Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 company, it’s important to have a good online reputation. Your customers are going to Google your business, and they’re going to find your website. They’ll check out what people are saying about you on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, among many others. 

If you want to gather website traffic and also keep previous store visitors coming back for more, it’s important that you manage your brand’s online reputation.

Today, reputation management has become an essential part of every business. A good online reputation can help you in attracting more customers, while a bad one can have the opposite effect. 

What is online reputation management? 

Online Reputation Management, or ORM, is a multidimensional concept that focuses on building better public awareness and perception of a brand, company, and/or person. 

ORM encompasses building and regularly monitoring reputation, tackling any and all content that could possibly tarnish the brand image. It deals with strategizing and execution to achieve the desired results. 

Why is online reputation management important? 

1. It impacts buying decisions

Customers are more easily influenced than we realize. And your online reputation is going to play a major role in buying decisions. 

53% of shoppers claim they do research before purchasing anything. And over 81% of consumers do online research before making big purchases.

Only and only if shoppers find your brand reliable enough will they consider making a purchase from your store. And hence, your online reputation plays a major role in determining your conversions.

2. It is the online version of word-of-mouth

88% of consumers trust user reviews as much as personal recommendations. 

Now, while your potential customers are out there reading reviews, testimonials, and other social media posts about your company, you should be able to make a good impression. This will help you improve your chances of persuading them to buy from you.

3. You cannot really delete negative reviews

Once on the internet, always on the internet.

This means that if ever a negative about your company gets posted online, it is going to be there for many more potential customers to turn away from you. While you obviously cannot simply delete these reviews to improve your odds, you can still offer to assist the displeased customer and make amends. This is a great online reputation management strategy.

Great customer service directly impacts long-term revenue. In fact, according to a study, 70% of unhappy consumers who received a satisfying response from the brand will come back and make purchases again. 

4. You can gather valuable feedback

When you manage your online reputation well, you’ll be able to tell what people think of what you’ve done in the past and how they feel about working with you in the future. This will help guide your decisions moving forward so that everything goes smoothly!

How to manage your brand’s online reputation? 

1. Perform an audit of your online reputation

Performing an audit of your online reputation is a great first step in managing your brand’s online reputation. An audit is basically just a way to measure what people are saying about you, and how much it matters. You can do this by monitoring your brand’s name on social media and search engines, or by using an external tool like Radarr to monitor your brand’s mentions and sentiment.

This gives you a starting point for developing strategies to manage your online reputation so that it reflects what you want it to be!

If you see anything that isn’t accurate or fair, contact the site owner and ask them to remove it. Be sure to follow up with an email confirming that they have taken down the content. If necessary, file a complaint with Google or other search engines.

2. Establish an online reputation management strategy

Stay on top of the latest industry trends and build a content strategy based on real-time insights. Never miss a beat when it comes to creating campaigns that resonate with consumer sentiments!

This involves creating a plan for how you will respond when negative content comes up in search results. You should also include steps to take if you want to create positive content that will be displayed in search results instead of negative content.

This strategy will help you decide what to monitor and how to respond. You’ll want to determine what information should be monitored by your employees and what should be outsourced to a third party – and then set up the systems to make that happen.

Your strategy should ideally include –

• Identifying potential issues that could affect your brand’s reputation (and working to prevent them)
• Defining the goals of your reputation management strategy
• Determining how you want to respond to negative reviews or comments about your product or service
• Creating goals for how many positive comments or reviews you want to receive and set aside time every week for monitoring these comments/reviews and responding if necessary

3. Monitor brand mentions efficiently

Actively monitoring your conversations gives you an in-depth insight into your online presence. Turn online conversations about you into an opportunity to understand your brand’s standing among consumers.

Radarr is a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that helps you in social listening, monitoring, and tracking online mentions about your brand. You can get in-depth data and actionables to optimize ongoing efforts with better targeting and messaging to drive successful outcomes.

