With the world turning more digital every day where the web is playing a huge role in obtaining information, a negative online reputation can destroy your business. A negative reputation can have major consequences for organizations and individuals. For example, if the first page on Google’s search engine result pages about your business or brand has 5 negative results, it can affect your track record for anyone that are searching for your brand, products or services. This means that you can lose that customer right there.
Having an online reputation management (ORM) strategy in place can help you undertake a step-wise process to monitor, observe, and engage with people on the social web to help build your credibility, and at the same time act as an early warning system should anything negative arise. A ORM strategy can help secure your business and brand image on the web.
What does an online reputation management strategy consists of?
Proactively monitoring the web
You need a process where you can proactively monitor the social web on where you have been mentioned, was it positive or negative, on which platforms were you mentioned such as forums, blogs, websites or social media channels. This will help you if you get any negative feedback online on what your response can be. This should be done proactively so that you can respond as soon as anyone mentions you online. This process can also be a listening process to check what people are talking about online, but hence the name “listening”, it will only be a “listening” process until you decide to act on what you find.
Correcting negative content
A negative blog post in regards to your products, services or a negative consumer experience can create negative publicity for your business or brand. If the negative blog post were published on an authoritative blog, it might show up higher on the search engine results pages. On the social web there are many people reading and leaving comments or sharing the content with their own network and this can push the negative content even higher on the search engines.
After you have responded to the negative content, there are a couple of ways you can enhance your profile on the search engines by only displaying positive content. This involves publishing and promoting positive content with an SEO strategy to help you get high rankings on Google.
Safeguard your reputation from future attacks
With a proper online reputation management strategy and process in place, you will be able to handle the online content relevant to your market niche. Included in your strategy should be methods to build up your blog, optimize your website content, arrange your social media profiles, and optimize your online profile to be inline with your business. This will help you make direct interaction with your customers and this can benefit you in the long run to cope with negative criticisms that can turn into a snowball. You will also be able to get the buzz on your competitors, and what they are doing online that can help you improve your sales.
With an online reputation management strategy you will be able to take advantage of your reputation on the web. An ORM strategy can help you remove those unwanted negative content about you on the search engines and help you build brand awareness on the web together with your digital marketing strategy.
Really good post about ORM Anton. When I first started online I was told by one of my mentors how important your online reputation is. I am glad to see this in a post because you are right, it can make or break your business. Thanks for sharing this!
Thanks Patty.