6 Tips For Effective Online Reputation Management

6 Tips For Effective Online Reputation Management
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Summary: How can you ensure your company's good reputation reaches all potential customers? Here are a few best practices and principles to follow.

Online Reputation Management: Why Is it Like Whitewashing Your Brand?

Online reputation management is the key to improve the business rather than just manage the reputation of the company. Businesses are expanding their wings all over the virtual world and becoming super brands in the market. But the bigger a company grows, the riskier it becomes to manage. There are many risks to be considered: bad publicity, false information about the company on the internet, etc. Such matters must be taken very seriously, because a brand is the organization's front face in the market. Bad publicity can cause the company to drift away from the customers.

This is where online reputation management comes in. Here are a few factors you need to consider to protect the reputation of your company online:

Monitoring The Company's Online Activity

You must check the progress and the latest news about the organization online, so you know what people think about it. Where is the company brand mentioned? What are people's comments when they're talking about the brand? To monitor the organization's activity online you can use tools like:

  • Google Alerts
  • Yahoo Alerts
  • Twitter Search
  • Social Mention

Online reputation management extends to a few factors connected to the organization. All of them must be taken into consideration, because even if a single factor is affected by bad publicity, the entire firm will be impacted:

  • Owner of the organization
  • Organization
  • Brand
  • High profile employees
  • Handles/usernames
  • Product

How To Ensure Effective Online Reputation Management

Here are 6 things you can do to bulletproof your organization against bad publicity and false information:

1. Be Active On Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Quora are some platforms the organization should be active on. After creating an account on social media, the account must be linked with the company's blog/website.

Being active on social media sites has enormous potential of improving a company's reputation. The company must update their social media regularly in order to provide the best information to potential customers. Also, guessing customers' needs before customers takes the company one step ahead: by making customers happy, a company can get good reviews and gain more customers.

2. Create A Blog

A blog can prevent bad publicity. If the damage is already done, it's better to hire an ORM (online reputation management) consultant so they contact the owner of the website that generates content responsible for bad reputation and ask to delete the content. If they refuse, you can always have the right to make a legal move.

It has been said that online reputation management is like polishing your shoes: No one likes dirty shoes, and to get rid of the dirt you need to take some necessary steps.

3. Know That Reviews Are Crucial For Online Reputation Management

In today's digital world customers search about companies by reading and analyzing their reviews. Reviews play a major role in bringing the customers towards the company and also far away from the company. What makes the reviews important? Around 70-90% of customers go through reviews and feedback in order to decide whether a company meets their needs.

4. Manage Your Net Promoter Score

The Net Promoter Score reflects how often a customer is referring a business to their friends and colleagues. It shows whether a company's doing a decent job in satisfying their customers' needs. When the score increases, this shows that the company is doing pretty well in making the customers happy; thus the customers refer the business to others and come back again.

5. Pay Attention To Feedback

Actions are more powerful than words in online reputation management. In many companies, customers face a situation where their feedback is not received by the company, despite their efforts to contact customer support. Now, such issues make the customer lose interest in the organization and leave a bad review, which again is read by other (potential) customers.

It is better to do something than only talk about it. In this case, the organization must keep track of the latest customer reviews and provide feedback accordingly.

6. Interact With Different Types Of Clients

Different types of clients offer information on different habits, opinions, and ideas for improvement. These precious insights tell what’s working, what’s beating down the business, and what customers actually want.

These are the few things to understand about online reputation management to enhance your business' effectiveness and avoid all traps of bad publicity.