Online reputation, well we all have heard about business reputation, company reputation, brand reputation but what exactly is online reputation?
For over 80 per cent of shoppers or audiences google your business before they make any purchase and that’s online or in-store.
Perhaps on the internet if we have our brand or services or personal identity and how are we managing the profiles the reputation and so on.
Online reputation defines how business is monitored and viewed online by consumers or other businesses, it also adds about improvisation how one can improve one’s reputation online.
But who are those audiences and entrepreneurs? There are numerous stakeholders like potential customers, Reporters, Competitors, your target audience.
A lot of people are in the confusion about ORM which stands for Online Reputation Management. Some people think that it’s social listening, social listening implies seeing what people are talking about me on social media. ORM means how we treat all those people who buy our product and it doesn’t matter if they are satisfied or unsatisfied with our products. For an instance- If someone is happy having our products we would appreciate those people and some who are not that fond of our products, that’s okay too because reacting to such issues would get our brand into trouble which could lead to negative marketing of our brand.
Online reputation management can make the brand but also have the authority to destroy it overnight. When it comes to reviews and social media if anything else the quickness of the customer being able to instigate their complaints or their feedbacks in regards that they’ve received from their business.
Managing your online reputation especially for a business is about closing the gap. Reputation management in the traditional sense meaning offline is closely related to PR (Public Relation). Before google managing your business reputation & shaping the public perception of your company was mostly based on offline activities. The goal was simple though these businesses wanted to build their reputation and get people talking about them because this is the best way for potential customers and clients to learn more about a company through word of mouth especially if what they heard came from a friend or a relative, based on a personal experience that they had with the brand like a peer recommendation. The goal is still the same today but a lot has changed in the Reputation management landscape.
How can you check your online reputation?
Well, you can check it through your search icon you can google your business if you wanna see your, own individual business reputation you can google that as well, you can google search your people or product name.
Well, how to build strong online reputation management?
Here are few tips to cover-
1. Capture reviews
Capture reviews from your past customers, that’s the easiest of all if you don’t have any reviews or you don’t have many reviews. The first thing you wanna do is send out feedback to your past customers. So the way that we recommend doing that. Send them an email. If you’ve had a thousand past customers, let’s say you’re gonna wanna email those thousand customers for feedback on your business. Don’t be afraid of bad reviews. It’s okay to have 5 stars or 4 stars.
2. Automate your review capture
So you have captured all these reviews from past customers but what about customers moving forward. Well, you’re gonna automate that the best way that you can. So if you send out any invoices or newsletter or thank you notes after you do business anything like that you’re gonna wanna try to automate those processes. So try to update those templates, those email templates may be your email signature. Update your communications with call-to-actions.
3. Ask your customers
Ask them for reviews face to face. Do this face to face if you have people out in the field such as visiting for home services or maybe it’s even over the phone and you’re just calling these customers and on one on one basis or maybe you see them daily.
4. Read & Reply to all reviews
Always make sure to read & reply to all the reviews even if it’s a bad review. By responding allows people that are analyzing your online reputation and reading your reviews to see that you care because you’re reading the reviews and responding and they can understand that you care about your business. On a bad review don’t be negative or combative, just state the facts. Responding to all reviews also builds more online content.
5. Invest time in your online reputation
I know most of them are busy you get a million calls and you’re running your own business. If you don’t have time to do it yourself assign it to one of your employees and if you don’t have time for these types of things hire somebody to do it.
6. Avoid & remove fake Anonymous reviews
A lot of times your competitors are gonna see you building this online reputation and they are gonna try to put a fake negative review out there for ya and it’s super frustrating. A lot of review sites have removal procedures and if they don’t, try not to worry and bury bad reviews with good ones.
Get in touch with expert PR Agency in Pune, which provides you with end-to-end reputation management services to ensure that you enjoy a fruitful reputation and gain the complete trust of your public.