In a world where the reputation of every little item matters the world to any small business, business owners and digital marketers are keeping a close eye on what builds online reputation and what practices can be detrimental when you're building your brand online.

Previously, it was imagined that online brand reputation mattered to large businesses with thousands of customers because it takes only a few negative reviews or negative comments to bring their reputation falling to the ground. Large businesses have a large customer base and negative feedback can destroy their brand name and sales.

New and potential customers keep a close eye on how the business operates and how satisfied their customers are. With companies focusing on social media presence, where a single comment from a customer could be enough to make or break your reputation online, the online world has been quite uncompromising when it comes to a company's reputation.

Small businesses are now also taking their online reputation and online presence quite seriously. With the rise of search engine optimization (SEO and tips for online reputation management, businesses have considered these essential parts of their online marketing strategies.

That said, online reputation management is essential for a company's growth.

What Is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?

A series of approaches and activities to create a positive public perception of you as a brand, person, or business, is termed Online Reputation Management (ORM). PR and reputation management include gauging how well you are performing based on customer feedback and what you can do to serve your clientele better.

Why Is It Important?

Imagine that you're traveling to New York and you open up search engines for results about hotels where you can stay and eat. But suddenly you're put off because the hotel nearest to the airport has some negative comments. Your first instinct would be that this hotel might not be the first choice for you.

The same can happen with restaurants. If one person has a bad experience and they vent out their frustration on social media, you'll wish that the same doesn't happen to you.

On the flip side, you'll most likely see that places with better feedback and better reviews will be ranked higher in your search engine results, and that is most likely going to be the place where you'll visit.

This is why building an online reputation is essential for your business. Your presence, as well as your place in the search engines, matters.

How Does Online Reputation Management Help Your Business?

Managing online reputation means that you'll have to use your website and your social media to represent yourself. If your business is tied to your name, then the reputation may be far more important to you than the services you are providing.

You may provide excellent products and services, but all of that would be sitting ducks if your current online reputation doesn't send positive vibes to your target audience and to your new and potential customers.

Knowing how to create a great and usable product is one thing, but managing how your product is perceived in the public and how you deal with that perception is an entirely different ball game. Therefore, on top of creating brand awareness and attracting new customers with digital marketing, businesses are actively investing their time in having a reputation management strategy in place.

Effective online reputation management can help you in the following ways:

1. Getting To Know Your Customers Better

When you gauge your online reputation, you're looking at yourself from the lens of the consumers. You're trying to find out what the customers want and what they think about you. This will give you a better idea of your strengths and weaknesses.

2. You Attract More Customers By Pleasing Your Existing And Past Ones

 Knowing your customers is key to understanding which areas of business can create more traffic and sales. Your customers are the bread and butter of your business. The positive impact you leave for them, they'll most likely express it in public.

That can come in the form of positive online reviews.

Transparency

Reputation management done right leads to growing sales. In a 2018 ReviewTrackers survey 63.6% of customers check Google reviews before visiting them. They also showed that 94% of customers wouldn't do business with a company with negative reviews.

If you want better sales, you would have to make sure that your online reputation is well managed. Taking care of positive and negative reviews will help you grow. You will increase the number of sales and conversions.

3. Increasing Sales

Reputation management done right leads to growing sales. In a 2018 ReviewTrackers survey 63.6% of customers check Google reviews before visiting them. They also showed that 94% of customers wouldn't do business with a company with negative reviews.

If you want better sales, you would have to make sure that your online reputation is well managed. Taking care of positive and negative reviews will help you grow. You will increase the number of sales and conversions.

4. Mitigate Risks

The cost of attracting a new customer is far greater than the cost of retaining a customer. Once a bad review is on the internet, it's not going down easily. The way you handle the situations and build your online reputation will dictate how secure your future will be.

A negative review does hurt your online reputation, but it doesn't kill your brand. A good online reputation can help you turn your unsatisfied customer into a positive one, keeping brand loyalty intact.

You wouldn't need to start all over again if you have managed your online reputation with the right practices.

5. Better SEO

Better reviews, better online presence, and better search engine optimization. To appear better on search results.

You might have seen that companies who have built their online reputation well would rank higher on search engine results. Positive reviews on Google have actually helped their businesses in gaining traffic on their websites and other locations because it contributes massively to their local SEO.

Tips To Best Manage Online Reputation:

With the online world expanding to uncharted territories day by day, reputation management is a key factor for businesses. Building a reputation helps you position your brand better and helps you stand out from the competition.

