A good online reputation is vital to success in today’s online business world. Today, we live in the age of the internet, and if a customer is interested in your product, then the first thing they’re going to do is search online to see what people are saying about your company.
Online reputation management (ORM) is the art of handling your personal online reputation so people get the best possible impression of you on the internet. Businesses with a bad reputation online are unlikely to get any customers at all.
Managing your online reputation can be a challenging task. Fortunately, there are companies that you can hire that specialize in managing online reputations. A reputation management company can help you improve your online reputation, ensuring that customers get a positive impression of you and your business online.
Let’s take a look at a few reasons why you should look into online reputation management for your business.
1. Staying Ahead Of Your Competitors
Most companies today are investing heavily in reputation management which means that most of your competitors will be working to improve their online reputation either through their own efforts or by hiring a reputation management company. If you don’t have a good online reputation, then you will be at a huge disadvantage compared to your competitors.
If you don’t have a prominent online presence or, even worse, if you have a bad reputation online, then customers will seek out your competitors instead of you. Apart from customers, your digital reputation will also influence prospective investors or partners. If the internet doesn’t have good things to say about your personal online reputation, they will be unlikely to invest in your business.
Some companies choose to keep a low profile online, avoiding social media platforms and reputation management hassle. But this is not a good strategy if you want your business to succeed. If you don’t have a notable presence online, then your customers are likely to simply pass you by and go to your competitors, regardless of how great your product or service is.
2. Bring More Traffic To Your Website
If a reputation management company does its job well, then it will be able to direct more visitors to your business website. If more people are visiting your website, drawn by your online reputation, then that means you will get more customers as well. More customers are what any business wants above anything else.
A prominent online presence means that people know about your company and what you’re offering. A crucial part of reputation management is making your company more prominent on social media platforms. If your company is active on social media, then more people will be aware that it exists and visit your website to find out more about you.
A reputation management company will ensure that your business has posted on all the popular social media platforms, and each post will contain links to your business website. So, if someone is intrigued by one of your posts, they can easily access your website by clicking on the link provided.
ORM online reputation management also means that you will also be involved in the community that your business is a part of. You can write informative blog articles to contribute to the community and include links to your website in the article. So any readers of the blog will have easy access to your business website.
3. Attract The Best Employees To Your Business
A skilled and dedicated workforce is essential if you want your business to succeed. Most people seeking jobs today use the internet to look for the best job opportunities. If your business has done its reputation management well, then your online reputation will attract these potential employees to your business.
If your business has a bad reputation, then these potential employees will seek jobs elsewhere, maybe even with your competitors. A reputation management company can help you get a solid online reputation that will attract the best and brightest on the job market. Your business needs to be visible on social media platforms for this strategy to work well.
LinkedIn is one professional social media platform that pays special attention to attracting skilled employees. People seeking jobs often go to LinkedIn to search for good businesses to work for. If your business has a good profile on LinkedIn and you are active on the platform, too, then you will have no shortage of skilled employees applying for a job.
One possible downside to having lots of people applying for jobs is that you might have some trouble screening out those who are less qualified or skilled. While a positive personal online reputation is guaranteed to attract job-seekers, the strategy might work too well, and you might be overloaded with job applications.
4. Cost-Effective Marketing
Marketing is one of the biggest drains on a company’s budget, but reputation management can bring you the same results as an expensive marketing campaign – at a fraction of the cost. The goal of any well-thought-out marketing plan, after all, is ultimately to increase your sales. A marketing team increases sales in a number of ways, including increasing product awareness by promoting your product or service.
A reputation management company improves your online reputation, making your product or service more visible to people on the internet. Through social media posts and blog articles, reputation management makes your product something that people know about. If people see your product or service on social media and on other websites, they will be more likely to think of it as legitimate and credible.
Cultivating a good online reputation means employing a variety of tactics, a number of which are also great marketing tools. One important reputation management tip is to use influencers to promote your product and popularize it on the web. A good reputation management company can help you cultivate good long-term relationships with prominent influencers on the web.
