One of the biggest boons and banes of the Internet is that it records history. Yes! Our personal history, college-era Facebook photo uploads, and everything in between Although the users attention span is fickle, the content’s shelf life is forever.
What does this mean for your businesses? This means that every deal your business has done and every action it takes are forever recorded in the thick pages of Google.
As e-commerce expands and businesses double down on online channels, getting ahead of the narrative and building a solid brand identity are imperatives. This is where Online Reputation Management (ORM) comes in.
ORM is taking active steps and employing proactive strategies to manage your brand story and perception on the Internet. Online reputation management isn’t exactly like:
“Bad people are saying mean things about my business, so I must respond to them.”
As a brand, you can control and improve your brands’ online persona by managing the content you post and the conversations you inspire. This includes social reviews, testimonials, search engine results, mentions, partnerships, and more.
With proper online reputation management strategies, you can create enough influence to sway your brand’s image in the eyes of the crowd.
What is Online Reputation Management (ORM) In Digital Marketing?
Online Reputation Management in Digital Marketing uses insights and digital tools to maintain a positive brand presence online.
But how do you do it? How to improve online reputation? What are the advantages of good online reputation? How can you control your brand’s online reputation in the eyes of millions of people?
The answer to that lies in these three words: Monitoring, Identifying, and Influencing.
We will expand on that. But before that, let’s learn why your brand needs online reputation management.
Top 5 Online Reputation Strategies For Brand Growth
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Create Your Brand Story
Creating a brand story is a proactive way of managing and supplementing your online reputation.
A brand story is the all-encompassing narrative of a brand’s values, history, mission, and vision. Your brand’s story makes you stand out from your competitors. And by humanizing your brand, you invoke strong consumer emotions in people.
People don’t buy from brands; they buy from people. You can personalize your brand with the right brand story and establish deeper connections with your customer base.
Creating a brand story helps businesses with online reputation management in plenty of ways:
- Creating a brand narrative
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating leads
- Increasing customer loyalty
- Evoking strong emotions
- Building a community of like-minded people
Also Read : That’s how online reputation can impact your business negatively
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Leverage Social Media Effectively
Social media platforms are ladened with the most in-demand commodity of today’s times: Human Attention!
As a brand in 2023, your social media presence shouldn’t be limited to posting product updates and sharing Christmas greetings. It should be your main platform to experiment with online reputation management techniques. You should go all-in and invest in ORM tools and professional services.
You should also use the platforms to interact with your followers, address their concerns, generate leads, and gather data about your target audience.
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Add Reviews and Testimonials On Your Site
Social proof and testimonials are crucial parts of any buyer’s journey. It was recently reported that 91% of millennials trust online reviews as much as they trust their families.
A strong online reputation is built brick by brick through testimonials, reviews, and generally positive word of mouth.
Social proof is less about boasting than adding genuine evidence of your brand’s work. It shouldn’t hide in the corner but be the front and center element of the website.
Also Read : 7 Essenstial Elements of Online Reputation Management
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Address Negative Feedback With Empathy
You will encounter negative feedback, dissatisfied customers, and critics when running a business. Rather than dismissing their concerns or questioning their motives, you need to develop an effective and empathetic counterstrategy.
The response strategy is unique to each business. Still, the core of it remains the same: to address customer grievances, offer refunds, returns, or exchanges, and administer genuine apologies for the inconvenience.
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Invest In Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a part of your content marketing strategy. Investing in the right SEO tools, producing high-quality content, and deploying an SEO-forward content strategy can improve your website’s online visibility and help you reach your target audience.
SEO includes using the right keywords to enhance your website’s chances of appearing on the search engine results page, optimizing your website for mobile devices, and building backlinks.
5 Tips To Nail Your Online Reputation Management Strategies
- Address customer concerns, queries, and doubts about the purchasing process quickly.
- Always answer with an empathetic and professional tone.
- Handle the negative reviews, comments, and doubts upfront instead of making excuses or concealing the error.
- A sorry goes a long way! So apologize as and when needed.
- Monitor your search results and stay on top of your social media mentions.
5 Reasons Why Online Reputation Management Is Important In 2023
Managing, monitoring, and influencing it through brand reputation management strategies is a critical step to ensuring the success of your marketing efforts.
Here are five reasons why Online Reputation Management is pivotal in 2023:
1. Reputation sells
Web Tribunal recently reported that 89% of people online don’t take action until they have read positive reviews of the product or service. That’s understandable. As recession looms, every company is cutting budgets, and households are checking every dollar spent.
If customer acquisition is your focus in 2023, you must invest your time, energy, and money in a consistent online reputation management strategy.
2. You stand out from the crowd.
Operating from the mindset that your business is unique harms your brand and business.
Instead, you must do everything you can to stand out from the crowd and ensure that your current and prospective customers notice your presence.
Online reputation marketing techniques like building a brand, engaging with the audience, and investing in user-generated content can get you one step closer to this goal.
3. It’s marketing.
When you invest in the right online reputation management strategies, you build a narrative and plant seeds of your growth around the space. The seeds come to fruition in time, and you will have a self-established brand identity on which to base your marketing campaigns.
Building a positive brand image is a leading online reputation management best practice. It helps generate leads, counter negative comments from customers, establish trust with your current and future customers, and make you stand out from your competitors.
4. Customers are seeking transparency.
The fundamental trust between people and big companies is diminishing. Businesses are moving away from intermediaries and large chains and putting their money into B2C and D2C because of their transparency standards.
The right online reputation management strategy puts a face on the brand and humanizes the business. This taps into the core consumer emotions of trust, reliability, and openness.
5. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Online reputation management is a proactive approach to PR. With traditional PR, you wait for the blunder before you can get the corrective statement out.
Whereas ORM allows you to stay two steps ahead and build a narrative of trust, transparency, and authenticity all year. Although ORM isn’t crisis training, it prepares you to deal with it.
Conclusion
Online reputation management holds unparalleled significance in today’s world.
It is one of the core components of an effective digital marketing strategy and the solid ground on which your brand image is formed. Your business needs these online reputation management strategies, regardless of its genre or scale of operation.
