Online Reputation Management
A positive reputation can take 20 years to build and only five minutes to destroy. Maintaining a positive reputation online is critical to your success. People are searching online to learn about specific companies, brands, products or services before they engage or make a purchase online. Some consumers will visit your site for general information but they are also likely to look at third party review sites. So, online reputation management is important for your business.
Online Reputation Management and Why it is Important
These discussions sites, forums and blogs help them formulate an opinion and there are four key questions that you should know the answers to:
- What are consumers saying about your company on the social networks?
- Which social networks are they on?
- What type of content are third party sites publishing about your brand?
- What is the overall “rating” of your product and services online?
Establishing an online reputation management plan to ensure proper brand management of any conversations happening around your company will help you find out.
Online Reputation Monitoring Versus Online Reputation Management
The abbreviation ORM is now widely used but it can be confusing and can stand for Online Reputation Monitoring or Online Reputation Management. These two terms are often used interchangeably even though they have very different meanings. So let us define the difference between Online Reputation Monitoring and Online Reputation Management.
Online Reputation Monitoring (ORM)
Online Reputation Monitoring is all about listening to online conversations by setting up alerts to stay aware of when your company, brand, slogan, product, service or company spokesperson(s) are mentioned online. Reputation monitoring is important because consumers are becoming more vocal about their questions, comments and dissatisfaction with products and services. Social Media gives them a channel to share their opinions with the world. So reputation monitoring (listening to brand mentions online) is only a small part of Online Reputation Management.
Online Reputation Management (ORM)
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a much more complex strategy than just monitoring online conversations. It involve listening to social conversations and responding to comments and interacting with your online audience to influence their opinions about your brand. Online Reputation Monitoring is about LISTENING whereas Online Reputation Management is about ENGAGING and participating in the conversations about your brand, product or service.
Online Reputation Management combines traditional Marketing and PR with Search Engine Marketing. It involves monitoring and managing the search engine results to protect your company’s brand reputation from negative exposure online. Keep in mind that online searchers rarely view more than 2 pages of search engine results, so high rankings for good publicity are the ultimate goals, which will in turn push any bad publicity down the search engine listings and out of public view.
Benefits to Implementing a WSI Online Reputation Management Process for your business include:
- Improve customer satisfaction by communicating directly with dissatisfied customers
- Salvage customer relationships by implementing service recovery to those who are unhappy
- Increase your brand loyalty by engaging in dialogue with your customers
- Reduce marketing costs by interacting with customers directly
- Learn more about your customers’ expectations and how you can better meet them
Anyone can use the internet to talk negatively about an individual or a business. If someone has posted negative content about your business or profile, thousands of people could be seeing it all over the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. You need to be equipped to effectively take action. Contact WSI Digital Marketing today to implement an effective Online Reputation Management plan for your business.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” -Warren Buffett
