An online vent via Facebook or Twitter is fast becoming the default reaction for anyone who’s had a bad experience with a company. In fact, online reputation is becoming so important that plenty of people are finding work as “social media managers,” tasked with responding to disgruntled customers. The question for real estate agents is, what are people saying about you online? Here are three ways to check:
Go to Google
The most obvious place to start when tracking your online reputation is to plug your name into the biggest search engine for your area, which for most of our readers will be Google. If you have a common name, try searching with the words “real estate” included or the name of your local market.
Don’t stop at the general search either - use Google’s filters to check through categories such as blogs, discussions, and updates. If you want to keep an even closer eye on these results, you can set up Google Alerts so they will automatically be sent to your inbox.
Use Facebook’s Search
If you’re relatively new to Facebook, you might not have tried out the search bar at the top of the page. The results from this search won’t be limited to updates from your Facebook friends - any public Facebook updates, groups or members, along with web results from Bing, will also be visible.
Check up on Twitter
Once you’ve covered Google and Facebook, open up twitter.com and plug your name into the search bar at the top. You don’t have to be a member of Twitter to see the results, but if you do want to respond to anything you find here, you will need to sign up.
Hopefully none of these searches will uncover anything damaging to your online reputation, but if something does come up, remember to respond in a factual and considered way. As Oliver Hesketh of Australian real estate agent directory and rating website propertyscope.com.au told us recently: “How you deal with negative feedback in a public forum is an opportunity to set yourself apart from another agent who may engage in an emotional mud-slinging match.”
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There’s a great case study around the Boeing company and how they dealt with negative comments about their business, and turned it around into a very positive example of using social media to turn the tide.
http://sobox.com.au/2010/05/06/boeing’s-social-media-lesson/