What is Online Reputation Management and why it is important?

The term Reputation Management is the process of building and maintaining a business valuable online presence time and again. It involves taking steps to ensure that the entity, person or organization is maintaining transparent and authentic relations with their audience.

Building a strong Online Reputation has become a mandate for doing business online. Reputation management is not only for organizations to take care of but also for the individuals who are regarded as Influencers and leaders in the public eye.

With the age of social media advent, people like to know more about the business or an individual about how they conduct themselves online. With social platforms, it has become vital for institutions to respond to their audience authentically and in time. This helps them to build strongly onto their Online Reputation Management structure.

Have a look at what statistics say:

1. 91% of online adults use a search engine to find information. (Source: Forbes, 2012).
2. Before visiting a business, its online reviews are read by 90% of consumers. (Source: Forbes, 2016).
3. Consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before trusting a local business.
4. Online reviews impact 67.7% of purchasing decisions. (Source: Forbes, 2015).
5. 74% of consumers trust a business more if it has positive reviews. (Source: Forbes, 2016).
6. If a business potential customer finds any negative article about the business on the first page of search results, they risk losing 22% of business because of that impact. Source: Moz
7. 89% of consumers read that how the business has responded to its reviews online. Source: Bright local
8. 4 out of 5 individuals have decided against a purchase which was due solely because they discovered negative information online. Source: Cone online influence trend tracker
9. 11% of review readers require a company to have a 5-star rating before they decide to do business with it. Source: Bright Local
10. It takes nearly 40 positive reviews from customers to reverse the damage of one negative review. Source: INC

Reputation Management

Reputation Management can precisely be broken into three segments:

1. Building your company and brand reputation: Whether you are a new company or you are launching a new product/service or have branched out to a new industry or a customer base, your primary focus is on building up a good name for your business and your brand.
2. Maintaining your company and brand reputation: Building a brand reputation is one thing but maintaining it is the key. Once your company has built up a solid reputation you have to take continuous strategic and formational steps to maintain it through and right communication is the fundamental key to that.
3. Recovering your company and brand reputation: A negative word or an image in the public eye can ruin the brand’s reputation and to tackle that we need to successfully create and rebuild our brand overtime by involving a strong positive image in the minds of the public about the association with the brand. It comes with great promotional activities and building trust.

How Social Media can be an effective tool to build your Online Reputation:

A. Building a credible social media presence:

Social media is a tool which when used at the right time and in an effective way yields better results. Consider this-

• Sometimes not participating on social media can be the moment when the things go wrong.
• Responding quickly to the negative situation or accident is important.

Participating actively on various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,  Instagram builds a communicative network and a community of loyal customers who will be your biggest brand ambassadors.

You can also move a step further by creating a separate support handles which would be dedicated solely to responding customers who need help. Like in the way Nike does as it has it separate support handle @teamnike solely for this purpose.

B. Pick the Right Social Media Platforms:

When starting out on social media, select one platform that is the most appropriate for your business. As you become familiar with social media, start integrating other social media tools.

The most important thing to consider is which social network your target audience is accessing.

LinkedIn, for example, is an excellent platform for B2B professionals wishing to become an expert in a specific industry. Tools such as LinkedIn groups allow you to interact with people from specific professions, industries or interest areas by either starting or responding to discussions.

C. Create Conversations and Curate Quality Content:

Creating a quality of good conversations and content will keep the audience engaged and it will also help to filter your website from other websites.

Keep your audience engaged by posting at regular intervals, announcing contests, rigorous promotions for upcoming products/service and asking your customers for regular feedbacks. Keep your audience engaged by posting at regular intervals, announcing contests, rigorous promotions for upcoming products/service and asking your customers for regular feedbacks.

In the end, Online Reputation Management is about building a transparency with the public when your business is in the eye of social media.

online reputation management