Gathering new customers is one of the hardest parts of running a business (especially when starting out), but one way to gain clients is by having a strong online presence built on trust–not fake reviews or inflated followers. 

Appearing authoritative in Google search results attracts prospective buyers who see positive links and articles as a sign of credibility, making reputation management a priority. 

At its essence is trust.

Personal Referrals and Reputation Management

Initial business referrals could come from a variety of sources: a hearty personal endorsement from a friend or family member; through a strong business recommendation; via a convincing ad, email introduction, cold call, or networking event–or yes, even through a Google search. 

Often, the next step for prospective clients is verifying your talents through an online review of your reputation where they assess and confirm your talents through Google searches. 

Trust and Authenticity

Prospects seek authenticity, trust, and believability, and if this is not found online, the best recommendation from a close friend could be negligible. 

Substantially worse, however, is if nothing appears or if there is a negative link, which turns the potential client swiftly to move on to someone else.

Before hiring you, prospective clients usually ask a bunch of questions–either out loud or to themselves before hiring or engaging a new business partnership:

• Are they trustworthy? 
• Have then been in business long?
• Where can I see examples of success?
• Can they solve my problem? 
• Do they understand my issue?
• Will they give me good advice?
• Are they overcharging me?
• Is it a good value?
• When can I see results?
• Who else have they worked with?
• Is there a guarantee?

Your web presence should focus on answering these questions. 

What Is Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management is built around the premise that information found in searches is sometimes a primary- or certainly a secondary-consideration in deciding to hire someone. It is a place to confirm that you are the right person to work with, showing that you are professional, friendly, experienced, and truly helpful. Compelling online content is a central component to substantiate this.

Articles, blogs, videos, presentations, social media platforms and your website need to drive this point home. The work here should always be focused on what the potential client wants, showing you as the definitive and dependable source that solves their problems. 

When clients see your positive web presence, they feel more comfortable in choosing you to work with over a competitor. Don’t be afraid to give away information; in fact, I strongly encourage it, because this signals to clients that you are helpful, and thus, the right person to work with.

Poor or Negative Online Reputation

On the other hand, if there is no online appearance or a minimal one in Google search results, potential customers ask themselves, “Are they still in business?”, “Are they unprofessional?”,  “Do they even care?” or, “Is this the kind of firm I want to work with?” A poorly defined online reputation is seen as untrustworthy, so clients just move on.

The most damaging case is if something negative appears in the few pages of Google searches. Competitors, “trolls”, ex-partners, disgruntled employees, and of course, unhappy buyers, can write negative posts, and even if it’s not truly condemning, new and existing clients will quickly move on to someone else without even investigating the problem. 

So, to gain new clients, establish an accomplished online reputation.

Reputation Building Strategy

Develop a carefully considered reputation strategy. Before building a reputation, draft an initial strategy built around knowing who do you want to work with, where will you reach them, and how will you connect. It’s usually a work in progress requiring continual tweaking, but always create original content, share meaningful information and be helpful.

To formulate this, start by asking some basic but crucial questions:

• Who are you trying to connect with?
• How will you build trust?
• What kind of content will you create?
• How and when will you share it?

Each reputation strategy needs to be customized for the customer’s industry, their geographic location, company size, challenges and specific goals. As a result, no two solutions are probably alike. The key is creativity, excellent content, constant updates and ceaseless adjustments. 

For example, building a reputation for a financial advisor differs substantially from that of a grad student; an entrepreneur who received initial funding investment needs a different service than an established CEO professional working at a large firm; a biomass firm in Brazil is different still from an international divorce lawyer in Paris.

Not getting this right could mean failure.

Define Clear Goals 

Now that there is a basic framework, lay out specifically what you want. Clearly define outcomes and milestones before building your reputation; by the way, the same goes for working with someone new or connecting with a prospect too. Although it might seem obvious, it is important to get very specific with your online goals, such as:

• Fill the first page of Google search results with positive links.
• Repair a damaged web presence by pushing down negative article(s).
• Generate leads and close deals quickly.
• Convey trust and experience online to easily convert new clients. 
• Work with targeted, niche clients.

Each intention has a slightly different approach. Once you have a straightforward vision mapped out, define exactly how you will achieve each step with measurable, time-bound and specific tasks.

Why does this matter to your reputation? Identifying key objectives keeps the process on track, and, importantly, prevents disappointed clients, which avoids potential tarnishing your own online reputation later.

Set Your Online Persona

Set your voice and online persona. Do you want to appear to be neutral but very informed, sound like an academic, casually breezy, or snarky/sarcastic? Since your online reputation reflects your identity, the easiest approach is to just be who you are in real life. This too is an on-going process that should be reviewed and revised frequently. 

Part of the strategy includes systematically generating content on appropriate platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.These sites are also a place to post informative articles, videos and links made by other experts. Being active and engaging builds your web profile. This in turn, draws in prospective clients who see you as the trusted professional that solves their problem.  

