Your company works hard to keep your consumers satisfied. You meet with customers one-on-one and work relentlessly to design new goods and services that fulfill their needs.
Even with the best customer service, a company’s reputation is sure to suffer from time to time.
A consumer uploads an angry review for all to see on the internet. Or a negative media article spreads well beyond your expectations. This is where online reputation management enters the picture.
You can reduce negative consumer feedback and keep your online appearance as positive as possible by actively managing your reputation.
To get you started, we’ll go through the what, why, and how of online reputation management, as well as tactics you may apply for your business.
Let’s get started!
What is Online Reputation?
An online reputation, also known as an e-reputation, is the reputation of a business, individual, product, service, or other factor on the Internet and digital platforms.
This online reputation is influenced by the material distributed by an organization, the reactions and interactions of web users, activity on social networks, and so on.
Online reputation is critical for e-commerce firms since it affects the legitimacy and exposure of their online store.
What is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management is a technique for improving how your customers perceive your brand. It can help you gain client trust, establish industry authority, and even improve revenue.
While ORM and public relations (PR) are related, they are not the same.
Public relations uses relationships to build a positive outlook for a brand both online and off. Online reputation management accomplishes the same purpose by monitoring and controlling your brand’s reputation and media interactions, particularly those that occur online.
In a nutshell, public relations and ORM are two distinct approaches to managing public perception of your brand.
ORM media channels are divided into four categories:
- Paid media
- Earned media
- Shared media
- Owned media
This is how they differ:
#1. Paid Media
Paid media refers to any type of online material that demands money in order to feature your business. This includes Google Ads, social media ads, sponsored posts, and influencer campaigns.
Paid media is advantageous since you have complete control over the story. However, it can be rather costly.
#2. Earned Media
Earned media is coverage that your brand obtains from third-party outlets for free.
Here are several examples:
- Press attention
- Other websites’ blog postings
- Forums
- Third-party industry listings (such as Glassdoor, Capterra, or Trustpilot)
- Review sites that are not under your control (such as Google or Yelp)
Organic coverage can be obtained through reviews, online listings, and so forth. However, in order to acquire social and press publicity, you may need to reach out to media and influencers.
Earned media can help to promote your company and build trust with online visitors.
#3. Shared Media
Any content about your brand that is shared on social media is considered shared media. Whether it’s from your brand’s account or from someone else’s.
Unresolved complaints, bad remarks, and low ratings on social media can all affect your company’s reputation and turn off potential customers.
So, just as you would pay attention to consumer remarks in a physical store, you should pay attention to what’s happening on your social media accounts.
Monitor brand references and respond to bad criticism as soon as possible.
#3. Owned of Media
Owned media refers to any media that you control, such as your website or blog.
By boosting your Google rankings, you may assist restrict the reach of owned media channels. Here are a few examples:
- Create material that is relevant and beneficial to your target audience.
- Concentrate on branded keywords.
- Optimize for on-page SEO elements.
- Obtain backlinks from authoritative sites in your field.
- Control your visibility in local search results.
Following SEO best practices will increase your chances of ranking higher on Google. When visitors search for terms connected to your brand, they will find valuable content from your brand.
Read Also: EMAIL SPOOFING: How to Prevent and Stop It
How Online Reputation Management Differs for Businesses
The majority of online reputation management companies concentrate on local business listings or personal branding for people.
Scale, on the other hand, changes the game in business companies. Mistakes have an impact on millions of customers. As a result, business owners lose control over their brand messaging both online and offline.
For example, suppose your website goes down for three hours. Customers may not even realize if it is a small business website. That same three-hour window, though, might cost an enterprise e-commerce organization millions of dollars in revenue. Worse, it would almost certainly make the evening news.
And what if you’re a business-level platform like Slack or Facebook? Prepare for three hours of Armageddon memes on social media.
Consider the consequences of a mistake that truly harms the client or a heinous act by a company official. What if your website is hacked and malicious actors obtain access to your consumer information?
Small firms can bounce back fast, while large corporations will confront a storm that could last weeks, months, or even years.
