Nowadays when everybody is online, and privacy is very limited you need to listen what others are saying about you and your business. Online Reputation is how consumers are perceiving your business in all the digital platforms. This perception can be good or can be bad.
What is Online Reputation Management?
Online Reputation Management is the process of monitoring and promoting positive brand image, and managing the negative contents consumers are posting about your brand. In other words is the process of promoting positive content through different techniques like SEO, that can help your business to gain brand equity, monitoring how consumers are perceiving or qualifying your business in all the digital platforms and taking actions to minimize the negative comments or contents that impact your brand.
Some people will say, well, this is Public Relations and in reality yes, but it combines the use of some software or apps to help monitor, listen and see what others are saying about a product or a service or a person in the organization.
What make this a little complicated is all the digital platforms you need to watch or monitor. From websites to social media to online directories to personal blogs, etc.
What software is available for Online Reputation Management?
This type of software can help you to:
- Brand mentions. track keywords, brand terms, associated hashtags across all multiple digital platforms.
- Sentiment. Measure hour your brand is perceive by consumers, positive, negative or neutral.
- Trending. Are there people mention your brand in online conversations? you can monitor by keywords or brand terms and see if there any association with your business.
- People posting. Who is posting the most comments about your brand? by this way you can tackle people who talk more about your brand in a positive or negative way.
There is ethical aspect you can use to improve your online reputation, like asking your customers to leave you a review after they purchase your product or service, if you offered then a good services, changes are high that you will get a positive review from them. Also, you can review what the people is commenting about you on social media and respond in a nice way to bad comments and give thanks to the good comments. Register your business to local or national associations like the Best Business Bureau (BBB). Show your credibility logos and reviews or testimonials your customers are giving you to your website. Make sure your website is secure with an SSL certificate. Show your hours of operations, and customer service phone number and/or web form.
A positive business reputation will help attract new customers, new employees, and potential investors. So, pay attention of this part of your business very seriously.
