Online Reputation Management is more than just damage control. It is a proactive process that helps companies build trust, increase website traffic, and create positive perceptions in the eyes of customers.
It includes encouraging happy customers to leave reviews on third-party sites as well as the company?s own websites and social media channels.
1. Reputation Monitoring
A positive reputation builds trust and increases brand awareness, but it takes time to build up. Monitoring conversations on social media and review sites is an essential step in online reputation management. It’s also important to monitor conversations that could impact your business, such as news articles or regulatory changes.
Reputation management tools can help you track these conversations, identify trends, and respond to negative comments quickly. You can use a simple tool such as Google Alerts or more advanced software, like SentiOne or Birdeye, which offer analytics and sentiment analysis of your brand. The goal is to find a reputation monitoring tool that aligns with your goals and allows you to easily set up real-time alerts.
Often, negative comments are more effective than positive ones in affecting perceptions and building trust, so it is important to address them. A strong ORM strategy includes training for employees to effectively communicate with customers when something goes wrong, especially in the case of a crisis.
It’s also important to promote positive content on owned media, such as your website and email newsletter, to drown out any negative sentiment. You can use SEO techniques to increase the visibility of these assets and boost organic search results. The benefits of a good ORM strategy trickle down to the entire company, from customer service to sales to marketing.
2. Social Media Monitoring
One of the best ways to get ahead with reputation management is to keep an eye on your social media. This gives you a chance to quickly see if someone is talking about your company or brand, and respond to them in a timely manner.
It also helps you to weed out conversations that aren’t about you, which is important for online reputation management because there can be some fake reviews and comments that could negatively affect your online reputation. To do this, you need a tool that can monitor conversations and alert you to new mentions.
Some tools are easy to use, like Mention. It has a simple dashboard that you can monitor in real time, and you can set up instant email and SMS alerts. It’s a good tool for SMEs and agencies that need a straightforward monitoring solution. Other tools are more advanced, like Talkwalker. It has a rich reporting interface that is geared more towards agencies and large brands that need insights into consumer sentiment, relationships with public figures and competitor benchmarking.
If you want to take it a step further, try out Get Five Stars, which lets customers share their happiness with your business on Google and other review sites. It’s a great way to encourage positive customer feedback and help your company improve its overall reputation.
3. Reputation Management Software
A reputation management platform or tool should offer a secure online environment where corporate teams can collaborate. It should also allow for roles, privileges and access to be configured according to the needs of each project. It should also be easy for each team member to find, share and respond to feedback from different sources in one place.
A good reputation management tool will enable companies to monitor online review sites, social media and news websites for mentions of their brands. It should be able to detect brand mentions across these platforms and provide a sentiment analysis for each one. Having this information will help companies plan their outreach, which might include customer service responses to negative reviews, PR campaigns that address the root causes of the complaints and other initiatives that can build trust with customers.
A company can improve its reputation by being open and honest about its products and services and sharing its values with the public. A reported 86% of consumers say they value transparency from businesses. Moreover, they will be more likely to buy from and recommend brands that have transparent business practices, even when those businesses make mistakes or fall short on delivering on their promises.
4. SEO
The online world is full of information that can have a negative impact on businesses. As a result, reputation management strategies must include digital public relations tactics. A key element of this is SEO, which focuses on optimizing websites and other online assets to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This can help push positive results over negative ones.
While many business owners know about SEO, few understand how to effectively implement it for reputation management. To do this, they must monitor review websites and social media platforms to identify negative comments or reviews about their brand. Additionally, they must search for their brand name on Google to assess their SERPs.
Once a business has identified negative content, it must take steps to mitigate it. For example, it can write new content to rank higher in search results. Similarly, it can create a list of keywords that are relevant to its niche and then optimize onsite content with these terms.
Another option is to use image optimization techniques to keep negative images off of Google Images. By using alt attributes, it can promote other images that showcase the company’s positive reputation in search results. These methods can be used on a short-term basis until the company can secure higher rankings for its own onsite content or digital assets.