How Online Reputation Management Differs For Executives
In the public view, many brands have become inextricably linked to their founder or CEO. This is especially true if the company has a compelling Genesis story. You can’t talk about Tesla or SpaceX without mentioning Elon Musk. Along with that, he’s built a brand for himself, pushing his own narrative and encouraging nicknames like “The real-life Iron Man.”
Not every CEO wants to be famous, but it is an unavoidable side effect of running a well-known brand. CEOs are now in the limelight thanks to social media. Customers also take mistakes personally.
CEOs’ controversial personal behavior can cause negative news cycles and social media boycotts. A single Tweet can cause stock prices to collapse and investors to flee.
As a result, CEO reputation management develops an executive’s legacy beyond their function as a company leader.
Read Also: CONTENT FILTERING: Definition, Top Tools, How To Turn It Off & Guide
Why Is Online Reputation Management Important for Your Company?
Maintaining a positive reputation is critical since it affects sales.
In fact, nearly 60% of US consumers stated they would avoid purchasing from a brand that appears untrustworthy.
A bad online reputation can undermine your brand’s credibility. And, eventually, your company. Here are a few more reasons why reputation management is critical for your company:
- It has an impact on purchasing decisions. Before making a purchase, 59% of shoppers indicated they conduct online research. In addition, 97% of shoppers read product reviews before purchasing. As a result, depending on how your brand appears online, you may lose clients.
- It assists you in dealing with unfavorable feedback. Negative reviews are unavoidable, but keeping an eye on your online presence might help you turn them around. Customers who had their social media concerns resolved in less than five minutes were more likely to spend more money on future purchases.
- It offers useful feedback. If you receive the same complaint often, there is most likely an underlying problem that has to be addressed. Reading reviews can help you gather helpful information about your products, services, or overall customer experience.
Examples of Online Reputation Management
Let’s look at some real-world instances of ORM in action to discover how much it affects real organizations.
#1. United Airlines Inc.
United Airlines’ market value dropped by more than $1 billion after a video of a man being pulled off an overbooked flight went viral.
In one day, the video received over 1 million online mentions and over 100 million views. Many viewers condemned the CEO’s inaction during a public perception problem.
This incident occurred in 2017, however, it is still frequently brought up in ORM discussions today.
#2. Nestlé
Nestlé also had a well-publicized reputation management blunder when Greenpeace accused them of detrimental environmental activities online.
Rather than confronting the issue, Nestlé exacerbated matters by requesting that Greenpeace’s video be removed from YouTube.
The company had to briefly lock down its public website owing to harsh remarks that included an altered image of the KitKat logo that said “Killer.”
It only takes one negative story to transform online reputation management into a nightmare. As a result, it’s best to manage your brand’s image proactively and have a crisis strategy in place.
How Can One Implement Online Reputation Management?
Now that we’ve defined online reputation management, let’s look at how to put it into practice in the workplace:
#1. Creating the correct presence
Creating the correct presence entails exhibiting the only item a company needs to show its clients. To establish a proper internet presence, a company must monitor all of the content, ad plays, and interlinked sites associated with its website. This entails creating industry-specific content, promoting press coverage, backlinking to rich media sites, and ongoing improvement, among other things.
#2. Ensure that your business can be located
This includes having a spot on the internet solely for the business. SEO helps a company rise to the top of search results. It is the role of the ORM to assist search engines in finding the page that is appropriate and suggestive for each linked search phrase. As a result, company ORM managers must create relevant content, investigate user behavior, maintain the site, and ensure the content’s credibility.
#3. Providing enough content
Content is king. It is a company’s job to ensure that the content on its website is completely relevant to the industry that it represents. Without correct material, the user will be uninterested in visiting the website, causing the business’s reputation to suffer.
#4. Interact with consumers
One of the most important aspects of online reputation management is customer interaction. If a consumer has a complaint, the company should investigate it. The company should do its best to settle the concern.
#5. Advertise only what a company can deliver
One of the most damaging aspects of a company’s failure is that it promotes far more than what it can provide. For example, if a company promises a 10% discount, it should honor that promise regardless of the circumstances. If a company imposes terms and limitations on its discounts, it should make them clear to its customers.
#6. Engage in social media
Social media acts as social proof of a company’s existence. Brands that are active on social media get numerous rewards. For starters, it may tell a company what its target audience is interested in hearing and purchasing from them.
