Kris Beus

Keeping Online Business Integrity

Learn how to increase word of mouth marketing and overall satisfaction by having integrity and honesty with your business. Audience loyalty and trust begins with your businesses character. 

There will be few things that separate you from your competition and one of the biggest should be your honesty and integrity. We as online business owners do not have close personal contact with our customers so we have to build trust and loyalty through a computer screen.  The reason building this trust is so important is the way information spreads online.  One of the biggest factors for your lasting success will be people telling others about your business.  If what they are spreading is good then you will see increased profit and traffic.  On the other hand if you are screwing over your audience or even sharing information which is inaccurate the backlash from scorned people can potentially be devastating to your business. Something to remember about reputation online is when you please people they are likely to be happy and go on their way, but you will probably not see much in good reviews on your site.  On the other hand if you are dishonest with a visitor or rude that person whom you hurt will be very likely to post anywhere they can telling people about how you hurt them.

Saying you will be honest with your internet business is easy, but following through you may find it more difficult than expected. Everything you do online can have different shades of honesty.  Perhaps you publish work which you have not thoroughly fact checked and was slightly off.  This may not be dishonest, but could definitely hurt your credibility.  Everything you do online will tell visitors who you are and you should always be attempting to put your best foot forward.  The first and most important aspect of building trust and credibility is the work you publish.  This is basically what you say on your presence.  Every word written should be the truth as you know it. Most of the time you will need to research what you are writing about to ensure your words have truth behind them. Another important aspect is remembering that as people read your work they will be making judgments about you so be sure your spelling and grammar is up to par.  Personally all work I do online is firsts done in a word processor.  This allows for spelling and grammar checks.

The second aspect of credibility and trust is your personal interactions with visitors.  These can be done using social sites such as twitter or facebook and through email.  Every time you speak with your visitors be sure to treat them with respect no matter their education or demeanor.  You may run into someone who is angry with you or your presence and is rude within an email.  Rather than reacting to their email with your emotions you should attempt to resolve the situation by treating them kindly.  Once you start seeing some success online people will be attempting to contact you so keep these thoughts in mind when you begin communicating with your audience.  For bloggers one of the biggest things to focus on is how you respond to comments.  Always be civil on your blog even when the visitor is not this will make you look very good and those who hatefully spam your blog very bad.  

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