What is Online Reputation Management?

When it comes to managing your brand online, you have control over the brand voice you cultivate and which methods are best for attracting your target customers. Most elements of digital marketing have a strong degree of control and analytics, with one notable exception: what other people say about your brand.

If a customer has a bad experience, they'll be more apt to talk about it online than if they have a good experience. If an employee was treated poorly, they will gladly rage about it on Glassdoor. Worse yet, none of those reviews can be removed. Even if they could, requesting removals can snowball the problem if the unhappy party takes it to social media, it goes viral, and then the news reports on it.

Those reviews are powerful: Search Engine Journal reports that nearly 100% of customers rely on online reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. 96% of them specifically seek out negative reviews! Moreover, customers have grown wary of positive reviews that sound overly pleased, especially if they're anonymous.

You cannot control word of mouth, or how your brand image is reflected in the news, on social media, and on review sites. But by preparing some reputation management strategies, you can fortify your search landscape, making it more difficult for negative information to make as big of an impact.

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online reputation management is the sum of actions taken to manage public perceptions about an organization. With online conversations about businesses being part of daily life in the digital world, addressing negative statements and feedback is just as important--if not even more important--than gathering positive reviews from customers.

Reputation management strategies include:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Social media monitoring and engagement
• Public relations and outreach campaigns
• Thoughtful, deliberate management of negative reviews

These actions help demonstrate to current and potential customers that your brand makes an effort to rectify bad experiences.

How Can SEO Help with Online Reputation Management?

SEO serves multiple purposes with an online reputation management strategy. When someone searches for your brand, they will most likely skim the first page of search results (SERPs). Because you can quantify the number of people searching your brand name and then estimate a conservative click-through rate, you can estimate the number of positive or negative interactions a search result may have on your brand. Positive information, like good reviews and consistent online presence, makes a favorable impression, while negative and missing information doesn't.

By optimizing pages for branded queries and implementing strategic link-building campaigns, SEO can help with online reputation management by building confidence from both users and search engines.

How Does Social Media Presence Differ From Social Media Marketing?

Having a presence on social media is not the same as using social media sites to actively market your brand. A brand that isn't very present on social media can come across as one that's not engaged with its community and doesn't listen to their concerns.

Being present on social media also doesn't have to mean that your account must have millions of followers. You can spend $0 on social media campaigns and have a micro influence and still have a presence.

Having brand accounts and posting unique, engaging content on them with consistency vastly helps with online reputation management. It helps verify that your brand is what you say it is, and provides a free way to find new customers and engage with them.

Enhancing Your Brand's Digital Reputation

Online reputation management is now a crucial part of maintaining your brand's online brand image. By taking strategic approaches like social media monitoring and addressing negative online reviews in a responsible manner, digital reputation can be repaired and bolstered by building trust. Honesty and responsiveness to customer concerns are key elements to online reputation management and creating a sustainable search landscape.

Ready to level up your digital reputation? Contact our team at The Gist for a free consultation on reputation management strategies. With our experience and HubSpot expertise, we can get your brand on the right track with a tailored inbound marketing plan.