It has become a very common occurrence that a website, a company or a brand suddenly starts getting negative reviews for no reasons. In such cases, the situation becomes dreadful. In some days, you observe that it has started affecting your business and this consequence is growing really fast. This is where you start thinking about the remedial actions to be taken to minimize the blow on the brand and improve its overall online reputation.
This thought of improving online reputation sounds really justified because of the fact that businesses across the globe have to face the deficit of millions of dollars just because of the harm, their online reputation suffers. The data below will reveal some more alarming or disturbing facts before you.
Here are the Strategies to follow:-
Corporate Reputation Statistics
- 25% of a company’s market value is derived from its reputation
- Four negative search results can cost you 70 percent of your potential business
- 69% of job-seekers won’t apply to companies with online reputation issues
- 41% of companies have reported loss of revenue from a reputation-related event
The solution to this is, of course, improving online reputation and since companies now offer these services, the first thought is always of “availing these services”. But the following thought is about the cost and then, the question arises that is it worth investing this much in online reputation management services.
After an in-depth assessment of the pros and cons, necessity, etc., the answer would surely come down to “yes”, but still; a research has shown that businesses really stay ignorant about the same. They don’t stay totally ignorant, but actually, they try to tackle the negativity or the damage of online reputation with the help of some digital marketing or Internet marketing strategies. Then, there are some who wait for the bad phase to pass away without taking any stern actions, while forgetting the fact that this phase does not pass away that easily. Even if it does, the damage that it causes to the business is inconceivable.
Next up in the research is the mention of some businesses that attempt do it yourself (DIY) in reputation management too, thinking it to be sufficient as well as affordable. But everything goes in vain because tackling this issue involves having an in-depth knowledge of several services like SEO , PPC, overall digital marketing and finally, ORM too. Lack of knowledge, followed by lack of resources has been the biggest reasons why DIY attempts record “failure” every time.
This all brings us to one conclusion that availing online reputation management services is the best step for businesses and in fact, they too agree to the same as CEOs and executives have more important things to do than manage their own reputation. With that being said, if you too have made up your mind to hire an online reputation management company, the first thing to mull upon is – what kind of ORM services would be ideal for you.
This question holds more importance than others and right in the beginning only because companies that offer these services divide them in different types. Let us have a detailed look at these types in the next segment.
Types Of Reputation Management Services that Companies mostly offer
In a majority of cases, you will find these companies offering this service in two different types namely, ORM services for individuals and second is online reputation management services for businesses. This is also called business reputation management services, but the ultimate result of both is the same. However, there are totally two different types of strategies used in these two types because businesses mainly focus on review management. On the other hand, services that individuals need entirely involve improving the online presence or image.
Let us have a detailed look at both these types and what they include.
ORM Services For Individuals
The first thing to know about these services is that they are not made for everyone, because no matter how less the work is, they can be really expensive at times. Another point is that the guarantee of success is there, but there is no guarantee whatsoever of the retention of the reputation. This means that those who can get benefitted the most are those who are at the most risk of getting the reputation damaged.
This could include CEOs, executives, company founders, celebrities, philanthropists, politicians and financial services professionals and the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, these are also those who first attempted DIY in reputation management and upon getting failure multiple times, they approach these online reputation management companies. They generally offer these services to tackle the following problems.
- Misrepresented Legacy
- False Or Damaging News Articles
- Public Personal Information
- Under-Represented Digital Presence
To tackle these issues, the hired online reputation management company deploys the following very popular strategies.
- Expanding and improving the individual’s social media accounts
- Creating additional websites, blogs and professional profiles
- Earning positive media mentions
Business Reputation Management Services
As the name suggests, these services are mainly designed for businesses and promoted as “The Most Incredible Solution” for them. Rightly so, because to tackle this issue, companies that offer them build a number of strategies and digital assets as well…to control the sources of negative reviews.
Small businesses have been found gripped in the habit of using different ORM management software that are either free-to-use or very affordable. But then, the choice of software and whether to use them or not depends entirely upon how much damage, the reputation has suffered or how much you are willing to invest.
What Drives Most Businesses To Look For An ORM Agency?
Businesses that avail business reputation management services often look to get the following issues resolved with them.