4. Dominate SERPs for brand searches

Let’s say you run a company that provides cell phone accessories, like charging cables, cases, and other accessories. You want to get your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings up so that people who search for things like “charging cable” or “case” see your website first when they look for things like that.

The first step is to make sure that you’re on Google My Business with all of the information about your business (like an address, hours of operation, etc.). Then start optimizing for keywords related to what you sell (like “charging cable,” “case,” or “Apple charger”). The more keywords you can rank for on Google and Bing, the better off you’ll be!

5. Encourage positive reviews online

Online reviews impact your business and conversions. This includes both negative and positive reviews. 

Customer reviews also affect your SEO. So, being bad to your customers is bad for business as well. Google has an excellent sentiment analysis system that ensures that web pages that have negative comments against them do not rank up effectively on Google search results so that users can enjoy a great Google-ing experience.

So, your safest bet is to try to collect as many positive reviews as possible so your SEO gets boosted as well. With Radarr’s ability to analyze sentiments you can reach out to people who speak positively about you and drive them toward giving you positive reviews. 

Read: How to Get More Positive Customer Reviews for Your Business

6. Managing negative online reviews

Online reviews are an important part of your brand’s reputation. They can be used to research products and services, help you find new customers, and keep you top of mind with existing customers. But, what do you do when your brand receives negative online reviews?

Negative online reviews can be a huge headache for brands. If you don’t address a customer’s issues, they might never come back to your business. It can feel like there’s nothing you can do to stop the negative comments from coming in, but there are definitely steps you can take to manage your brand’s online reputation.

Here are our top tips for managing negative online reviews:

• Respond quickly and thoughtfully. You could use Radarr to quickly find negative conversations, comments, and remarks and reach out to those users.
• Be honest
• Apologize where needed and make it right if you can
• Follow up with customers who left positive reviews about the same product in order to find out if their experience was different from the negative review and why, so you can make adjustments where needed.

7. Create content that is always on-brand

​​If you want to manage your brand’s online reputation, then you’re going to need to create content that is always on-brand.

You don’t want people to think of your company as fun when they visit your website, but boring when they read your blog. You don’t want people to think of your company as professional when they visit your social media page, but as casual and unprofessional when they read your email newsletters.

You want people to see the same thing in every piece of content that you produce. That way, they’ll have a consistent experience with your brand no matter where they encounter it online!

This can be in the form of images, articles, or even videos. You want people to know exactly what kind of products/services you offer and what your company is about when they see your name pop up on their screen.

8. Choose your influencers wisely

If you want to manage your brand’s online reputation, you need to make sure that the influencers you work with are trustworthy and reliable.

It’s important when choosing influencers that you take into consideration not only the size of their following but also how engaged their audience is with them. If someone has a big following but most of those followers aren’t engaging with their posts, then it may not be worth having them as an influencer for your brand.  

When looking for an influencer to represent your brand, make sure you understand what kind of content they typically post and if it aligns with what you want from them as an influencer. For example, if you’re trying to promote your new sneakers collection and want people to share images of themselves using the products, then a fashion blogger may be better suited than someone who shares food recipes every day.

Ensure that any influencer you work with has a good track record of working with other brands and delivering results. You should also check out whether they have any complaints against them on social media or review sites like Trustpilot, TrustRadius, and others. Radarr can help with identifying prominent names and influencers and how they sentimentally impact your audience.

Conclusion 

Having a good online reputation is incredibly important and can help you find new customers, get more leads, and get people to trust you.

Owing to the ever-increasing digital landscape, maintaining an online reputation is getting tougher by the day. You need to know where your target audience is having conversations about you, your campaigns, or their experiences with you across the internet.

But what if you don’t know how to get started with ORM or don’t have a good online reputation? What if your business has a lot of negative reviews? Or what if your competitors are talking trash about you on social media?

That’s where Radarr comes in! With Radarr, you will always know what others are saying about you. Gather actionable insights about their audience response, interests, and market trends in a fuss-free way; in real-time.

Book a demo today to improve and manage your brand’s online reputation with real-time social listening, monitoring and analysis!