Online reputation management is an absolute must for companies that want to stay on top of their digital presence. With the ever-changing landscape of the internet, it's essential to keep track of how people perceive your brand. Digital marketing is no longer a trend, it's a necessity. To ensure your company's online reputation is in good standing, you need to have a reputation management strategy in place.
Reputation management is the process of monitoring and influencing your company's online presence. While white hat tactics may take longer to produce results, they are more likely to be long-lasting. If your efforts aren't enough to protect or restore your brand image, you can always enlist the help of an external ORM professional. Consider the cost of hiring a reputation manager versus the cost of an external online reputation management service.
For e-commerce businesses, reputation management is essential for protecting and growing their customer base. Studies show that 54% of digital marketers consider ORM to be “very necessary” for their company's success. When auditing your brand reputation, review the risks and create an escalation management strategy that notifies key players of their responsibilities. A hybrid acquisition and review management strategy is often used to maintain a positive reputation.
An effective online reputation management strategy can open up new opportunities and provide insight into how to increase brand awareness. To maintain control of your brand narrative, you need a strategy that responds proactively to risks and opportunities across all departments. Most reputation management firms start by performing an online analysis of their brand to determine which strategies will be most effective. Review your list of risks and opportunities to identify which colleagues should be involved in developing your reputation management strategy.
If you're looking to manage and monitor online content about your brand internally, it's important to hire the right people for the job. A great social media presence can have a positive effect on your reputation, while an inactive or poorly managed account can have the opposite effect. Even if you have a great restaurant or large company, it doesn't guarantee that your online reputation will be positive; this is where reputation management comes in. To help companies manage their online reputations, one expert has created 10 commandments of online reputation management. These include:
- Monitoring what people are saying about you
- Responding quickly and appropriately
- Creating content that reflects positively on your brand
- Engaging with customers
- Encouraging customer reviews
- Managing negative reviews
- Staying up-to-date with industry trends
- Protecting yourself from cyberattacks
- Monitoring competitors
- Creating a crisis plan
