WHY Do YOU NEED TO WORK PROACTIVELY FOR YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION?

We cannot live perfectly without a good reputation in society if we talk about our day to day life. Just like online, if the reputation of our brand or product is not good then it might become little tough to attract desired traffic over your website.

Just think about yourself you even cannot visit a store without checking its online reviews or material. Still you are unaware regarding this topic don’t worry, In this article you will get in-depth knowledge regarding the online reputation management.  

A study done by Local bright, says that 85% of the consumers go with something after satisfying with his online reviews despite of personal recommendations, and 49% are those customers who used to see ratings and expect at least four star ratings before they chose something. Being an aware one is the first step that leads to maintain your online reputation.

Do Check: How To Keep Positive ORM?

What is Online Reputation?

Let’s understand this term by taking an example; Google some of the brands in which you are interested, then you will see lots of search engine results. Some of which are relevant or rest are may be irrelevant.

The next thing that will happen is you will get results of all Business that are listed on Your Google My Business with negative or positive experiences of the users. Perhaps there will be posts of the company’s Facebook page, Tweets that mentioned that particular brand, or comments of the Instagram posts

These things sound low but together they only form the first impression about your company.

Do Check: How To Establish Yourself As A Brand?

What is the importance of Online Reputation?

Gone the time when there was only one way of communication, from top level to down level. Websites were static and information flows from company to customers online.

Now the advancements have been changed this scenario. The customers get involved in the brands whose products they are supposed to use. Now customers can easily get access to the online platform related to their brands, these online communities took customers engagement to a whole new level.  

A customer only expects a transparency with the brand, to feel real and authentic relationship. This is how a customer can share its experience in social media posts, or through tweets. The fact you need to understand here is, you cannot switch from this online chatter. If you want not to engage, then you can imagine you will definitely lose control over it.

This is the reason, why your online reputation matters. Don’t take this in one side because it is flipping in nature, this can go dubious where with the positive results it could also bear a few negative too. And easily it can destroy your business due to bad reputation.

Before you understand what online reputation management is, have an insight what are the threats for your good online reputation.

  1. Impact of negative reviews – reviews becomes a part of customer’s life, whether it is about the product or food, they don’t shy of expressing their opinions online. If you are ignoring these reviews, then get ready for a big hit. Because these peer reviews create big impact on your sales, 95% of your buyers make their decision for your product after reading reviews.
  • Antagonistic Media stories – trust is the basis for your relationship with the consumer, it also has big impact on your sales. What if someone reveal negative about your brand? Like media stories online, if they reveal unfavorable about you it can really dent your reputation.
  • Consumer’s dissatisfaction – although this is not more harmful for your reputation but if your customer is showing their complaints on social media, and your services are not good enough to them, so it could be a matter of concern for you.
  • These are the threats that actually affect your online reputation. That’s why we need to do online reputation management. Let’s have a look what is this online reputation management?

Online reputation management is about working on the positive reviews first to ensure that your valued customers receive all the good information about your brand. And once you have covered the positives next you need to focus on the negative reviews of your brand, this is how you can make a good online reputation that focus over the customers.

Simply it is concerned with favoring the quality content higher in search engine ranking, it automatically keeps the bad and un-useful content in the lower rank.

A key element of online reputation management is pushing favorable brand-created or third-party content higher in the search engine rankings. This brings down the ranking of damaging and harmful content about your brand. Now keep this point in your mind that it is especially important because your top 5 search results should be under your favors as they are clicked by two–third of the customers.

  You cannot delete negative reviews about you on Google, but you can compensate it by taking desired actions. Try to work with another level of construction by engaging your happy customers to provide positive reviews in different content formats this will helps you in a good way. You will see the results in your favor

What are the marketing Channels Involved in Online Reputation Management?

There is a number of marketing channels that are involved in the online reputation management. Before getting into the online reputation management strategies, understand what the techniques it uses are.

Here we go:

  • Paid media – it is we can say this is the way through which we can expedite the process in online reputation management. But you need to pay for these quick- fixing posts in blogs, PPC advertising with Google AdWords and for the sponsored content on social media. The best thing about this is by elaborating the availability of these paid methods, you can ensure that customers will naturally focus the positive aspects and simultaneously they avoid the negative attributes of the product.
  • Earned media – there also remain an option for that you don’t need to pay. Value what here is the positive reviews that can only earned by your quality work and good experience of your customers with your product.
  • Social media – it’s an integral tool in online reputation management. Through this platform you can easily connect with your target audience. You can start a particular channel with the intention to connect your brand with the audience.
  • Your website and blog – these platforms are your owned one. By customizing your content in an organized way is a great way of attracting the audience.

These were the platforms where you can get ideas about the quality of services you are giving to your customers through their opinions; this is how you can bitterly make changes in your online reputation.

The thing is here that how you can make a better online reputation. Here are some important tips that you need to keep in mind while working.

Trust and credibility – easier said than done, but possible to make, it needs focused work or efforts from your end. You can build trust with your customers by the use of tools like guest posts on the websites and it can help you to make a good reputation.

Transparency with a relationship – another very important aspect of maintaining transparency with your customers. Customers appreciate the companies that are ready to address their all queries irrespective of how big or small the magnitude of the query is. If for instance, something is wrong with the product, spotted by the customer, it is better approach to what exactly went wrong. You can take necessary actions about that, this is how you can see how customers appreciate your work by the actions taken by you.

Combat critics with pace- in today ‘s world every product is under severe criticism and scrutiny but what really matters are how we deal with it. The best way to handle criticism is finding a way to convert the criticism into opportunities of improvements. This is an old saying that “keep your friends close but enemies closer” similarly encourage positive criticism (which can be researched upon and a solution can be figured out) but remain diplomatic about negative criticism (which is a mere negative judgment.

Be aware regarding the detectors– there is a difference between genuine critics and detractors. You need to distinguish between them, although through genuine critics you can make improvements but the intention of these detractors is only to bring down the reputation and ranking of your brand. If you found something unusual like videos regarding your brand take strict action against them.

Use tools for ORM- now everything is possible with the use of tools in this online world. Luckily, there are online reputation management tools available to make online reputation management simpler. There are tools like Awario, BrandWatch, and Grade.us that help you monitor and analyze brand mentions so that you can craft a strategy accordingly. Then there are more specific tools like GoFish that help you find negative reviews of your brand on 40+ complaint websites. Or SEO Spyglass that helps you monitor and manage backlinks which affect your reputation when it comes to SEO.

WRAP-UP

Hope now you can plan according to the above points that how online reputation management is an important factor for your brand. Although negative and positive aspects both helps to make a good reputation. Might you be thinking how negative, let me tell you one thing, you cannot satisfy every person of this world, in a single time but there is another compensation that you can make them satisfied by working on their approaches, by taking quick actions?

We do provide Digital Marketing Course which can help you learn more on this. You can check details for more.