Online Reputation on Higher Education

During our last meeting on our Data Mining Class, we've discussed about online reputation, how to manage it. But what exactly does Online Reputation mean? Why is it so important and what does it have to do with Data Mining.

According to Wikipedia, reputation a publics opinion or more technically a social evaluation towards a person, a group of person or an organization. But why is it so important in a business? According to and article about building your business reputation, reputation is so important it greatly affects every aspect of your business. How people would want to buy your product or how companies would want you as a partner depends on you reputation as a company. Big companies even have a department whose main concern is to improve their company's reputation, some even outsource people who specialize on this field.

But isn't this about Online Reputation? Well it is pretty much the same. Online reputation simply has an element of internet technology which nowadays is very popular. Because of its popularity and people's support, e-commerce business is born. But Online Reputation does not only apply for online businesses since being online provides a lot of advantages and possibilities that is why a lot of businesses online or not uses internet technology to their advantage and it is important to maintain and improve their Online Reputation.

Since the internet is known for its anonymity and prone to hacking, online reputation is required to be develop especially if you are considering e-commerce but it is still important on businesses that are not internet-based. As I've said earlier, internet provides advantages and a lot of possibilities for a company. One of it os being able to monitor one's reputation by using numerous tools such as Trackur, Google Alerts, Technorati , etc. and this is important in improving your business by using people's negative feedback as a consultant on what to improve on your products and services while you can use the positive feedbacks as a marketing support since it is said that a satisfied customer's positive feedback is the most effective advertisement.

But how exactly can this apply to higher education which is the focus of our group? Well it can be applied in a lot of ways. One of which is like what I have said earlier, it acts as a comment and suggestion box on what to improve to the service the school is selling. It is important to do so since in any business, it is vital to keep your customers satisfied since it cost less to maintain a currently satisfied customer than to find new ones. Especially those who are considered "loyal", it is very important to listen to what they say since they are one of the key to making your university one of best since not only that they would tell you words of praise but they comment and suggest not only for their own needs but what they think would be good for the university as well because they would rather ask you to give them what they want than to transfer to other universities.

Having a good online reputation also gives the university of improving one of its tedious processes particularly application. with a high online reputation, it allows people to put their trust on the online process of application and other processes like enrollment. Just imaging if people simply need a computer and an internet connection without requiring people to be physically present to complete all the processes the it would be great for the university and the applicants since it lessen the efforts on both parties.

Good Online Reputation also means landing great deals on business partners and any other support from other companies. Because of the university's reputation, it is easy to convince other companies for support since they would also be helping themselves. Though your reputation, they may also improve their businesses. And lastly, it also provides your students good reputation by studying and graduating from your universities. it may give them better opportunity for work. Not only making the your Higher Education Business a success but also provides young people a better chance for a successful life.