Reputation isn’t built in a day. Each blog post, social share, or comment contributes to your overall impression online.

Once you have established a good reputation through time and effort, it’s important to maintain it. Here’s how:

1. Google Alerts

Google Alerts allow you to set up an alert system via email whenever certain keywords are searched. It’s a good idea to set up an alert system for your company name, the names of employees (especially high-level employees like the CEO or managing director) and your industry area, depending on how broad or narrow it is.

Take note that you don’t want to make it too broad, or it won’t be effective and you won’t be able to go through all of the alerts you receive. The best thing to do is make it targeted and specific to the parts of your business that are most important from a reputation perspective – brand name and employee standing.

2. Comments on posts

It’s important to know how people are reacting to your posts, especially if there’s a risk a post is divisive or polarising. Though unlikely, there’s been a vast number of social media gaffes made by businesses – make sure you stay on top of how your content is being received.

3. Daily checks

Check your social media platforms daily – so that means Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram or Pinterest if you have them. If there’s time, it’s a good idea to go beyond just your company’s social media posts – explore hashtags, community groups and chats, to learn what the topics of discussion and mood of the community is.

4. Search engine results

See how you perform in search engine results and whether you have any bad results in the first couple of pages by searching your business name and any related keywords. It is possible to influence where bad results appear on search pages.

5. The competition

Your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s important to monitor what the competition are doing because your reputation is linked to theirs, and you will be judged against them.

If they’re making moves to change the way they’re positioned in the market, you should be the first to know about it so you can potentially respond quickly and efficiently.