Second, the company can study audience trends and make changes to its product/s or service/s as a result. Furthermore, social media minimizes the communication gap between the client and the seller, allowing buyers to communicate directly with the seller without the use of intermediaries.
Aside from the aforementioned factors, what makes a company’s reputation truly visible and important on the internet is its honesty and dependability. If the company is ethical, it will not be concerned about a bad reputation.
Being online is always a risk due to various issues, but what distinguishes a business is how a client perceives it. As a result, while a company should focus on controlling its online reputation, it should also strive to improve its services for the individuals it serves.
Tools For Online Reputation Management
Online reputation management necessitates a significant amount of effort and time to manage and track. There are numerous tools available to assist you to check your online reputation and monitor how your business is perceived.
Here are our top 9 online reputation management tools:
#1. BrandMentions
BrandMentions allows you to monitor every social channel as well as a wide range of blogs, news, and review sites. It then provides you with an overview of how and by whom your brand is being discussed. You may also observe who is talking about your competitors, which provides information about their reputation management tactics.
#2. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a platform that searches the web for material based on certain phrases or brand names. You can see how popular a piece of material is, as well as who shared it and where they shared it. This is an excellent tool for spotting unfavorable sentiments about your business and measuring your online share of voice.
#3. Mention
Mention allows brands to monitor social media and online conversations about their brand. The platform gives you detailed information about who is talking about your brand and what they are saying. You can respond to specific social media conversations as well as develop social media content depending on audience patterns.
#4. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a free service that monitors any mentions of your name, brand, products, keywords, and competitors. When it discovers a mention of the terms you typed, it will send you an email with the link.
#5. Socialmention
Socialmention is an online tool that allows you to type a term and select from a number of search possibilities. It can search blogs, microblogs, photos, and other sources and will display the results from the previous day. The granular degree of filtering allows you to locate brand-related topics that you may otherwise miss.
#6. Reputology
Reputology is a review monitoring technology that can help a company manage its reviews. It can track and reply to reviews for your brand across different review networks. It also allows you to automatically poll customers at crucial moments in the customer experience, allowing you to discover and address issues before they become major.
#7. Birdeye
Birdeye provides enterprise-level internet reputation management tools to help businesses provide great customer service. One of its most powerful features is the ability to automatically seek reviews from consumers and then respond to those reviews on over 150 review sites. This makes it much easy to obtain positive consumer feedback and respond to any negative ones that may arise.
#8. GatherUp
GatherUp is a comprehensive set of tools that focuses on both the customer experience and online review management. It provides review request tools, review response tools, and social networking tools for simply sharing positive reviews. It also includes an embedded review widget that can be used on any website. As a result, you can collect Voice of the Customer feedback and keep track of your online reputation.
#9. Meltwater
Meltwater offers an all-in-one platform for monitoring brand reputation. It allows you to monitor a wide range of sources, including social media, online news, print media, podcasts, and review sites. It also includes a social media management tool for posting material and interacting with followers. It also comes with a social influencer management tool for identifying relevant influencers and running reputation management campaigns.
When Should You Use an Online Reputation Management Firm?
There are numerous factors to consider while selecting online reputation management services. Before making a final decision, consider the following questions.
- Do you have experience working with corporate brands like ours?
- Could you please describe your privacy, security, and data management systems?
- Can you establish a track record of long-term success rather than just short-term success?
- Do you have any customers who can serve as references?
- How long have you been in operation?
For Fortune 1000 companies, the stakes are high. A bad reputation has an influence on hiring, retention, sales, and investor confidence. As a result, working with a company that genuinely understands how Google operates is important.
Conclusion
The conversation about your brand is going on all the time, whether you realize it or not.
One of the best ways to remain on top of this is through online reputation management, which ensures that whatever is stated appropriately represents the brand image you want to establish and maintain.
When it comes to recruiting new clients and retaining existing ones, a targeted ORM program can make a major impact.
Make a positive first impression and reclaim control of your brand’s online store.
Related Articles
- ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT ORM: Best Practices and Tools
- REPUTATION MANAGEMENT TOOLS: How It Works, Free & Best Tools
- REPUTATION MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE: Best Reputation Management Software for Business
- ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT TOOLS: Meaning and All You Need to Know
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