Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

In today’s world, the Internet and Social media are considered to be the most powerful platforms through which people voice their perspectives, look for information and search for a solution. All it takes is a search to find reviews of a particular industry or brand. Because of this, it is very crucial to maintain a good reputation in the online marketing platform which leads the customer to take a decision towards your business. This is the very thing that makes the owner successful in his / her business field. It is impossible to establish a business without having a good online reputation management . Having a good reputation encourages the customer to trust them which would result in, the customer taking your services. Thus, it is mandatory to have the power to encourage the customer to buy your products which is only possible if your brand has a good image.

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online Reputation Management or ORM refers to the strategies and practices to take control over the online communication or perception of an organization, individual or another unit on the Internet. The main motive behind ORM is that a company can try to reduce the effects of a negative viral video, create balance, counteract misleading trends, make proactive marketing plans and allows to put the best foot forward in the online marketing platform. Therefore, we can say that Online Reputation Management is an attempt to influence the clients or an individual, how they assess the online brands while buying goods or utilizing the services. 

Cycles of Online Reputation Management :

A good business owner always listens to the feedback given to him by his clients. They improve their services which ultimately increases their client’s satisfaction and in turn, these customers leave good feedback which results in a lot of customers. This very feedback cycle is known as Online Reputation Management Cycle.

There are two types of the cycle of ORM:

1. Vicious Cycle:- If the business owner ignores the online reputation of his business and risks falling victim to a vicious cycle of misinformation and rumors. It is, therefore, the result of ignoring the client’s opinion. In such a cycle you will miss feedback and because of this, the customers will be less satisfied who in turn may leave negative feedback which would probably end up having a few numbers of customers. A vicious circle is a build because of misleading, poor quality of service and negative comments ranking higher and the spread of such comments in social media due to the ignorance of the online goodwill.
2. Virtuous Cycle:- It is important for the business owner to take care of his online reputation and create a Virtuous Cycle of good quality product and positive feedback which is ultimately ranked higher bringing in more clients. Every individual starts spreading the positive feedback of your business services via social media and every sort of online platform. 

Consideration of ORM :

It is important for your business to have a good online reputation and a positive presence as it would resemble goodwill.

The reasons to consider online reputation management are enlisted below :

• Nowadays, people are more prone to the world wide web i.e Internet. For every small and big thing, the first step every individual takes is to google, which suggests that we trust online resources a lot.
• The online reputation of any business or brand is forever. No individual can see your offline reputation but for a lifetime he can check the online reputation of any business. Single negative feedback can ruin everything.
• Online marketing has gained much more importance than offline resources. It is because online marketing saves time, is measurable and is in the budget.

Why is ORM required?

It is not an easy task to manage the reputation of your services on the online platform. One should be consistent when it comes to online reputation. It is not a simple task, to begin with, and needs a lot of patience. Maintaining a good reputation is very important and especially for digital marketing services online. The pointers below give an idea as to why ORM is required.

1. Online reputation helps a lot to increase sales of a brand. As people of this era are basically relying on the internet. The internet is also the best source for information as one can easily connect with other people out there. This helps to engage your potential clients via social media and other websites thus, increasing your sales. It is, therefore, the best way to communicate with clients around the globe and gain a good name for your brand.
2. It helps in building credibility and trust with the clients as it is the utmost important thing in business. In case there is a problem with your product; it is obvious that a negative comment will spread everywhere about your brand which will affect the reputation of your brand badly. But if there is an ORM strategy then it can help your brand to get a good name again with time. It helps to make credibility as a brand that cares about customers and improves the quality of service.
3. Effective online reputation management may help in creating a perfect brand or company image worldwide. It is mandatory for you to regularly monitor the brands in the online platform and response to any sort of communication may build the brand image, the company needs. Therefore it is important for your brand to maintain a perfect ORM which would, in turn, aware people about your brand and its services, thus, creating a brand image.

Working on Online Reputation Management :

In this 21st century of huge competition, it is important for you to be in the first position when it comes to render services or deliver products to clients. You need to toil day and night and monitor continuously to set up a good image in the market. It is mandatory to have a good ORM plan.

1. Building up a new Web Presence:- At this time it is necessary for you to have a presence in online and for this, you have to go with the course of modern times in order to last. This is the only entryway to get in touch with your planned market. In order to build a web presence in which you have your own hold such as :

• Personal or Business websites.
• Forum portal or blogs.
• Social profile on Instagram, Facebook, etc.
• An account on Rich Media sites such as Youtube.
• Informative articles and PR News.
• Listing of Business.

1. Being approachable:- Assure your clients that they can approach you at any particular time. Through this, you can make a good brand reputation as this will give your clients an idea that you are sincere in making a good relation with them. Never forget to provide your existing contact details like email address, contact number, etc. As a ranking indicator, one must have:-

• Relevant content mention on our website.
• The quality of backlinks.
• The interaction of the user with the contents.
• How authoritative are profiling sites?
• How frequently your brand updates the contents.

1. Client Testimonials:- To build up trust between your company and clients is very significant. It would be far better to add client testimonials on your brand’s web page to provide the clients with the working of your company. You also have the choice to ask and upload customer reviews in your sites to be more precise about what your company can do. It can also increase the credibility of your company with the help of quality ratings from qualified organizations.
2. Dealing with negative feedback:- Every individual has his / her own perspective and opinion therefore it is obvious that negative comments will pop up every now and then. Being a part of a good reputation management policy it is important for you to tackle the negative comments positively. In case the damage is done then you need to do these things:

• Nominate an ORM consultant.
• Search for the owner of the bad reputation site and ask him respectfully if he can put it down.
• If it is unlawful, then you can ask a concerned government official for help to get it down.
• Appeal google to de-index in case there are elements in the page against google’s guidelines.

Tools of ORM :

Here in this part, there are some tools enlisted below which will help you monitor your online reputation.

• Google Alerts: You just have to enter your company name and the terms of your desire to get the alerts. You will get the notifications on your email ID by Google’s database, according to your preference. 
• Social Mention: It is a free tool that looks after more than 80 social media sites comprising Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc. It also displays the following results to improve the brand’s image.
• Strength: Possibilities that your brand is discussed on social media.
• Sentiments: Ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback.
• Reach the number of unique authors who reach your brand.
• Passion: The probability of people talking about your brand to gain popularity.
• Reputology: It is a review managing and monitoring tool for multi-location businesses. 
• Trackur: This ORM tool helps your brand to monitor all of the social media sites and conventional news sites, insights such as trends, keyword discovery and many more.
• SentiOne: It is very important for you to pay attention to what your clients say about your brand. The tool sentiOne enables you to do so. Not only the tool lets you access the new data but also the past data. 
• Review Push: This software assists businesses with multiple locations in order to monitor social media and admired review sites like Facebook, Yellowpages, etc.
• Chatmeter: It gives you information via email of any feedback found on more than 20 local search review sites.
• Reputation Health: In case you are in a medical practice or you provide SEO and other online marketing services relating to medical practice then you need this tool.

We hope that this piece of content would be valuable for our clients in order to know all the essential matters regarding ORM as well as manage their business in the online marketing platform.