“Mass advertising can help build brands, but authenticity is what makes them last. If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.” Reputation management has always been a major factor while building up any brand.With the increase in global internet usage,and availability of internet on one’s fingertips,maintaining Online Reputation Management for business is a greater concern for bigger brands.
To keep trust and reliability of your brand on internet, it is important to maintain online reputation on web. How do you define your online reputation?Now suppose,you opened a pizza shop at Bandra,Mumbai. In a few months you gather a good customer base.After a few months, you find people putting their reviews on food review websites like zomato.com, burrp.com.You will enjoy a good customer flow if customers visiting your restaurant write positive reviews about your service.
Angelsmith conducted a survey of over 500 foodies, to know how do they zero down upon their dining choices
Although nearly half (48.9 percent) of survey respondents seek information from trusted friends first, more than eight of 10 (80.1 percent) respondents go on to do additional research after receiving a restaurant recommendation.
One of my friend who recently opened a coffee shop at a prime location in Pune, approached me in last week.He asked me , “Why are people saying so much bad stuff about my shop on the Internet, and what can I do about it?”. I know ,It takes years to make your organization a “brand”, but one defamatory remark can ruin everything overnight. It is worse,when such negative remarks appear on websites that rank higher than your website on search engines. You may face tremendous losses,and your conversion rate will hamper unless you take proper action to recover from this damage.
A single negative tweet,blog or a Facebook post about your organization can cause severe damage to your reputation.
How to Handle Online Reputation Management of Your Organization?
Business gets badly affected if your online reputation goes down. In such a crisis,you need a trusted person who can handle this situation well. He should be able to provide solutions and suggest reputation-protection measures. It is important that person comes out with a detailed strategy and has capability to implement and restore the online reputation.It is always better to prevent minor problems turning into major reputation crisis,hence immediate communication is expected from the concerned company.
A quick communication is appreciated if the crisis involves product and service quality or safety and security or privacy of customer or employee information.
Tips to Get Better Online Reputation Management
1.Dominate Search Engines
Optimize your website for the major keywords you deserve rankings for Reviews websites generally rank for the keywords like “reviews”, “ratings” etc. Try to get rankings higher than these reviews websites.Hire a good Search Engine Optimizer who will not only keep your rankings intact, but also keep a tab on negative feedback of your brand on any other website.
2.Social Media
Update your social media page regularly. Any defamatory remark about you may go viral on social media,likewise you can defend your point through different social media channels,and restore the lost confidence among your customers.
3.Blogging
As a Search Engine Expert, I recommend blogging as a core component of ORM. Buy a domain name or create a blog on WordPress or Blogger, and start writing your product reviews,benefits and customer’s testimonials. This will not only boost your online reputation efforts but also help you in getting better rankings.
When planning to go for ORM(Online Reputation Management) for your business or brand, make sure the agency you hired has worked with bigger brands,and ask them the strategy they implemented to regain the lost reputation.