Understand Your Client’s Business Process

Understand where your prospective clients are in their buying stage. Are they just starting out, still getting research? Are they comparison shopping to get more information after already receiving a proposal from a competitor? Or are they ready to sign-up now? Each phase has its own reputation process, so knowing where they are in the business cycle is paramount. 

The typical milestones in the business process might be:

1. Show that you understand their problem and the damage it’s causing them.
2. Present clear solutions that solve it.
3. Convey trust that you can help.
4. Show that your fee is competitive.
5. Negotiate and close the deal.
6. Work together, offering the solutions you agreed to.
7. Complete the work.
8. Follow up to see if they are satisfied.
9. Ask for recommendations or reviews.
10. Share success on social media.
11. Update your new case studies.
12. Stay in touch regularly with helpful articles; be friendly.

Don’t Sell; Share and Help to Build Trust

Listen to potential prospects. Concentrate on what they have to say rather than speachify-ing your agenda and your perceived solution. 

Pausing to hear what they have to say signals you’re capable of really comprehending their issues and are ready to help. 

For example, share a pertinent blog article you’ve written that points them to a solution you’ve found for a previous client. Gain their trust and they’ll ask you about your services on their own without the need to push for a sale. 

Great Content Draws in Clients

Assemble an exceptional reputation by crafting superior content and share it. This might appear straightforwardly simple, but there are many variables that can make it difficult to properly implement and requires thought and strategy. Keep the focus on:

• What content to share.
• When to share it.
• Who to share it to.

What to share knows what really matters to prospects and delivering solutions to them is key. Offering meaningful value in blogs, podcasts, videos, social media posts–and more–are vital ways to stay top-of-mind. Don’t forget the power of directly sending targeted content to prospects.

If you are just starting an initial conversation, send pertinent posts and case studies to further forge trust. If you are close to signing a new client, point them to case studies. If you\’ve worked with someone in the past but think they could benefit from an additional service you offer, reach out with this information. Even if a proposed buyer says, “no” or decides to work with someone else, continue to circulate knowledgeable information to them since you never know when their situation will change.  

When to share depends on the platform and other factors. Some social media sites have optimal posting times, which could be during business hours, weekends, evenings, or other times. 9-to-5 generally are the best time for Twitter and blogs; early morning and end of day for LinkedIn; slightly later in the day for Facebook; night and weekends for Pinterest. When to share also importantly depends what buying stage the client is in.

Who to share it to are prospective clients, people who’ve shown interest in the past, previous clients, and people you’d like to work with. Don’t forget ancillary professionals who can naturally refer you to your key client.

Get Active Online

Generate a constant flow of rich content in a variety of forms.

Do this frequently:

• Consistently publish excellent new content on your blog.
• Post valuable information constantly to a range of key social media platforms.
• Engage with prospective clients across all relevant channels by sharing, commenting, retweeting, etc.
• Write and share useful articles.
• Develop guest blogs; create posts for others.
• Participate in online groups.
• Join in-person networking organizations.
• Be open and helpful.

Show up online constantly, clearly and consistently, always delivering value and connecting in meaningful ways.

Create Exceptional Content to Build Trust

Assemble content that illustrates your credibility. Write, post and share as a specialist who recognizes and resolves prospective client’s problems and displays integrity. Clients will see this and be drawn in.

Where to Find Content

Generate content from a variety of places, but a primary driver is creating your own. Carefully craft content from topics based around clients’ needs. This should be thoroughly researched. Other sources should come from social media, Set up Google Alerts to respond quickly to things in the news as they happen.

Tweak and Update Constantly

Be nimble. Pivot to alternative solutions since reputation management is more alchemy rather than a mathematical formula. Google never divulges the “secret sauce” used for their page ranking system so it’s important to constantly monitor, review, and tweek your strategy.

Also, Google itself is a “wild card” in the reputation process, since they are always tinkering with their algorithms, making major–and unannounced–updates about every six months. In other words, the strategy that worked three months ago might not work three months from now; what worked a year ago will probably not work a year from now. 

Since reputation management is always a moving target, the only constant is to institute notable content for your prospects.

Different Content at Different Times

Offer the right content at the right time. 

When initially contacting a prospective client, listen; then point them helpful blogs or white papers. If they have additional questions, pass on detailed case studies to substantiate further trust that you are the right person to hire. 

As you continue to work, be transparent and forthright when addressing any client concerns. Not paying attention to consumer requests can lead to online reputation damage, especially if they post complaints on social media. 

When the project is complete, continue to stay in touch since this could yield recommendations. Send occasional emails asking how they are doing, share articles they would like, and see if you can help them in other ways. Update your case studies based on your success, and put these online to further show your reputation as an adept specialist. 

