Online Reputation Management: Your Complete Guide
Online Reputation Management: Your Complete Guide
Maintaining a positive online reputation has become paramount for businesses in today’s digital world, where information travels at the speed of a click. Thus, your brand must have a concrete online reputation management (ORM) strategy! Research revealed that 98% of consumers believe reviews are essential when making a purchase decision. Furthermore, nearly two out of three people will leave a brand after a poor customer experience. In this piece, we’ll break down:- What online reputation management is
- The importance of ORM
- Eight tactics to bolster and protect your brand’s digital reputation
What is Online Reputation Management?
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the art of strategically shaping the digital narrative surrounding your brand.ORM includes enhancing your brand's image, mitigating potential risks, and fostering positive interactions with online audiences. You can successfully manage your brand’s online reputation by
- Monitoring online conversations and engagements
- Addressing customer feedback
- Highlighting positive user experiences
- Creating a cohesive strategy between your SEO, social media, and PR teams
The Importance of Online Reputation Management
When people search for your brand, customer reviews, social engagements, online press, and more impact their opinion of your company. You want to make a positive impression immediately. Research found that people often form their first impressions within the first 0.05 seconds! ORM helps you control that narrative and influence how the public perceives your brand. It also helps you showcase your brand’s values, which is a top priority for consumers. In 2023, 48% of consumers say it’s very important that a brand’s purpose and values align with theirs.Online Reputation Management Media Channels
ORM is a multi-channel strategy. It includes your content marketing, SEO, and PR efforts. There are four primary ORM platforms or mediums that you can utilize to control your brand’s perception.- Owned Media
- Shared Media
- Earned Media
- Paid Media
Eight Worthwhile ORM Tactics
To ensure the content you want appears when consumers search for your business, you must manage your brand’s online presence and reputation. Below are eight effective ORM strategies you can implement today!1. Audit Your Reputation
First, you must audit your reputation by putting yourself in consumers’ shoes. Open an incognito browser window so that search results aren’t personalized. Search your brand name in Google Search and Maps. Take notes on what appears on page one and assess how you would perceive the results without background knowledge of your brand. You can also examine the second page but know that only 0.63% of Google searches click on something from page two. You can also utilize Google’s “Any time” results tool to see how the SERP has changed MoM, QoQ, or YoY. If you’re a multi-location business, you must conduct similar searches at each location to see how your Google Business Profiles (GBPs) appear in search results. Even better, you can use SOCi Listings to get historical and current data on your GBPs and all major listings. More on this later!2. Track and Respond to Reviews
Reviews and how you respond to them heavily influence people.- Nearly 79% of consumers specifically seek out websites with reviews.
- More than three-quarters of consumers who leave critical reviews expect a business to respond. Forty percent expect a response within 24 hours.
- Track and analyze reviews
- Encourage customers to leave reviews
- Respond to reviews and other online engagements
3. Update Your Brand and Tone Guidelines
Part of a strong ORM strategy is ensuring you have up-to-date brand guidelines, which should include details on voice and tone. For instance, how you respond to negative reviews or comments will differ from the content produced for your social media channels. When updating your brand guidelines, we recommend outlining language within your crisis management plan. It’s also imperative that everyone is aware, properly trained, and follows these new brand guidelines. Additionally, you can implement generative AI to help create or modify your voice and tone guidelines and help assure team members adhere to your updated tone of voice.4. Implement Social Listening Software
One way to ensure you’re capturing all online brand mentions is to incorporate social listening software into your ORM strategy. If you’re unfamiliar, social listening technology monitors and analyzes online conversations across various social media platforms and search engines to help you gain insight into public opinions, brand perceptions, and trends. Social listening enhances brand oversight, mitigates business risks by monitoring customer and public conversations, and keeps you attuned to industry dynamics and consumer sentiments. This enables you to respond to brand mentions and capitalize on news-jacking opportunities. Some social listening tools include competitor and industry trends to help you stay ahead of every potential disaster and every business opportunity.5. Monitor Competitors
Speaking of social listening, it’s important to monitor competitors and identify potential threats or opportunities in the market. For example, seeing competitor product price hikes or increased renewals are opportunities for your brand to convert competitors’ customers to yours. Understanding how people perceive your competitors provides valuable context for enhancing your brand image. It enables you to:- Benchmark your reputation against competitors
- Pinpoint areas of improvement
- Capitalize on differentiators
- Observe how others respond to online feedback and offer valuable lessons for your response strategy
6. Publish SEO-Driven Content
Part of having a strong online reputation is to ensure your brand has a secure share of voice (SOV) and ranks well for thought leadership content. To do this, you need SEO-driven content that ranks well for non-branded keywords and search queries potential customers are searching for. For SEO purposes, we recommend publishing ungated:- Blog posts
- Press releases
- Research reports
- Data studies
- Surveys
- Infographics
- Interactive content
- Example: Calculators, quizzes, assessments
- Case studies
- Listicles