Online Reputation Management: A 101 Guide to Build Your Online Reputation

Your brand’s online reputation is more important than any other thing. It builds trust among customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders. This will allow you to grow your business and provide a better return on investment. 

As per search engine optimisation company Singapore, the greatest way to maintain your brand’s reputation online is through reputation management. Too many brands wait until they have a crisis in public relations before investing in their digital reputation. 

It’s mostly the industry’s fault, as we haven’t done enough to explain what reputation management is and when it’s important to invest. 

What is online reputation management?

This involves optimizing and publishing online content in order to be on the first page of Google when branded search queries are used. An ORM strategy could include review management, social marketing, public relations and customer service.

Digital reputation management falls broadly under the search engine optimization category (SEO). Why? Because regardless of whether your focus is on brand health or full-on reputation control, the top priority should always be controlling what people see when they search for your brand.

98% of searchers will not look beyond the first page of Google results when searching for a query. The first page of Google results dominates public perception. You must control what appears on page 1 when people search for your brand.

The experts at the best digital marketing company in Singapore believes online reputation management involves many digital channels. Actively managing all channels is key to creating a positive brand impression. These channels can be divided into the following types.

• Media owned

The term “owned media” refers to any online media you own, including blogs and pages on third-party sites. SEO is crucial in this area. You can have greater control over your online reputation if you can place more manageable web pages on the first Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engines.

• Earned media

On the other hand, earned media refers to all your brand’s coverage and exposure through third-party platforms. Take, for example:

•  Reportage by the press
• Blog posts and articles on other websites
• Forums (Quora, Reddit, etc.)
• Listings by third parties (Capterra and Trustpilot, Glassdoor, Trustpilot etc.
• You can’t review sites (Google, Yelp, etc.).

Earned media is important for online reputation management. Positive brand mentions strengthen trust with your audience and Google. Google will also attribute more trustworthiness and authority to your brand as they see more positive signals off-page. This will translate into higher rankings.

• Media sharing

Any type of content marketing is called shared media if it’s shared with others. Your social media accounts can be shared media, for example. You are the only one who can create your social media posts. However, everyone can reply with positive and negative comments.

It is important to monitor how people interact with your brand online, particularly on shared media channels. Negative feedback on Twitter or Facebook can harm your brand’s image. You should make a concerted effort to monitor negative mentions of your brand and get advice from online reputation management companies to rectify it.

• Paid media

Paid media covers all digital marketing channels and platforms where your brand is featured. Paid media includes social media ads, Google Ads, and Microsoft Ads, as well as LinkedIn sponsored messaging, native ads, display ads, sponsored content, and Microsoft Ads.

Paid media can be used to support your preferred narrative. Paid media is not as valuable as earned or owned media, as consumers trust organic search results better than ads.

Why reputation management is so important?

This has been mentioned before, but it is important to emphasize negative reviews’ influence on brand sentiment. These are amazing statistics that tell a simple story. Customers seek reviews and trust them. They then make decisions based on what they find.

• Brand reputation can be worth billions.

A negative experience can quickly go viral on social media and ruin your company’s reputation. A United Airlines crew pulled a passenger from a plane in 2017, and someone captured the event. This video went viral quickly on social media, with over 100 million views.

What did the result look like? The result? United Airlines lost more than one billion dollars in value. This and other examples like it highlight how damaging negative press can be for your brand.

• Sales Impact

Online reputation can also have a direct effect on sales. 53% of buyers do their research before making a purchase. Negative reviews and press may put potential buyers off about your company. This could make them less likely to buy from you.

However, customers are more inclined to trust brands that have received positive reviews and press and will make a purchase.

• Customer feedback

You can also collect valuable feedback from customers by managing your online reputation. You can then improve the customer experience and your products.

To improve your company, you must conduct customer surveys and polls. Unsolicited feedback can be invaluable in helping you to better serve your target audience.

What online reputation management can do for businesses?

