media sites

Even if you just create a simple page with your company description and your contact information, it can provide your customers with another avenue to contact you should something go wrong. It also provides you with a quick way to get in touch with customers who are not satisfied about something related to your business.

• Delegate tasks if you don’t have time for them

If you run a larger business that gets many customers each day, it could be quite time consuming to keep checking on consumer advocacy sites, social networks and discussion forums regularly and respond to any posts. Therefore, you can assign this task to a worker who will be responsible for managing the customer service aspect of your online presence and who will forward any particular problems to you so that you can take action to resolve them.

Previously, we have looked at why it is important to keep an eye on information posted about your business in the online world. The principal reason behind this is quite simple: not all of the stuff that will be posted about your company will be positive. Some of it could be complaints or dissatisfaction from your customers or members of the public. What is the best way to react to it? Here are a few tips:

• Don’t try to remove negative information

Why? Simply because chances are very high that you will not succeed in doing so. Unless the information posted is libelous or is blatantly false, it will be very difficult to remove it from the internet as many websites, such as consumer advocacy and complaints boards have a policy of not removing content from their sites. You should also know that attempting to censor information can very well create a “Streisand Effect”, where doing so will cause the information you want to hide to actually gain much more popularity and thus spread even further on the internet.

• Respond to complaints

Rather than trying to have them removed, one of the best ways to deal with complaints and negative information about your company is to actually respond to them. This can be done through various methods. Consumer advocacy sites give business owners the option of giving a “rebuttal” concerning any complaint posted about them. YouTube lets you create a video response to a video that was posted. On forums, you can join in on the discussion and make posts.

All of this will give you the chance to present your side of the story, ask for more information from the complainer to see what happened and reassure people online that you care about defending your company’s reputation.

It will also give you the opportunity to straighten out any potential incorrect information that was posted about your company and to further explain your products, services, policies and the way these work to your customers and other people in the online world.

Responding to complaints will show that you are interested in running a legitimate and honest business and not a fly by night company.

• Fix the issue

Responding to complaints is of course an important step to take, but what is even more important is to fix the problem that was reported by the person who is dissatisfied with your business. In some cases it will be quite easy, while in others it will take some time and require you to negotiate with the customer to try and come to a solution.

In some cases, resolving the issue may not be possible, especially if someone is making unreasonable demands or doesn’t want to cooperate to resolve the problem. But in these cases, you will at least show that you have in good faith attempted to fix the problem and solve the issue at hand.