Influencers are people who are active on social media and have a large number of followers. People consider influencers they follow to be authorities on their chosen subject matter. For example, if you are a clothing manufacturer, you can collaborate with an influencer who talks about fashion and clothes. They can tell their followers about your clothing brand to make it more visible and popular. In this way, reputation management can serve as a great marketing tool.
5. Gathering Valuable Information
The first step in any reputation management campaign is finding out what people are saying about you on the internet. The purpose of this information gathering is to get an idea of your online reputation so that you can manage it accordingly. The gathered information includes seeing what customers write about your product in product reviews on the web.
You can get valuable data about your product’s shortcomings and strong points or services by reading customer reviews. Suppose a number of online reviews mention trouble with your customer service. In that case, you know what you have to do to improve your product and customer satisfaction – focus on bettering your customer service.
Similarly, reviews can reveal many other insights into your product that you weren’t aware of previously. Some customers may also make suggestions on improving your product which you can then implement to increase product quality.
Apart from reading customer reviews, you also have to monitor the popular social media platforms as a part of your reputation management. If you have a bad reputation online, then social media posts by dissatisfied customers will give you a clear idea of what is wrong with your product.
6. Improving Your SEO
Many of the actions you will take to better your online reputation will also improve your company’s SEO. Good reputation management means creating informative content and posting it online on social media platforms and community websites. The higher the quality of the material you post and the more frequently you do so, the greater the improvement in your SEO.
A reputation management company can help you create content that improves your online reputation and improves your SEO. One way that content can improve both online reputations and SEO is by using anchor links in the written content. A larger number of anchor links that connect to your business website will increase your website on search engine lists.
Another way to improve your online reputation is to make sure your business appears in online business directories. And frequently appearing in business directory listings is also great for boosting your SEO. A business directory is a web page where businesses are organized into categories and then listed. Each business has its address and contact information posted alongside the business name.
So if you focus on getting listed in as many business directories as possible, you can kill two birds with one stone – improve your online reputation and improve your SEO.
7. Increase Your Sales
It goes without saying that a business needs sales to thrive, and reputation management can increase your sales exponentially by bringing your product to the attention of people. Social media platforms are one place that a reputation management company focuses on. By managing your company profile and posting on the platform, a reputation management company will bring your product to the attention of a large number of people.
For people to buy your product, they first have to be aware that it exists. And online reputation management does just that – it brings your product or service into the awareness cloud of the internet community.
8. Improve Your Product Or Service
Good online reputation management (ORM) means tracking whatever your customers have to say about your product. When you sell a product online, it’s inevitable that some people won’t be completely satisfied. But you shouldn’t take this the wrong way. Negative feedback is valuable information that you can use to make your product even better.
Companies usually have to conduct expensive surveys in order to find out what customers are saying about their products. The goal of these surveys is to discover how a product can be made better so more people buy it. But with reputation management, when you track your online reputation, you get this information at practically zero cost.
9. Defend Your Business From Fake Reviews
Fake reviews are, unfortunately, becoming a common part of online business. A fake review can be written by someone who is not one of your customers, and it could present your business in a bad light. Fake reviews are illegal, but it’s hard to stop them from being written entirely. If there are negative fake reviews about your business online, then you will have a bad reputation online.
Reputation management can help you address these fake reviews by having them taken down. Your personal online reputation can be kept safe through your efforts or by hiring a reputation management company.
10. Increase Your Credibility Online
A strong ORM online reputation management plan will also increase your company’s credibility in people’s eyes. One part of online reputation management is being active on social media platforms communicating with customers and other experts in your field. A company that is active on social media is perceived to be trustworthy and reliable by people.
Another part of reputation management is creating useful online content and posting it online. If the posted content is written well and provides something helpful to people, then your company’s credibility also increases accordingly.
Conclusion
In this day and age, reputation management has become essential to the success of any online business. But managing your online reputation can be a difficult task – especially if you have a bad reputation online. Fortunately, you can hire a reputation management company to manage your ORM online reputation for you and make things much more manageable.
Although hiring a reputation management company is going to cost you some money, given the number of benefits we’ve just discussed from having a positive personal online reputation, it will surely be money well spent.