• Online reputation management companies tend to concentrate on local business listings and personal branding. Enterprise companies are different. Many customers are affected by mistakes. As a result, owners of businesses lose control over brand messaging both online and offline.
• Imagine your website experiencing a three-hour outage. Customers may not notice if it’s a small website. This same time frame could cost an enterprise ecommerce company million in sales. It would likely be featured on the evening news.
• If you are on an enterprise-level platform such as Slack, Facebook or Twitter? Prepare for three hours’ worth of memes that evoke Armageddon on social media networks. Imagine the consequences of a company executive’s egregious or negligent act. 
• What happens if your website is hacked? Do bad actors have access to your customer information? While small businesses can be successful quickly, enterprise businesses may face a storm that lasts for weeks, months or even years.

Executives can make online reputation management a more effective tool.

In the public eye, many brands are intrinsically linked to their CEO or founder. This is especially true when there is a strong company’s origin story. 

You can’t talk about SpaceX or Tesla without talking about Elon Musk. He’s also a brand and has promoted his backstory, encouraging nicknames such as “The real-life Iron Man.”

While not every CEO would like to be famous, it is a natural outcome of being a successful brand. Social media has made CEOs more visible. Customers can also take their mistakes very personally.

Social media boycotts and news cycles can be triggered by controversial CEO behaviour. One tweet can drive investors away and send stock prices plummeting. This is why CEO reputation management ensures that an executive’s legacy extends beyond their role as a leader in the company.

 

7 Online reputation management techniques for brands

The digital marketing company Singapore suggest 7 techniques that you can do to improve your online brand image.

• Do a brand audit

A brand audit will be a crucial first step in your online reputation management plan. Assess your online presence, including your website, blog and social media profiles.

You can also check your Google search results. 

What results do users see when they search Google for your brand name or related keywords? Are there any negative or off-brand results? Are there too many news articles? Or are there not enough brand assets that can be controlled? 

Positive articles are great, but only until something terrible happens. Those stories will quickly turn into negative mentions.

• Track brand mentions

Actively monitoring brand mentions online is a great way to manage and grow your brand. You can set up alerts for your brand and related keywords and respond quickly to any positive mentions. 

This applies to mentions made on social media and mentions your brand receives via blog posts, forums and videos. Negative comments are easier to identify and remove. If the company makes an honest effort to correct the situation, most people will forgive you for your mistakes.

• React to any negative comments

Negative online reviews may seem tempting to ignore them and hope they disappear. But that is a mistake. Negative reviews can be a great opportunity for your brand to address issues head-on, show customer care, and build a stronger connection with potential customers.

All reviews are welcome, positive or not. Even if the feedback is negative, thank customers. Always offer solutions to problems. A customer who has had a negative experience with a product or service should not be offered a 20% discount on their next purchase. 

That approach will ensure that there will never be another purchase. Show customers that you are committed to your brand, and they will trust you to do the right thing.

• Invest in SEO

The management of one’s online reputation must include SEO. However, the strategy is slightly different. We use SEO most often to rank multiple pages on a website for different search queries. 

In terms of ORM, however, SEO is used to rank multiple websites for a handful of brand-specific queries. You’ll be able to push down negative search results and replace them with positive content you control.

Your brand SEO strategy must be focused on optimizing web pages for brand-related keywords.

• For reviews and leadership pages, create valuable content for your website
• Backlink to the pages that you wish to rank on Google page one
• Positive brand mentions can be earned through digital PR, events and sponsorships.
• Participate on social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook
• Claim third-party profiles such as Google My Business and Yelp. You can also optimize them.

Remember that Google almost always favours trustworthy, authoritative sources when it comes to SEO for reputation. This means that you should focus on improving the authority and trustworthiness of your website as well as optimizing it for inclusion on authoritative third-party websites. SySpree is the best company for SEO and reputation management. This is why we receive testimonials like these:

• Public relations: Take advantage

Public relations are a great way to improve your online brand reputation. You can use this press in many ways, including:

• High-quality websites have guest posts
• Interviews with company executives
• Press releases
• Branded events
• Charitable events
• Marketing with respected brands or individuals in your industry
• Podcast appearances
• Live streaming where you can answer all your questions
• Statements to the public about any company-wide mistakes

Your online reputation management efforts should highlight your core values and build trust.

• Encourage customers to leave reviews.

