Reviews are an essential part of online reputation management. Reviews provide potential customers with insights into what it would be like to do business with you, and they can impact whether or not someone decides to patronize your establishment. Online reviews can help or hurt a business, depending on the sentiment of the review and how they respond to it.
In this post, our team of experts will discuss the importance of reviews and how to make sure you’re following the best practices of online reputation management.
More on ORM
Before we begin, let’s learn a bit more about online reputation management. Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the process of controlling what shows up when someone searches for your name or business online. It is the practice of utilizing online platforms to monitor, respond to, and mitigate mentions of harmful content of an individual or organization wherever they may exist on the internet.
Some people confuse ORM with public relations (PR) or use them interchangeably. Both PR and ORM processes indeed share the same goal: To help business owners to build their brands into something people know, trust, love, or fear for them to be successful at what they do! There are also similar methods used by these two different sectors, though PR uses channels like traditional media outlets while ORM uses social platforms such as Twitter hashtags (#) and Facebook pages.
The main objective of ORM services is to push down negative search results, improve or protect brand image, and increase or maintain web traffic flow towards positive pages or content. Online reputation management covers strategies and ongoing processes to influence and shape an individual’s or organization’s reputation. Towards this, ORM firms usually use review monitoring tools to track what people say about the business online.
Most of the work that goes into ORM is handled internally by brands rather than by an external firm.
So, what does online reputation management involve exactly? When you monitor a brand’s reputation, you are:
- Using online reputation management software to monitor reviews and comments about your business.
- Adding a review schema markup to your website.
- Responding to reviews to thank a customer for their feedback or address a concern.
- Promoting positive reviews through paid or owned channels, such as posting on websites, sharing on social media, and paid ads.
Reviews and ORM Campaign Strategy
There’s no doubt that online reviews are important for businesses. Not only do reviews help with search engine optimization (SEO), but they also play a role in online reputation management. Research from Search Engine Land shows that 88 percent of customers consult online reviews before making a buying decision. That’s why businesses must make sure their online reviews are as positive as possible. Of course, this can be a challenge, but with the right strategy, it can be done.
Along with reviews, ORM campaigns typically include some or all of the following:
Search engine optimization and marketing.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use algorithms to rank the website or web page according to the quality of content and the number of links pointing towards them from other websites.
The purpose of online reputation management is to fill up the first few pages of these search engines with positive links about the individual or organization so that when people search for them, they are only able to see good things about them. By creating positive articles, blogs, press releases, reviews, etc. about the business the hope is they will rank at the top while pushing down and burying the negative articles to lower positions where people are less likely to see them.
Online reputation management usually starts with SEO techniques like keyword research and link building, which aim to improve the visibility of positive content and push down negative content in search results. By encouraging customers to write positive reviews, you can improve your ranking on search engines and increase traffic to your website.
Damage control
Reputation Management firms or RM wings of the company often handle damage control when their clients are involved in negative publicity. By proactively working to strengthen their client’s image, the firms can help to minimize the impact of negative media attention. As a result, these firms play an essential role in promoting and protecting the reputations of their clients.
Businesses should make sure they are monitoring their online reviews and promptly responding to them. In some cases, online reputation management involves directly responding to negative customer reviews, feedback, and criticism. If you find negative reviews, don’t panic! There are steps you can take to address the situation and hopefully turn things around.
Brand improvement
Online reputation management strategy is the process of shaping and steering the online conversation about an individual or brand. It is a proactive, strategic approach to managing an individual or brand’s online presence to protect and strengthen its reputation. Reviews can help your brand attract new customers and build trust with current ones.
It’s all about perception. Ultimately, the goal of online reputation management is to create and maintain a positive online presence or social media presence for an individual or brand.
Brands manage their online reputation through various means such as SEO, social media management, and online public relations.
Along the way, ORM campaigns may utilize some or all of these actions:
- Comprehensive research on the state of your pre-campaign online reputation, including risk analysis and negative content removal.
- Boosting the SEO value of existing web properties, pushing positive content, and higher search engine results page (SERP) mentions.
- Creating new web properties that serve as additional sources of positive content.
- Managing online review sites like Yelp, while highlighting positive comments and scores without impacting objectivity. A Nielsen report found that 83% of internet users trust peer recommendations more than traditional advertising.
- Outreach to and formation of content-producing relationships with influencers in a given field.
8 Rules of Effective Online Reputation Management
What the internet is saying about your company is what your customers believe. Managing your online reputation is an ongoing process, but it’s worth the effort. Proactively managing the online image of your business is critical. In addition, having an expert ORM company in your corner can help you better position yourself in front of prospects and take care of any negative instances as soon as they crop up.
Here are 8 online reputation management tips or rules to follow for protecting your brand image.
- Monitor your online reputation regularly.
- Optimize your website.
- Engage with positive reviews.
- Don’t ignore negative reviews.
- Have an ORM strategy in place.
- Be active in social media.
- Create valuable content.
- Choose the right influencer.
ORM is an essential part of brand management. It is the process of monitoring, protecting, and improving your online reputation.
Importance of ORM
Your online reputation can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Most people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations when it comes to choosing a business. Plus, it’s not just potential customers who are paying attention to what’s being said about you online. Investors, partners, and even prospective employees are all making decisions based on your digital footprint.
The good news is that ORM is relatively easy and inexpensive to do. By taking some simple steps to monitor and manage your online reputation, you can safeguard your business against negative publicity and ensure that only positive information about you is out there for the world to see.
As a business owner, you need to focus on ORM to increase your leads, customers, and sales. This only happens when people are perceiving you in a positive light.
Manage Your Online Reputation
Information management can help your company succeed in today’s competitive market. The concepts of reputation management and public relations have existed for a long time, but now the medium has shifted to the internet. Companies are focusing on digital reputation alongside physical reputation and PR.
The idea behind ORM is to get harmful content removed. However, most review sites don’t allow removing posts just because it’s bad news! As such, companies who specialize in managing your online presence do valuable work with angles like removing negative feedback or helping customers resolve issues over phone calls by providing a superior customer service experience than you would otherwise have gotten without their help, making sure all sides are happy before letting something go and building a positive reputation.
Online reviews are an important factor in your business’s online reputation. They can make or break a sale, and they are one of the first things people look at when researching a company. Make sure you are actively managing your online reviews by responding to them, thanking customers for positive reviews, and addressing any negative reviews quickly and professionally. By taking the reins of your online review presence, you can put your best foot forward with potential customers and create a great impression that will lead to more sales.
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You gain complete command over your business reviews and can collect, monitor, and view your Google Business Profile reviews (and 20+ other platforms) with your tool. You can also reply to reviews directly from our dashboard. Reviews are an integral part of online reputation management.
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