1. Where Does Your Online Presence Stand Now?

Take a self-reflection and judge where do you stand now. How does your online reputation stand as of now?

Analytics is a great way to monitor your brand and there might be other brand monitoring tools that you need to get started with as soon as possible.

When your business is registered with a Google My Business (GMB) listing, optimizing it well will give your current online reputation on Google a significant boost. This is where most of your online reviews should land if your want to rank better on Google.

Fun fact: you can also have notifications on Google Alert as soon as your business is mentioned online somewhere. You could use Google as a brand monitoring tool too.

Some other well-known online reputation management tools include Buzz Sumo, Brand Mentions, Reputology, Mention, Hootsuite, Review Trackers, and Similar Web.

Audit Yourself:

An extensive online reputation audit can help you determine where your online business stands. For a free proposal, contact seokot.com.

2. How Do The Customers See You Now?

Maybe you don't have as good a positive online reputation as your competitors, then maybe it's time to reevaluate your online marketing and reputation management strategy.

If your customers see you as some underdog who's trying to compete with a larger player in the market, then you have a steep hill to climb already.

Are Your Products And Services Visible Enough?

The more visible your products are the better it is for people to find you. Online reputation can be built by developing social media, websites, backlinks, and content that display your product well.

3. Have A Social Media Plan:

Your peers will be having to interact with people with social media accounts. You will probably be having a team who'll decide what kind of content goes on your social media.

It's far easier to build an online reputation on social media than on any other platform because of the ease of engaging with people. The kind of content that goes on your social media and the way you interact with people and their good and bad reviews will be very transparent on social media.

Social Media And Search Engines:

It's not exactly clear how Google, Bing, Baidu, and Yahoo gauge the performance of your business on social media, but Facebook and Twitter also provide analytics to better help you with reputation management.

People frequently use social media as search engines too. You would have to manage your online reputation by thinking about the frequency of social media posts as well.

4. How Do You Want Your Existing And Potential Customers To See You?

You might already have customers but you should encourage customers to land reviews on your social media and on Google. Online reputation doesn't lead to sales and conversions overnight, but it's a gradual climb.

You want customers to see you as great service providers and how your customers see you will help you decide what your online reputation will be. You should show yourself as an authority in what you do.

Encourage Online Reviews:

Every time a customer is happy with your services, ask and encourage them to leave a review on Google and social media.

When I once bought a flagship phone from a newly opened cellphone reseller near my house, as a new customer, my honest positive experience with them was quite significant for them. Apparently, because the next time I went there to get some accessories, I received $10 off from the owner himself.

A few months later, the same shop had many positive reviews and a significant influx of customers. Fair to say that the brand's online reputation is quite high.

5. Listen To Your Customers:

You won't always be able to please your customers. Sometimes, things happen where you will find that an unsatisfied customer will shine a light on a weakness in your business processes. A few bad reviews or a negative comment from some social media accounts may sound disappointing but listen to your customers. Sincerely apologize to them if needed.

Customers do get frustrated when they don't get the value out of their money, and they will vent it out on social media. Do everything you can to retain the customer, otherwise, you may see them fall into the hands of your competitors.

Don't be too rigid with your solution. Sometimes you have to give more just to be sure that your customer will stay loyal to you. Loyalty and returning customers matter a lot in online reputation management. Your brand image and a customer can be saved by spending a few extra dollars.

Engagement With The Target Audience:

On average, users spend 3 hours each day on social media. If you want to build your brand name, you should try to squeeze your activity somewhere within that timeframe of your target audience. The more people notice your brand, the more you optimize your digital presence.

Sometimes, you might even want to use paid media or sponsored posts just to tap into the target audience and potential customers. It would be a worthwhile investment.

6. Content:

A user would visit your website for either of two things: to do some online research or to lead you to a sale or purchase.

Well-designed blog articles and content on your social media help create brand awareness. When you're optimizing for a better ranking on search engines using SEO, you're building your online presence not just among your existing customer base but also other customers.

An active blog also helps your ranking on search engines too, because relevancy factors and algorithms favor websites that have been updated regularly. Updating content on social media is easy, but that doesn't mean that you should forget your website especially if local SEO plays a huge part in your sales.

Conclusion:

Online reputation management has played an important role for businesses in helping them create a positive image for their brand name. This isn't to say that social networks and word of mouth don't create a reputation, but online reputation building is something that requires the business teams to actively participate.