Step by step guide for effective reputation management strategy for 2017

Any business would like to influence and/or control its reputation in order to sustain growth and achieve popularity. While previously the reputation of a business was managed through sponsorships, print media and the press conferences, the internet now makes easy for a business to be known internationally. Social media, the internet and the search engine results are some of the core constituents of ORM or online reputation management. The reputation of a business organisation may account for up to 28% of its value. Hence the implications of reputation management are immense towards sales and revenues. In order to have a positive reputation online, you need to have more of positive content and little or no negative content.

A business may get around 92% of web consumer traffic through the search engine results. In order to influence the customer reputation positively, a business should create and implement a strategy towards reputation management. Below are some of the components of an ORM strategy that is really effective. You can include these basic elements in your reputation management strategy step-by-step in order to project your brand image positively in the year 2017.

Keep monitoring the brand

You need to continuously monitor your brand both online and offline. If there are ample of resources, you can have a full-fledged professional team for the purpose.”Google Alert” is one program that can help your efforts in this realm.

67% of the online customers say that they are much influenced by the online reviews. Hence reputation management and monitoring can help you keep your old customers while having new ones, in both short and long run. The strategy should be conceived and implemented keeping in mind the target customer segment, product portfolio and business goals and should also not compromise on the ethics.

Take care of the negative content

Negative content can harm your online and offline reputation immensely and drive away your customers, including the most loyal ones. There are several ways through which you can have more positive content and less negative content on the internet. Below are some.

● Optimising the company/business published materials for search engine optimisation and by improving tagging. The business-friendly customer reviews, testimonials and white papers will help you have lesser negative content.

● Submission of the legal “take down” requests.

● Having more number of positive reviews

● Removing websites that publish negative content through the usage of “denial of the service attacks” and the “spam bots”.

● Lashing out at the negative reviews by astroturfing.

● Getting your product reviewed by the prominent and known reviewers, and publishing the reviews on the popular websites.

● Removing all the online mug shots.

● Removing the online embarrassing images and videos and the ones that violate the copyright norms.

Have a strong social media presence

All social media website shave their own set of peculiar features, which helps them to be more useful towards certain businesses. For instance, a sound LinkedIn profile and presence can work well for the B2B or business-to-business companies, while Instagram may help an antique business get many more new customers. Positive reputation and trust go hand-in-hand, and you can build a strong corporate profile across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other websites by using the same fonts, colours, schemes, emblems and logos. This will help customers trust you more. The social media websites are also a great platform to solve the customer queries and you can heed to their complaints and resolve their misconceptions here. You also get the feedback on the social media platforms as well that help you to improve your products and customer service operations, among other business aspects.

Focus on the quality of product and customer service

If you offer a subpar or low-quality product, no amount of reputation management can help you. The same goes true for the customer service, which should also be efficient and timely. Hence you can begin offline, target and improve the deficient areas and make your customers happy.

Create and publish informative and engaging content

The importance of content in online reputation management program and strategy is immense due to its mass reach. A single blog that is informative is read by millions of web browsers worldwide and many of them are your potential customers. See to it that your content is fresh, informative, unique, free of grammatical errors, and if possible written by experts in the field or a professional web content writer. It should also spread the message to the target customer base in an ideal manner, while also motivating them to opt for your product or service. Press releases, blogs, articles, social media content, pictures, videos, product descriptions, forum contents and pdf documents are some of the content types that can be placed at suitable websites (including your own). The amalgamation of the keyword (in required density) within the content will help you enjoy a better online reputation while also increasing your sales. See to it that your content is updated regularly and fresh pieces are added to it regularly. These efforts will ensure that you remain customer’s favourite and they connect with you the most.