Encourage customers to leave reviews on websites like Google, Yelp and Trustpilot. Positive reviews can influence customer behavior and occupy valuable real estate in Google’s search results.

You can encourage customers to leave reviews by doing a few things:

• Directly ask your customers to leave reviews by sending them emails
• Clear instructions about where and how to leave a review will make it easier for them
• Incentivize them with discounts and other special offers to leave a review
• Customers should feel valued and heard by responding to all reviews, positive or negative.

Customer reviews are a valuable asset when it comes to online reputation management. Customers should be encouraged to post feedback on reliable review websites.

• Encourage positive content

Promote content that promotes your brand’s positive image, such as:

• Place testimonials and reviews prominently on your website
• Sometimes, share positive reviews on social networks with a thank-you to the reviewer
• Highlight prominent endorsements from third parties for your brand
• Collaboration with influencers to promote the content you have created
• Share content you like
• Promotion of any collaborations between individuals or brands

 

9 online reputation management tools

Online reputation management takes a lot of time and effort. You can track your online reputation using many tools. Here are 9 of our favourite online reputation management tools by social media marketing company in Singapore.

1. Brand Mentions

Brand Mentions lets you listen to every social media channel and blog, news, or review site. This gives you a complete overview of the conversation surrounding your brand and who is talking about it. It also allows you to see the conversations about your competitors. This gives you an insight into their reputation management strategies.

2. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo allows you to search the internet for content related to specific keywords or brand names. It shows you how popular a piece is and who shared it. This tool is great for tracking negative sentiment online and identifying negative sentiment.

3. Mention

Mention gives brands the ability to monitor social media conversations and online interactions related to their brand. You can get deep insight into your brand’s conversations by using Mention. You can reply directly to social media conversations and create content based on audience trends.

4. Google Alerts

Google Alerts allows you to monitor any mentions of your brand, product, keyword, or competitor. It will send you an email with the link once it has found a mention of your terms.

5. Social Mention

Social Mention allows you to enter a term and then choose from many search options. It can search blogs and microblogs and display the results for the last day. You can find conversations about your brand at a finer level by filtering.

6. Reputology

Reputology, a review monitoring platform, can be used to help businesses manage their reviews. You can monitor reviews across multiple review sites and respond to them. You can also automatically poll customers at key points along the customer journey to identify and resolve problems before they become serious.

7. Birdeye

Birdeye provides enterprise-level internet reputation management tools that deliver outstanding customer experiences. It allows you to request customer reviews and then reply to them on over 150 review sites. This is one of the best features. This makes it easier to get customers’ positive reviews and respond to any negative ones.

8. Gather Up

Gather Up offers a complete suite of tools that focus on customer experience and online review management. Gather Up offers review request tools and review response tools. It also has social media tools that let you easily share positive reviews. You can embed the review widget on any website. You can collect Voices of the Customer feedback to monitor your online reputation.

9. Meltwater

Meltwater is a brand reputation monitoring platform that can be used in conjunction with other platforms. You can monitor many sources, including online news, social media, podcasts and review sites.

You can also use it to manage social media and publish content. It also includes a social media management platform that allows you to identify and manage relevant influencers.

 

How to hire a corporation that manages internet reputation

There are many things to take into consideration when selecting online reputation management services. Here are some queries to consider before making a final choice.

• Are you a proven success story working with enterprise brands such as ours?
• Could you please explain your data management, security, privacy and data management systems?
• Are you able to show a track record of sustainable results and not only temporary success?
• Are you able to refer customers?
• How long have you been working in the industry?

Fortune 1000 companies have a lot at stake. A poor reputation can have a negative impact on sales, retention, hiring, investor confidence, and even employee satisfaction. It is crucial to partner with a company that understands Google’s workings. Our success is your success. Ask us how we could help you position your brand online.

 

Conclusion: 

People judge brands based on what they read about them on the web. Utilize online reputation management tools to enhance the positive image brand that you’ve spent so long building. Respond to inquiries and negative feedback, and show prospective and current customers that you’re available to solve any issues they may face. 

Through the implementation of ORM methods, you’ll be able to have more control over how your customers think about your company. If you like this article, check out the previous blog What is Google Merchant Center, & Everything You Need to Know About It.