Implement One Reputation Tactic at a Time

Start small when constructing a web reputation. There are many tasks, each requiring detailed steps and integration with other tactics. Don’t take on too much when starting or you’ll feel overwhelmed, tempting you to drop the whole effort. Start with one step and master it before moving on to the next.  

Evaluate the reputation actions that you think would work for your business; prioritize them by what might appeal most to a prospective client; and appraise time, money, effort, and difficulty that is necessary. Don’t add a second approach until you have systems in place to completely manage the first. Doing several things poorly can lead to lost prospects and possibly even damage to your reputation.

There is No Overnight Success

When consulting with clients about building or repairing their reputation, I sometimes get the response, “I tried that already, and it didn’t work.” But digging deeper, I often find that they only tried one approach, and quickly gave up because they didn’t see immediate results. 

So to be clear: building an online reputation takes time. To fill the first page of Google search results with positive articles is a long-term process. Although some steps can be made nearly immediately (i.e., within weeks), building a reputation can take six months or a year. Remember too that ongoing maintenance can and should continue throughout the life of the business. 

 So don’t give up, and continue pushing forward developing your web presence.

Track The Cost of Getting a Client Using Your Reputation

Gaining clients can be surprisingly expensive, even in service industries. To get more clients, you need to know what works and what doesn\’t, and, importantly, what it costs. 

Frequently businesses often are in the dark about important metrics such as the time and expense needed to acquire new clients. Most companies have unsustainably high costs, spend too much time with little return, or invest virtually nothing on client development. Knowing what is necessary to bring new projects on board is crucial. Streamline this process by clearly knowing who your prospective clients are through research, and constantly generating excellent content efficiently.

Create a Contact Marketing Campaign

Related but slightly “offline” is to develop a reputation and marketing campaign aimed at meeting clients’ needs. Send a personalized message to targeted clients to get their attention. Then follow up with links that point to your already created online reputation. From this, the next step might be a phone call to set a meeting, which can be on the phone, in person, over coffee or at their office, as well as sharing case studies, blog posts, presentations, videos and more.

Real-World Online Reputation Tips

Here are real-world reputation management tips. These actions, tips and platforms are necessary to build or repair a web presence that draws in new clients. Based on real-world experiences, following these steps should lead to reputation improvement. Essentially, here is the “secret sauce” of using online reputation management to get more work.

Summarized Monthly Actions

Although many online platforms and links can show up quickly in Google searches, building a solid online reputation takes about six months or more. Here’s a general overview of reputation-based actions necessary to help connect with prospects online.

Start the first month with researching and building a custom strategy that works for you. Based on this plan, come up with appropriate content-related topics which will drive most social media sharing and content creation throughout the project. Another major priority is to create and/or update personal and business websites.

The second month focuses on key platforms–LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Medium–as well as creating or updating new ones, and writing well-made blogs.

During month three, share content across social media sites, engage with influencers, and generate more articles, presentations, etc.

For months four, five and six: repeat. Continually write, share across all platforms, search Google to review successus and constantly tweak. Always look for ways to build trust online and connect with prospects.

Summarized Daily Actions

Besides continuing to craft excellent blog posts, do these activities daily:

Daily Twitter actions:

• Follow several key influencers.
• Tweet on key topics.
• Share one tweet from Followers.

Daily LinkedIn actions:

• Request a Connection to several key influencers.
• Share and Like a few posts.
• Make a Comment.

Daily Facebook actions:

• Follow several key influencers or Groups.
• Share a few posts.
• Like several articles and/or Posts.

Summarized Weekly Actions

Drilling down more, there are online reputation building task you should do every few days or weekly, roughly in order of importance:

• Instagram: Upload images; Like and Follow others.
• Pinterest: Pin images; create one new Board.
• YouTube: Follow related videos; create new Playlist.
• Wikipedia: Attempt to update related Articles.
• School Alumni Site: update and find others.
• Medium: Follow and Comment on a related Article; Follow authors.
• Academia: Search for key articles; save and share.
• Scribd: Search for key publications; save and share.
• Google My Business Site: write one local review.
• Crunchbase: Follow Business; add link to newly written articles.
• Quora: Search topics and Follow; Share.
• Reddit: Upvote and Comment on related posts.
• TikTok: Create video video; share.
• SnapChat: Add new post; Follow others.
• Vimeo: Follow others.
• Yelp: Write one review; Follow other Authors.
• Soundcloud: Search for key posts; Like, Repost, Share; Follow People.
• Patch: Like and comment on a related article.
• Behance: Search People and Projects and Follow and Save; Upload one image .
• Google Books: Search topics and Follow; Share.
• SlideShare: Follow an Author; Like key presentations.
• Tumblr: Follow and Comment on related Sites.
• Flickr: Search People and Projects and Follow and Save; Upload one image.
• MyHeritage: Add photo; find others.

Note that the type of business determines the priority and types of platforms. For example, a financial-related or professional business would focus on LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia; Medium, Crunchbase and others; a creative business or individual might instead center on Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, etc.