Online Reputation Management
Online reputation management is essential for every business. Be it a small business or a well settled business, everyone needs good online reputation for their brand, services and products. In this article, we will learn about Online Reputation Management (ORM) and interesting myth busting facts about it. Being an Online marketing Agency in Melbourne, we believe it’s good to share some valuable information with everyone who are looking better Digital Marketing Solutions.
We will learn what is online reputation and how to manage your online reputation by following best practices. We will share the importance of ORM and how it can help in developing Digital Marketing strategies for your brand, services or products to represent a positive image to the market.
Online Reputation Management – ORM
Online Reputation Management is a practice of creating strategies to maintain the online reputation of a product, services, website, individual or any organization across different internet platforms. Within this practice, you can improve your internet presence by collecting public opinions about your business and its services. An important way to improve your internet presence it to seek positive reviews from satisfied customers who use your product or services.
Beginning of ORM
A decade ago when social media was at its infancy, it was very hard for customers to offer positive or negative feedback. At that time, the number of internet platforms were few. Social media brought a change to the digital media landscape. Since social media attracts many people, the platforms have become very important for businesses. The platforms help businesses maintain their online presence and increase the level of customer satisfaction. Having a positive image on social media platforms is always useful for every business owner.
A good ORM strategy should not rely on having an unattended social media presence. In addition to having an internet presence and engaging effectively interacting with the public about your business’s products and services, other important steps to take include:
- Proactive responses
- Approaching larger audiences
- Convert visitor into a Potential Customer
Pro tip: Always maintain a good response time if you responding to a customer or collecting a customer feedback or suggestion. Late responses are not appreciated by customers.
Importance of ORM in Digital Space
The number of users and power of social media platforms is increasing every day. ORM has become an important part of every business’s Digital Marketing Strategy. Social media platforms are not to be used solely for advertising product or services, but to be used to by business owners to reach a larger audience and drive better engagement towards the brand.
A better online reputation helps generate word of mouth which is important for a business to grow and succeed. If you have a respected internet presence that you maintain over time, you will get more direct visitors which may convert into potential customers. People who visit a brand after positive word of mouth are easy to convert.
Benefits of Online Reputation Management
A good online presence has multiple benefits for any business. There are four major benefits of having a good online reputation for your brand.
Transparency between users and brand
A good online presence encourages product or service users to ask questions from brands publicly and get answers. While addressing these questions, brands maintain transparency and share information which helps build trust between users. No company would share false or incorrect information on a public platform.
Direct Interaction/Communication Channel
Business owners can use social media handles as direct communication platforms where they can establish one-to-one conversations with consumers. Business owners can add quality in customer service by answering customer complaints and turn an unhappy customer into a happy customer. Direct and responsive attention to complaints, feedback and suggestions creates a positive impact on brand image.
Collect Feedback
For every product, the best feedback a business can receive is from the user. Social Media Channels are platforms used by many that can help businesses collect product feedback. Feedback helps drive change to products and can lead to the development of a better product suited for the target market. It is one of the most important factors in business expansion. Genuine feedback could help a lot in product improvement.
Handling Criticism
Social Media platforms are useful tools to handle criticism. Do not run away or hide from Criticism. Consider the criticism as an opportunity to collect different user experiences and review your products or services. Criticism of a product is genuine feedback about a product. Let’s take an example here.
Imagine you are running a restaurant chain and one of your customers is criticising your served food. You would immediately check the quality of the dish, the waiting service and many other elements of the overall service to improve it. But what if the customer is complaining there is no proper lightening in your restaurant? This is not a direct complaint about your food but feedback about the customer experience.
Despite many people not liking criticisms, you should be positive when dealing with criticism. Getting defensive in respond to a criticism does not help, especially over the internet. Business owners are not supposed to show aggression or get defensive with customers.
Disadvantages of not having online presence
If you are not maintaining your brand’s online presence, then you might encounter the following problems.
False Reviews
You will deal with false reviews if you do not have an authorised social media handle for the public to interact with. Most of the time, unhappy customers put false reviews about brands and take out their frustration with a false profile. Every negative review affects your business reputation and sales. You need to actively deal with false reviews to ensure that they are removed from sites.
Hate Websites
Hate websites directly leave a negative impact on your business. Some customers go beyond the boundaries and take out their frustration by creating hate pages about businesses. Often, it is hard to remove these websites. Some examples of hate sites are:
- www.yourbrand-falsecompany.com
- www.scamyourbrand.com
- www.i-hate-yourbrand.com
If you don’t have an online presence and should any of these pages have a high rank in SERP, you will need a lot of hard work to get this removed. You need a Digital Marketing Expert in this situation to resolve this issue.
Tips to build better Online Reputation
In order to build a better Online Reputation, you should follow few basic steps. Being a digital marketer, I have learnt a lot of things by experiencing different situations. I would like to share few tips with you all.
Strong SEO
Search Engine Optimization is one of the best methods to build your online presence. If your brand name or brand keywords give you a ranking on the first page of Google, then you have applied the correct SEO technique. Nowadays, higher ranks in SERP is more important than issuing business cards.
Maintain Transparency & Share respect
Maintain transparency with users and always respect their opinions about your business. It is a tough task to make people respect your product or service and what you do. Equally gaining trust is not an easy task to achieve. You can only build trust between customers by maintaining transparency.
Maintain excellent response rate
Proactive responses to customer queries and feedback helps dealing with customers on social platforms. No one likes to receive a late response from a business they are keen to engage with. If the response is poor or slow, you might struggle to retain customers.
Monitor customer ratings and reviews
Always keep an eye on social media content about your brand. Monitor what people say about your business and try to engage with positive feedback. Resolve all the negative complaints in a timely manner. This will bring more business opportunities for you. It is a common trend to ask questions via social media platforms such as twitter and Facebook.
Avoid Defensive Responses
When responding on social media platforms to customer feedback, never get defensive or show aggression. There are millions of social media users who can see and/or react to your responses. Maintain politeness and handle every issue carefully.
FAQs
What does Online Reputation Management Mean?
Online reputation management is a practice of creating strategies to maintain online presence of a product, services, website, individual or an organization. It includes public interaction and services support.
What is Online Reputation Management Service?
Online Reputation Management is a method of creating better online presence of a brand across different internet platforms. Big brands often use service providers to manage their online presence. Under online reputation management service, expert service providers help brands build a positive image for their business.
Why is Online Reputation management Important?
ORM helps to generate word of mouth for business. If the business has a strong internet presence, it will receive more direct visitors (Potential Customers) which you can convert into a business lead. It helps to enhance the customer experience and helps develop better products and services.
How can I improve Social Media Reputation?
There are several ways to improve your social media reputation.
- Be responsive to your social media users. Always respond on both positive and negative feedback.
- Work on building a positive brand image on social media platforms. Keep the brand image in your mind instead of sales when posting on social media platforms.
- Cover your brand story: Talk to social media audience and share your brand story with them.
- React on Reviews: Encourage your social media audience to review your services or products. Collect reviews and react immediately when you get a review.
- Develop Engagement Activities: Encourage people to engage with your social media page/handle. Organize quizzes, games and polls to engage better with your social media audience and let them engage with your page/handle.
These tips for maintaining your online reputation in Australia would help you to draft a strong Online reputation management strategy for your brand. If you are looking a Digital Marketing Experts in Australia then call us 1800 189 787 for all Digital Marketing Services.
Online Reputation Management Australia