Reputation Management: What are they saying about you?

Your reputation is what others say about you. It’s what they know before they meet you and the only thing they’ll know if they never do. In eCommerce, sellers will almost never know buyers, nor buyers know sellers. This means that what other buyers and sellers have said about you is paramount - they define your identity more than anyone else. In order to be a stellar seller, you need to know how to manage your reputation. In the coming week, eRated is turning its attention to how tens of millions of online sellers can build and get the most out of their reputation.

Fifteen years ago, reputation management was the purview of big public relations firms and departments for large corporations. They wanted to pump up their SEOs and bury down critics by astroturfing reviews and forums, setting up phantom blogs and profiles as well as unleashing a vast array of conventional media to build up their brand.

Since the advent of the sharing economy in the mid-2000s, reputation management has become an individual responsibility. It’s something we all have to be aware of because it directly affects our capacity to buy and sell. Probably more importantly, it represents how we’re seen by thousands of people online. Unlike the big corporations though, we don’t have expensive departments behind us.

So what’s reputation management all about? When you sell online, or buy, or swap or lend for that matter, the end user will likely have the opportunity to rate how you did. They will take into consideration whether or not your product was on time, whether or not it arrived in the condition you said it would and how responsive you were to queries. As the buyer, it’s about whether you provided payment. All of this is taken for granted when you shop at a place like FutureShop or Walmart. However, online we depend on what others have said about us to build our reputation.

Reputation management has become so important to online sellers that some sellers have gone so far as to discount their products in exchange for positive reviews from buyers. Does this sound dodgy to you? If so, you’re right. Online reputation is important because it’s the means by which we trust each other in eCommerce; if we lose faith in reputation systems as a result of greedy, unethical bad apples, it’s bad news for all of those great, dedicated sellers.

What many sellers don’t know is that they don’t have to “game the system” to get a better reputation in marketplaces. Because most of us are using more than one platform to sell and buy, we have additional data we can bring in to our eCommerce marketplaces. That’s what eRated is all about. eRated is a tool for honest, ethical sellers who see it as a way to take advantage of their responsible behaviour in all online marketplaces. If you’ve been a quality seller in Amazon, eRated will help you get the most of out it in eBay or AirBnB.

There’s no secret to having a good online reputation. Everyone operating online should behave ethically and treat others as they would expect to be treated themselves. If you do, you’ll get the reputation you deserve.

Remember, we’re not just talking about how well you buy and sell online. A 2010 Microsoft study revealed that 70% of US companies have rejected a candidate for employment due to their online reputation. If you’ve been a great seller in a number of platforms, why not make the most of it by opting into eRated and building confidence in yourself online?

For more information on how you can get the most out of all your hard work managing your reputation, check out www.erated.co.

Check back next week to find out why reputation management is important and how you can find out what others think about you!