3 Easy Ways to Manage Your Online Brand Reputation
As advertising channels have evolved beyond online banners, print, radio and TV to include search engine marketing, online videos and re-targeting; PR has also evolved  beyond media mentions and online press releases to include review sites and social media.
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of brand marketing and it’s gotten more influential as people share their opinions of companies in online reviews, on their social media accounts, and on their own personal blogs. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to stay on top of your online reputation, and most of them are free. We compiled the least time consuming and most effective ways you can manage what people are saying about your brand online.
1. Read and Respond to Online Reviews
Why? Online reviews are a great way to learn what others are saying about your brand. Online reviews have become an essential part of a consumer’s buying process – they want to know about other people’s experiences with a company or product before they make a purchase decision. In many ways, online reviews act as a free endorsement for your brand – people will write about the various amenities and services they like about your community, and many satisfied customers will encourage others to check out your company. You will also be able to respond to customer issues in real time and learn from negative feedback in a way that gives your company control.
How to Get Started: Claim your community profiles on review sites like SeniorAdvisor.com and on Google+ Local. Your Google+ Local listing will show up in search results when people search for your community name on Google, and it will often include a link to your reviews on other sites like SeniorAdvisor.com, so it is important that you are getting  many positive reviews on both sites. Once you claim your page on SeniorAdvisor.com, you will be instantly notified via email every time a new review is published about your community. Then you will have the ability to respond to reviews, giving you a chance to further engage current and potential happy customers and to resolve issues with unhappy customers.
- Instructions on how to claim your Google+ Local listing
- Instructions on how to claim your SeniorAdvisor.com profile
2. Connect With Customers on Facebook
Why? Everyone is on social media these days. Families, and even residents themselves, are going online to talk about your brand on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
How to Get Started: Seniors are the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook, so if you haven’t started a social media presence yet, Facebook is a good place to start. Many companies discover that they have more than two Facebook pages which can be confusing for consumers. The solution is to consolidate and create one unified official page. Facebook provides detailed instructions for this common situation.
- How do I claim a Facebook Page that already exists for my business?
- How can I merge it with my business’s official Page?
3. Use Google Alerts
Why? A great way to stay on top of what people are saying about you on the web, in blogs or in the news, is by allowing Google to bring the content to you.
How to Get Started: Go to the Google alerts page and enter your brand name in quotes in the “Search query” box. You can modify your alert based on your preferences by selecting how often you want to receive it and what types of content you want to be alerted about. To get the most inclusive set of results, keep everything as the “Result type” and select All Results for “How many.”
- Google Alerts
- Bonus tip: Use alerts to monitor brand mentions of your competitors
We hope these tips help you get started managing your online reputation. 
Read the original blog post on SeniorAdvisor.com.