Overview

Online Reputation is the outcome of how you run your business, & what people say or think about your services online. If you are responsible for marketing in your company, it is important for you to be aware of how your reputation online affects your sales, especially when you have a brand that is popular and people follow closely what you do.

It is common knowledge that when it comes to sharing their experiences, consumers are a lot more vocal about their bad experiences than good ones (Watch this). Opinions spread faster than ever through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. This can very easily affect the reputation of any business. This can be negative publicity, especially when complaints are not handled in a proactive manner. This brings a very important point of why listening & responding online is so critical for your business.

How does it work?

When shoppers search for your brand online, both good and bad things about you show up in search results. They not only look for information on your website but also look at blogs, review sites, forums, etc. to know what others are saying about your business. When they see good reviews about your brand it boosts their confidence and helps build credibility for your brand. What happens when you have 7 out of 10 results that are bad reviews?

Online Reputation Management is a strategy to manage search engine results, by listening to what people are saying about your brand. Your ultimate goal in this strategy is to bring good publicity about your brand to the top of the search engine results, in turn pushing the bad publicity results down in the list. This requires you to have a proactive strategy in place, to handle unexpected bad publicity online.

Research is critical and the longest process in the consumer’s buying cycle, They use search engines to research and gather information so that they can make informative decisions. If they find information about your brand, that is more negative than positive, it is highly likely that they take their business elsewhere. By not being proactive in handling negative reviews, you might be spending a lot more time and resources to gain control back in the market.

How to Manage Online Reputation?

Step 1: Monitoring

Setup tools in place to listen to what is being said about your brand online. Accept the reality that people tend to be more honest about negative experiences and more eager to share them. There are several social monitoring tools available for you to use such as Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts, Social Mention, Hoot Suite, etc. Some are free of cost and some require subscription. Choose the tools wisely depending on your situation.

Step 2: Analyzing

Once you start gathering data from these monitoring tools, what do you do with it? Be proactive and analyze the data frequently, and make use of important feedback to improve your services and provide better brand experience to your consumers. Be sure to let your consumers know that their feedback is valuable for your business.

Step 3: Influencing

When you come across negative comments while monitoring your brand getting involved in the conversation is very critical. By owning up to your mistakes, offering compensation for the inconvenience caused by these mistakes, and also by providing assurance that this will not repeat in the future, you can influence the outcome of negative publicity. This accountability may even help strengthen the credibility of your brand and build confidence.

Similar to how you have disaster recovery, & operations crisis management for your company, it is very important that you implement a digital crisis management strategy and assign responsible parties to execute this strategy when needed.

Conclusion

Your online choices can be overwhelming. Before you implement or setup tools for online reputation management, do your homework. Understand which social media platform is most popular among your target demographics. Set up your presence on these platforms and start monitoring. Participate actively in online conversations, even if it is not directly related to your brand. Online Reputation Management can be time-consuming and it has to be done. So, make sure you have delegated this to someone in your company who is accountable for managing these activities.

You want to explore Online Reputation Management options, but don’t know where to start? Please make an appointment and we’ll be happy to discuss 🙂

About the Author

Kalpana Murthy, President/CEO at WSI Plano, DBA Kriti Web Solutions, LLC. is a Digital Strategist, Consultant, Speaker/Trainer, & Software Engineer who is passionate about bringing affordable technology solutions to businesses to build online presence. Kalpana Murthy is a certified partner with Google, HubSpot, Sharp Spring, SEMRush and other digital solution providers.