It takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to build a business. With the internet becoming an integral part of every person’s and business’s lives, online reputation and perception have taken the center-stage for any company or business. Online reputation management is how the general public perceives your business when they see its name come up on the internet. First impressions matter as they determine the sentimental value people develop towards your brand.
What is Online Reputation Management?
Abbreviated as ORM, online reputation management means influencing how people view or perceive your business. In simpler terms, it means having control over what people read on the internet concerning your products, brand, or services. That said, how do you manage your brand’s online reputation?
Some of the ways include:
Performing an extensive audit of your online reputation- The substantial audit helps to uncover how people perceive your business online and what issues you are facing in challenging that view.
- Establishing an online reputation strategy – This will involve setting up your online management goals, defining your boundaries and limitations, and prioritizing the most critical parts to know what has to be solved first.
- Monitoring brand mentions efficiently- This gives you a real-time view of your online presence and the chance for a timely reaction. With efficient brand monitoring tools, you can monitor your business website and track all the mentions.
- Dominating brand search- By having keywords for your business page, you are easily able to track comments and contact the author of the negative review to have them rectify this. Seemingly, you are also able to approach your loyal clients and ask them to leave positive reviews to counter the negative ones.
- Encouraging positive reviews – Reviews, either positive or negative, will impact your sales. Encouraging positive reviews and customer engagement can be achieved in several ways. Such ways are: engaging customers in a fun way, sending signature emails to customers, creating small popups on your business page, encouraging customers to leave a review, and creating incentive programs.
What are some of the perks your Business derives from Online Reputation Management?
-
Increase in Sales
Customers search online for services, brands, and products before they make the final decision. Before making an online purchase, potential customers will start by reading the online reviews by people who have visited the site before. Businesses with bad reviews and a bad reputation miss out on clients. No client wants to experience inferior products or services, even with prior warning. For this reason, your business must have positive reviews on the internet.
2. Better Credibility
Social media and the internet have allowed us to share our opinions regarding anything. Customers prefer to buy from brands they can entirely rely on for good quality. A negative word about your service, product, or brand tends to spread fast, hence the need to have an effective online reputation strategy in place to address reviews that can bring down your brand. This helps to build your credibility.
3. Build Brand Image
Dismissive comments or reviews can damage the reputation, growth, and stability of your business. Moreover, it is one of the reasons your company may experience a ranking decline in search engines. To solve this, online reputation management should be applied, as it will help to build back your brand image by creating positive links and authoritative content.
4. Attract good Employees
Positive and negative reviews not only attract potential customers but equally captivate the attention of current and potential employees. Having professionals and employees who can deliver is the dream of every employer, and with good online reputation management, you can bring in talent to your business.
Ideally, qualified potential employees will look on the internet about a particular employer. If your company has excellent reviews, they feel the need to apply for jobs and want to be associated with your business. If the reviews are negative, this may drive away potential and current employees.
5. Higher Rankings
One essential aim of the internet is to provide the best experience for every business. As one of the ranking factors, Google will naturally reward your business with a higher ranking for having positive reviews. Online reputation management may help you achieve this.
6. Analyzing the needs and wants of your Customers
Lastly, positive or negative reviews will give insight into what is working or not working for your business. Customers are always quick in pointing out what they do not like, as well as things they fancy and prefer. Online reputation management helps you to spot all this feedback and track those that are recurrent. With this information, your business performance level increases and scales to better heights.