Online Reputation Management (ORM) simply put is a series of strategies used to create a certain public perception of an individual, business or organization. It makes your company look better by monitoring, improving, and maintaining information that is publicly available. Nowadays, reputation management has been dominated by online sites, such as review platforms, social media, and blogs such as this one.
It may sound simple enough, however there are numerous strategies that can positively or negatively influence a business’ reputation. It involves overseeing every single factor that will influence the public eye, whether it be in-store, online, or via telephone. Let’s face it, in business your reputation is all you have. “
Let’s face it, in business your reputation is all you have.
What exactly is Involved in Reputation Management?
- Review Monitoring: Managing reviews being populated across various platforms.
- Reputation Repair: A negative online presence will hurt your bottom line. Build a new throne by generating and promoting new positive reviews.
- GMB SEO: Reputation management relies heavily on SEO, Google steers your search results based upon the relevancy of the people searching for your services. Reviews play a huge part in this.
- Review Management: For businesses seeking reputation management, review management can collect and promote positive reviews online and proactively handling negative reviews. Reputation Management software can also automate your review handling, making managing your presence easier.
- Reputation Building: If you lack an online presence, agencies, PR companies or reputation software companies like Rannko can help you be present online.
- Status Recovery: Also known as rebranding, this aspect of reputation management involves developing a new image for yourself, your company, or your brand.
Reputation management however doesn’t need to be this monster that requires you to have to log in, and worry what is or can happen. It all relies upon you, as an individual and as a business owner or manager. You can and are likely adding value each and every day, just remember the following pointers;
- Provide a great customer experience. Your business will thank you for it ten times over. Each positive experience opens up new doors to new customers. business will equate to a positive response from the customer.
- Taking control and capture those customer experiences by encouraging your customers to rate and review their experience.
Use Social Media. If Your Customers Are Using It, So Should You!
A perk of living in the 21st century is the countless ways of getting a business heard and seen. Social media, review sites, company websites, and blogging are key attributes to a well-rounded marketing strategy. Social media posts and news updates inform people about current events and remind them of the company’s activity. It allows the public to share, comment, and like the posts, creating engagement in your community, building meaningful customer relationships as well as growing your following. Yes, I know that sometimes writing a post or finding a good photo to publish for your company can be a dreadful experience. However, Rannko’s Meerkat Social makes posting fast and easy with smart scheduling. You are able to pre-select the time and days that you would like to publish with auto scheduling, allowing you to publish weeks or even months in advance, saving you hours of time, killing two birds with one stone.
Acknowledgment to you customer shows them that their voice matters.
Reviews in a Nutshell
Why do reviews even matter? Not only does a review impact a customer’s review to visit a store, but it also affects its online presence. Without a solid search engine presence, there isn’t a very good chance that a customer will even find the business. Research suggests that 9 out of 10 customers read online reviews to determine the quality of a local business. Reviews are personal experiences from your customers, meaning they will be your most genuine and honest ambassadors for your business (unless you come across one of those notorious fake reviews. If that’s the case, refer back to In the Age of Fake News, Comes Fake Reviews).
In order to generate reviews, you need to open a door for your customers. Creating email listings or automated text messages are great ways to put your customer information lists to use. Although we won’t dive too deeply into review management, which is an entirely different branch in reputation management, I would like to stress the powers of Rannko’s Review Management feature. It allows you to send out review links to your customers via email or text message by sending the customer a link that connects directly to a review portal.
In addition to creating a door for customers to leave their personal experiences, your brand has the responsibility to carry out their experience by responding to the reviews. As Will Hanaran, Digital Marketing Manager at Fazoli’s says, “If you want your guests to return, then responding to reviews is going to be critical to build your reputation and avoid people going to a competitor.” A response to a customer- whether it be to a good review or a bad review- can either fix or keep a customer experience and will help retain their loyalty. Acknowledgment to you customer shows them that their voice matters.
