Online reputation management strategies have the potential to help your business grow in visibility and reputation. In this write-up we look at the best reputation management strategies for your business.
Online reputation management is managing, maintaining, and structuring the customer perception of a business, brand, or person online. The process involves displacing content that can be misleading, uploading trending and engaging content, and making all efforts so that they are visible through various internet algorithms. ORM also includes replying to negative comments, getting positive reviews, and observing brand mentions.
You can improve how your customers and prospects perceive your brand by following effective online reputation management strategies. These online reputation management techniques improve customer trust and build business authority. As a result, you can generate more sales and carve out a niche space for your brand in the competitive market.
A negative comment on your brand can take a heavy toll on your reputation, leading to slipping down your place from search results and making way for your competitors to rise higher. The professionals handling reputation management upload the correct information, counter misleading info, correct link pages, and organize a brand’s digital structure to present the best image of your brand in the digital platform.
Reputation management shares a correlation with customer experience. The more they speak highly of your business, the higher your reputation’s mercury. It does not mean improving customer experience is the only way to accomplish a higher reputation. It is a vital part but not all, especially in the highly competitive digital age. You need to focus on strong and effective techniques and an improved customer experience to find good results. Online reputation management professionals use numerous strategies to enhance your brand image online.
12 Effective and Result-Oriented ORM Strategies
1 – Monitoring Customer Feedback On Review Platforms
Actively scrutinizing various review platforms like Facebook, Google, and other industry-specific sites is pivotal in managing the online reputation of a business. Keep a close eye on what people say about your business on the review platforms. Most prospects read reviews online before taking the next step. Therefore, building and managing your reputation on these platforms is important.
Keeping a constant and close eye on online feedback is undoubtedly time-consuming and daunting, especially if your business is multi-location. You may need to engage your valuable resources at the cost of deducting their performance in other vital business areas. A feasible option would be hiring a professional team to manage your business’s online reputation. They will do the job more efficiently and save your resources from being distracted by review management. Let the experts take care of it as you reap the rewards.
2 – Creating Alerts on Google
Setting up Google alerts is an effective tool in making the monitoring job easier and one of the vital online reputation management strategies. As you set up an alert with your business’s name, you will get notified every time your business is there in the news feed or anywhere online. If there is negative feedback, the alerts will help plan a strategy to deal with it immediately. The professionals can chalk out a better response in such a scenario. Apart from dealing with negative feedback, Google alerts also help your business to be a topper in current trends related to your industry.
3 – Making Use of Various Monitoring Tools
You don’t need to keep track of your online reputation manually. Monitoring tools are readily available, and you can keep a close eye on where and how your business or products are mentioned in social media, blogs, and other online platforms. Various options include free and subscription-based tools like Google Alerts, Brandwatch, Brand24, Hootsuite, BrandMentions, SEMRush, and Brand Monitor. Evaluate their functionality and choose the one that suits the best for your business in particular.
Tools to Monitor Current Trends
A smart step in reputation management is to monitor the trends of your business-related search terms – are they going up or down when usage frequency is concerned? Like, when a particular subject is getting viral as online search interest, the reputation management team should plan out a content strategy for the long or short term. To monitor the current trends, you can choose from top trend-monitoring tools like Google Trends, Talkwalker, Exploding Topics, BuzzFeed, etc.
Tools to Monitor Backlinks
Keeping track of linking to your site is important for various reasons. One of the top considerations for organic ranking by Google’s algorithm is incoming links from authentic external sources. Your rivals can use them to modify or expand anything about your company. Tracking down your links is equally useful for forming a relationship in the future. Tools like Google Search Console, Moz Link Explorer, SEMRush Backlink Auditor, Ahrefs Backlink Checker, and Valuable Backlink Checker can help you monitor backlink profiles.
Tools to Manage Local Business Listing
Business listing management is one of the essential parts of online reputation management strategies. Ensure all listing sites and local directories have accurate information about your business’s location. It will let you serve the customers in your local area well and help you get valuable leads. Accurate listings are a vital part of organic “local SEO” as well. It is a time-consuming process. Don’t worry! You can use some services to create and manage your business listings. Paid options like Uberall, Yext, SEMRush, Whitespark, etc., are popular. For a free option, DIY via a spreadsheet would be the best, keeping track of all URLs, usernames, and passwords of your listing.
4 – Keeping Updated Google Business Profile
One key online reputation management strategy is maintaining up-to-date information on Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). Review your business’s GPB every six months and check whether the key info, like your business’s phone number, working hours, photos, or upcoming holidays are listed correctly. Or simply if it is accurately listed or not. GBP audit is an essential part of keeping the data accurate and relevant. It lets your business build trust and make customers happy eventually.
5 – Generating More Reviews
The direct way to earn an increased star rating on Google is by getting more reviews. You can potentially lose positive reviews from many happy customers if you do not adopt a review generation strategy. Therefore, a smart way is to ask for reviews from every customer directly. By adopting a proactive approach, you can increase the number of positive reviews, and your star rating will improve. To ensure high ratings, request reviews across multiple platforms like Facebook, Google, and various industry-relevant sites. A useful reputation management strategy would be automating the review solicitation process and asking for review via SMS too.
6 – Setting A Target and Timeline for Review Volume
Determine a volume goal by analyzing your competition. It is a key to online reputation management. The number of reviews you generate should be more than your competitors. And it differs based on business category and region. It is also important to monitor review frequency – a high frequency reflects high transactions and more business activity. By asking for reviews from everyone, you can get reviews from 20% of your customers.
7 – Personalizing Review Request
Requesting reviews is an art! We have already created a detailed guide on requesting reviews. Here are a few tips you should follow.
