Online reputation management is so much more than just tracking mentions about your brand. It is about proactively monitoring your online reputation and the way people feel about your business when they are engaging with you online. If you have an ORM strategy in place, you will be able to respond better to criticism and complaints online, and at the same time you will be able to control your reputation positively on the web.
When it comes down to the basics of ORM, a good portion of reputation management online is about SEO (search engine optimization). With a solid SEO campaign in place, you will be able to clear the first page of Google’s search engine listings of all the negative content about your business and rather make all the positive information and listings about your company displayed. This is not the answer to fixing your reputation online as it should first start within your own business, but it is a good way to push the negative comments further down the search engine listings.
If you are eager to start repairing or building your online reputation on the web, a great way to start is to leverage the people working at your organization to help you build and repair your online image. Think about it, you have all your employees that you can use, and you can encourage them to participate in a couple of activities to help all the positive and good information about your business rank higher, helping to push down all the negative information.
This all sounds well and fine, but how do you get started and what should you do? Find below 3 ways you can use ORM within your organization.
Blogging
If you are a part of big organization or you have a big marketing campaign, the chances are good that a number of your current employees or marketers have blogs. Look at every one of those blogs as a potential online advocate for your business. Not only can you use those employee blogs to announce positive information about your company, but they can also be used to create links back to your business website that can help you boost your organic search engine rankings on Google.
You don’t have to corner everyone and tell them to start blogging for you, instead create a company “badge” and provide this badge to your marketers and employees. They can then use that badge and place it on their own blogs linking back to your business website. This can create a sense of pride in your business for the ones who places it on their blogs and you can see it as free advertising.
Another way to make use of their blogs is to offer contests for the most creative and best organization testimonial posted on a personal blog or you can run other similar contests that will encourage your employees to post positive information about your business on their own websites.
Social media marketing
Social media factors such as sharing links on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook plays an important role in SEO and ORM. If you don’t have a social media marketing strategy in place, now is a good time to create one. Once you have a strategy in place, encourage your employees to join your network.
How are you going to get them started? Same as above, provide them with incentives when they share links to your business by holding contests. It is a great and free way to boost the morale inside your company.
Reviews, reviews, reviews
There are many review channels on the web where anyone can write a review of your business. Some of these channels are ranked quite high on Google and the chances are good that if you have a review on one of these sites, your business name will be on the first page of Google when searched for your business name.
This is another opportunity where you can shift the message on its head by encouraging your employees to create reviews of your business on their own websites and blogs.
Increasing your online reputation doesn’t have to be the focus point of only one person in your organization. When you get all of your employees involved, you can start building relationships online with targeted audiences that will create a positive reputation for your business.
Hi Anton,
Great post – Found it viable to all types and size businesses and or organizations. Especially when it cmoes to Social Media.
Thanks Byron. True. Why have one person handle the ORM strategy when your whole organization can help?