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Do You Know Your Online Reputation?

danielkatz919
Mar 26, 2015
3 min read

John has been a very successful Realtor for over 20 years. During this time he has covered all the bases, or so he thought! Here's his story in his own words: "After working for seventeen years in sales for the food industry, I decided I needed a change. Jorge, a friend of mine had been in real estate for some time and told me I would be really good at it. He said that if I was to decide to go for it he would mentor me - Thanks Jorge! As you can imagine, I got my real estate license. Anyways, back then we used to cold call people, used the Bressers cross reference book, do mail-outs and all those good thing. Life was simple and business was good. I keep in touch with past customers via hand written letters and phone calls. I have helped some of them relocate or even help their kids find homes. I try to keep up with the dynamics of our industry, so now I have a humble website which has a blog (I really do not blog as much as I should!). I also have a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a client relationship manager (CRM). I try to keep the content interesting and business oriented. I guess I can't complaint as it has driven some prospects my way. In the last six months or so, I started noticing that the volume of calls decreased and not everyone I contacted seemed eager to work with me. Traffic on my website was down and I was getting concerned my business would dry out completely. While everyone else I knew was raving about the real estate market, I was thinking what was I going to do next. Where was I going to have to work to be able to pay my bills. I was REALLY afraid! Some people say there are no accidents in this world and after you hear what happen next you'll understand why I am a firm believer of this statement now. One morning I open up my email and saw one of these Realtors tip guide emails (which I normally delete at once). For some odd reason I decided to open it and I started reading it. The article gave a whole bunch of statistics about how people now search online for companies and service providers (i.e. Realtors) reputation, to avoid doing business with the "bad ones". The article went about how to do a search for your own reputation which I did. I Google my name and to my surprise, there was another real estate agent with my exact same first and last name which had been highly criticized for his lack of professionalism and even some questionable actions. I was in shock, website after website filled with bad comment about this "other me". Well to make a long story short, I have spent since a whole lot of time and money to amend the situation; but I rather do that than starting all over again doing who knows what. I can't believe how my business that took me so long to built, could be damaged so badly in so little time! I just wish I had found about this when it started; it would have been so much easier. I guess I know better now!!!" John Before you become another victim of wrong online reputation, follow these simple steps to setup a Google alert on your name and website.