Tailor Messages with Name:
When asking for customer reviews, personalize the requests to make them more impactful. It works great as a reputation management Instead of repeatedly sending the same message asking for a review, personalize your messages with the customer’s name or any relevant information about the customer. Rather than a cold and impersonal request, a personalized message goes a long way to generate more responses. People are more inclined to leave a review when asked in a relatable way.
With the help of automated software for review generation and using proper tools & resources to pull relevant customer information, you can also personalize your review requests and responses. This will translate into better customer retention and more customer acquisition. People will see your brand as customer-centric and powered by people.
Strategic Use of Language:
You can tailor the language of your message to shape your business narrative. It is a smart step in online reputation management. By strategically using language, you can make your customers leave feedback to drive attention toward a more impactful message for your business. For example, if your business’s promotional focus has the “best collection,” ask your customers specific questions about their thoughts about your collection. Thus, you can make your prospects hear what you want them to hear and share.
8 – Using Video Testimonial Technique
In today’s marketing world, video content has garnered huge popularity. Your business needs to adopt this when thinking of success in online reputation management. A wise and cost-saving option would be using automated software for gathering User Generated Content. A professional reputation management team can help you make video collection smooth and seamless. Video testimonials can be customized and are a great way to get your desired feedback. You can convert more prospects to buyers with video testimonials.
9 – Getting More Engaged with Feedback
Engaging more with customer feedback is an important way to strengthen online reputation management. It would help if you were careful with every review about your business and responded to them. When left un-responded, the customers feel unheard. Therefore, reply to every review to make them feel their feedback is heard and acknowledged. How you respond to a review has a huge impact on its two categories of audience: the reviewer (positive or negative) and a large number of prospective customers.
Responding to Positive and Negative Feedback:
A response to a positive review is an expression of gratitude. When responding to a positive reviewer, they feel happy to leave a positive comment and decide to do business again in the future. On the other hand, a response to negative feedback is essentially an apology and an attempt to resolve the issue. It is a proven and successful strategy in online reputation management.
When responding to a negative review, the reviewer feels acknowledged and satisfied. They feel their concern has been heard, and your team will work to resolve their issue. On that note, they may stay back and work with you to find things right.
On Potential Customers:
Reviews significantly impact a large pool of potential customers. They are naturally skeptical and looking for information to decide whether to do business with you. As you respond to reviews, they get the message that you are helpful, engaged, and feel good about your business. Apart from reputation management, reviews also have a dominant role in local search results.
10 – Replying to Social Media Feedback
There can be no doubt that the social media accounts of your business have a huge role in maintaining your online reputation. By managing them efficiently, you can uplift your overall public image to a great extent. Most customers and prospects like to pursue the business’s social media pages. It does not go down well with them when they find unaddressed reviews.
Though all social media platforms do not act as review sites, Facebook has a provision where your customers can “recommend” or “not recommend” a business with a rating out of 5. A business’s Facebook page also allows them to share feedback (positive or negative) about a business. On the other hand, Instagram does not have such a review platform. Still, your business posts’ comments can influence how your potential customers see your business. It is important to respond and reply to all reviews on social media as a part of your online reputation management drive.
Review solicitation software can improve the review solicitation process. These tools are effective and help to get more reviews faster.
11 – Using Tools for SEO Keyword Research
SEO is a key element in online reputation management. Keywords are the soul of SEO; hence, you must choose the right combination of multiple keyword research tools to get the best out of your online reputation management drive. You can find a full suite of top SEO tools in one place at Moz, SEMRush, Conductor, Ahrefs, etc. These specialized tools will help you find keywords, audit links, find errors, build quality backlinks, trace out the right keyword, track your rankings, and do much more.
While creating content for your business website and social media audience, make sure that you cast the widest net to cover both the “bottom-funnel” and “top-funnel” audience. Many useful keyword research free tools also come up with good paid options to choose from; on the other hand, most paid options offer “free” trial periods. These tools have their pluses and differences. Some of these tools even have browser extensions to make your activities customized and more efficient.
To get the best out of them in your business’s reputation management, you need to research them and choose the one that fits your needs the best. The top keyword research tools (paid and free) are Google Ads’ Keyword Planner, Keyword Surfer, Moz Keyword Explorer, Keywords Everywhere, Jaaxy, Ahrefs, and SEMRush Keyword Explorer.
12 – Believing in Trust Marketing
Rather than through institutions, trust in today’s marketplace is built through peers. When buying a new product or service, prospective customers trust the words of past customers more than advertisements. Trust flows through personal networks and social media. People lean on their peers to build trust in a business or company. Therefore, you need to rely on trust marketing to shape your reputation and message in the digital world. Use trust marketing efficiently and use customer feedback to shape your business. Understand the world where potential customers primarily trust reviews.
To make the most out of a trust marketing strategy for online reputation management, you must capture, Distribute and Shape the broader message regarding your business. Learn to capture customer feedback that aligns with your company’s value proposition and distribute them to your audience. It is how the trust will be built between your prospects and past customers. Now shape up the message across multiple platforms about your business.
Vital Steps At A Glance Of An Online Reputation Management Drive:
- Setting up Google Alerts
- Responding to both positive and negative reviews
- Setting up a goal for Review Volume
- Asking for review from every customer
- Performing a GBP audit
- Setting up a plan for collecting video testimonials
- Following a trust marketing strategy
- Saving the best business reviews and distributing them
- Sharing customer feedback
- Organizing an event for video testimonial collection
- Posting any video reviews found on your social media accounts
If you are looking for a result-oriented professional team to drive your business’s online reputation management campaign, Cyrusson Inc. would be your ideal choice. With a proven track record, we are an expert reputation management strategist who helps clients establish trust and bring new customers to your business. Call us today @ 415-228-9969 to book a Free consultation, and let’s get started.