- Bad Reviews (Google, Yelp, Facebook, Ripoff Report Or Glassdoor)
- Negative Brand/Product/Service Comparison Articles
- Unfavourable Press (About The Business Or Executives)
- Under-Represented Digital Presence
- Brand Ambiguity
In a nutshell, experts say anything that affects customer trust, sales or revenue is worth fixing.
An interesting thing about online reputation management services is that they are not merely about managing the online reputation or the fixing the damage that it has suffered. The companies that offer these services work to deliver preventive services as well to make business immune in the future from any attack on the reputation. This brings us to the fact that availing long-term services are more beneficial than short-term ORM services as short-term services often lack this feature of “Permanence”.
The point made above clearly defines the fact that just like the SEO, ORM too takes time, but only if the company chosen by you implements all the very important services. Here is a quick rundown of some top some important points that make any ordinary ORM services, a class apart and more impactful than others.
Best Online Reputation Management Services
A very important fact regarding the “best ORM services” is that there are no templates or pre-made tactics to use in them. The strategies to tackle online reputation depend entirely upon the type of issues faced by the company and their severity at that point of time. Here, we share some of the most useful and result-oriented strategies that ORM professionals could use.
Content Marketing And Press Release Distribution
The content has the most crucial role to play in overall online reputation management and a fact about “Content” is that it can be used in numerous ways. So many that an entire E-Book can be written on the same, but in the beginning, the experts would use content to dilute negative topic density in Google’s index. The same will also be used in the form of tonnes of high-quality positive material like the “Press Releases”, “Paid Placements” and so on. Here is a quick list of how ORM companies can use content strategy in improving the overall online reputation.
- Expert Article Writing
- Microsite Creation
- Video Production
- Image Publication
- Posting To Social Media Sites
Remember, positive content doesn’t only mean articles, but as we saw above, the content can be used in numerous other ways to build a reputation that would have an unshakable foundation.
Search Engine Optimization
We read above in the beginning that some businesses use SEO services thinking that they will help in improving the online reputation. The problem with their SEO services is that they are not backed by expertise, essential tools, strategic planning and so on. All these things are found in the SEO strategies implemented by online reputation management companies and with them, they improve their client’s page rank on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other search engines.
Content Strategies
An important part of the SEO strategy is the content and experts know this and hence, the first thing they do is that they optimise the content to make it easy. This would mainly include meticulous crafting of the Meta Descriptions, Title Tags and even the Page Copy on all your websites and blogs.
Online Review Management
As far as online review management is concerned, this could include a number of strategies like those discussed below.
Earning New Reviews
In terms of earning new reviews, an interesting fact to know is that 1 negative review has to be tackled by more than 12 positive reviews. We will discuss this later in this article.
Removing Or Burying Negative Reviews
This could include deleting negative reviews from Google reviews, if they are unreal and violate the company’s guidelines and the same can be done in Yelp too.
But some websites or tools that businesses use…show their inability to remove these negative comments. But this inability can be tackled by the experience held by the experts of the chosen ORM agency.
Manage Customer Feedback
Modern-day customers have evolved a lot and now they have developed this habit of reading online reviews and customer feedback before dedicating themselves to a particular company. Therefore, it’s very important to stay on the top of those feedbacks and hence, use tools and companies that offer these services of improving them.
Brand Monitoring
Brand monitoring is a very important part of overall online reputation management and companies offer them as a “Highlighted” service in their packages. This service of reputation monitoring ranges from manual searches to Google Alerts or even fully-automated web crawls using proprietary technology.
Overall, it can be said that faster and better they work for overall online reputation management, better it would be for a company’s reputation on the Internet.
Social Media Management
In the past few years, social media has become the backbone of any company and also a factor that decides whether it will exist or not. Therefore, its management is very important and also because of the fact that it has a huge role in online reputation management as well. The services related to social media management include expanding the social presence more and more and not missing any opportunity of coming on any social media platform. Luckily, it is very easy to do not just for individuals, but also the firms and businesses, as they will only have to establish a robust profile on LinkedIn, complete with professional bios, headshots and thought leadership.
Public Relations & Crisis Management
In terms of public relations and crisis management, things become a bit more complex because here, the ORM companies have to devise totally different strategies. As mentioned above, there are not any pre-made strategies to use in reputation management; they have to devise strategies for crisis management.
Conclusion
Now You must have realized that online reputation management takes a lot of efforts, time and energy but helps you to attain your goals. If you want us to do it for you business then contact us, we will be happy to help!
