Online reputation management and brand monitoring

Posted by Anton on Sep 1, 2011 in ORM, Social Media

The online world is huge and anyone has the ability to post an opinion (good or bad) in mere seconds on the web. For your company, these opinions could be the difference between a potential prospect interested in your services or decided to look somewhere else based on the opinions of others regarding your brand.

Online reputation management (ORM) is a method of counter acting negative comments about your company or brand.  ORM should definitely be part of any digital marketing strategy and campaign. Efficient monitoring and posting appropriate responses can have a major impact on how others visualize your brand. An ultra efficient ORM service could prevent bad reviews entirely.

Available channels online

It is very important that you understand all the channels available online such as blogs, forums, websites, social networks, and various other Web 2.0 related services that people can use to publish their opinions on. When monitoring your brand reputation online, you should tie in every aspect of digital marketing such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to see how it can be used when an unhappy customer decides to start posting negative comments about your brand or company.

ORM is reactive and proactive

Online reputation management is both a reactive and a proactive strategy.  The prevention of future damage is usually more effective than attempting to remedy any existing damage. Brands should always do their best to maintain a visible presence online, provide good service, and release a consistent stream of quality content to be published on multiple platforms to stimulate positive conversations.

It is also a very good idea to take advantage of various alert services online for brand mentions on blogs, search engines, forums and various news feeds so that any negative and damaging posts can be stopped before they are ranked on the search engines.

The reactive side of online reputation management shows when and how you respond to negative comments about your brand or company online.  Most often, brands will publicly answer on each online channel being used to rally negative comments, which might entail real-time responses via the company’s social media profiles or replies on blogs and forums.