Having a good online reputation is vital for your online venture. Online reputation management (ORM) is an industry that has grown rapidly. You can either cultivate a good digital reputation yourself or hire an ORM agency specializing in reputation management. Either way, you can’t go by without it.

This article will share six tips to help you manage your business’s online reputation.  

1. See What People Are Saying About Your Business

To manage your online reputation, you first need to see your business’s reputation. To get an idea of your digital reputation, you will need to see what other people are saying about your business on the internet. Take a look at different social media platforms and websites specializing in giving reviews. 

But the very first thing you should do is google your business and take a look at the first few results that appear. If a customer wants to find out about your business before buying from you, then Google is the first tool they will use. So googling your business name should give you an idea of what customers see when they search for you.

You should keep track of many other platforms like Yellowpages, Glassdoor, Yelp, Indeed, and Foursquare. On these platforms, people will be giving reviews about your business and feedback about your products and services. Feedback from customers on these platforms will give you a good idea of your online reputation. 

You can also use tools like Social Mention, Google Alerts, Reputology, SimilarWeb, Chatmeter, and Trackur to notify you whenever your business name is mentioned on the internet. Whenever you get an alert from any of these services, you can look at the review or article in question and see what it has to say about your business. 

Getting a clear understanding of your digital reputation is the first step in reputation management. Your digital reputation won’t be as apparent as a numerical rating. Instead, you’re going to have to go through qualitative data – comments, reviews, feedback – and then process the data to find a straightforward course of action.

2. Have A Strong Social Media Presence

While it’s essential to have a profile page on the major social media platforms, that alone won’t be enough to manage your online reputation. You also need to be active on these platforms. The social media platforms that you should be active on include Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Some businesses avoid these platforms altogether, hoping to avoid getting a bad reputation by not engaging with dissatisfied customers. However, this approach is likely bad for your business’s online reputation. 

Your business needs to develop a good social media marketing strategy to cultivate a great digital reputation. Using your accounts and profiles on the different social media platforms, you should share lots of interesting content to attract new customers and give your business a favorable reputation. 

Content that you post on social media can cover many mediums. You can share interesting videos, pictures, and blogs through your social media. If people like your content, you can gather many followers on social media platforms. 

Having a strong social media presence is very good for your business for various reasons. If your business is active on social media, people will perceive your business positively. Also, even if there are some negative reviews about your business, people are more likely to trust you if you have many social media followers.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is another vital aspect of online reputation management. If you have a good social media campaign going, it will have a very big positive effect on your business’s SEO. An SEO agency can help you capitalize on your social media campaign to improve your online reputation.  

3. Create Top-Quality Online Content

The interesting content that you share from your business profiles should cover a wide range of media. You can make captivating videos that feature your product. The videos can be entertaining, informative, or inspirational. What you’re aiming to do here is create a marketing and advertising campaign exclusively for the internet. 

You can also post blog articles that your employees write, or you can hire a content writing firm to write these blog articles for you. The blogs should be related to the product or service you offer, and they should be written in an appealing way to capture people’s interest. 

You can also create infographics and pictures that appeal to a broad audience. Or, if you don’t have employees with the required skill set, you can hire an ORM agency to take care of it for you.  

All the content you create or have created can be posted on your social media profiles like on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If people find your content intriguing, they might choose to follow you on these platforms, which will be great for your social media image.

The created content can also be posted on your business website to make it more attractive to people. If the content is high-quality, it will improve your website’s SEO which is important for your digital reputation. Hiring an SEO agency can ensure that this process takes place more effectively. 

You can also post your videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and other video-sharing websites, which will be available to a much broader audience. Blog articles can be posted on blog hosting websites that cater to your field of business. You should also respond to any comments you get from viewers or readers on these websites as a part of your reputation management strategy.

4. Encourage Your Customers To Give You Reviews

Whenever a customer buys a product or service from you, you should try to get them to give your business a review. While it’s true that not all reviews will be positive, any kind of feedback from customers is precious to any business.

If a customer leaves a positive review, you can post that review on your business website, where potential customers can read it. And if a customer leaves a negative review, that can provide you with guidance on improving your business. 

For example, if a customer is not satisfied with your customer service department, you can look at what they had a problem with and then improve it. 

But getting customers to give reviews can be a bit difficult as giving a review means the customer is spending time and energy on expressing their feelings about your product or service. There are a few things that you can do to encourage customers to leave reviews. 

You can make the process of giving reviews easy for customers so that they don’t find it too much of a hassle. One thing that you can do to increase the number of reviews that you get is to make a rating system where a customer gives your product or service a numerical rating from 1 to 10 or 1 to 5. Customers find it easier to give numerical ratings than write out what they liked or disliked about your product or service. 

Another thing that you can try is to ask customers specific questions: were you satisfied with our product? Will you recommend our service to your friends? These types of preset questions make it easier for customers to express their feelings about your product or service.     

Remember that people tend to be quick to complain about something they didn’t like, but if they are happy with a product, they’re likely not to say anything at all. You should get happy customers to express their satisfaction with your product or service. Improving your online reputation requires that you get positive reviews from happy customers. 

5. Respond To Customer Reviews

Responding to customer comments and reviews is another important part of reputation management. If you want to have a positive digital reputation, you will have to dialogue with your customers. Hiring an ORM agency is one way that you make this task much easier, but if you want to take care of it yourself, then it’s not that difficult. 

The first thing to remember is to respond to customers as soon as possible. If a customer has made a specific complaint about your product, you need to respond before third-party publications pick it up. Or worse, if you don’t respond, the customer could get frustrated and begin to think you don’t care about them or what they have to say. Such brand behavior online can have a huge impact on your overall reputation. 

Sometimes, it’s impossible to address a customer’s complaint immediately because of various considerations. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t respond to customers. What you need to do is buy time. So, you respond to the customer by saying that their problem is being looked into or that you will address their complaint within a week. 

Remember to be courteous and civil in your responses to customers, regardless of how the customer addresses you. You need to be professional at all times. If you handle negative feedback from a 

customer appropriately, it could be good for your online reputation.

Also, try to respond to positive customer reviews, showing happy customers that you appreciate their satisfaction with your product. Good responses in such cases could include a warm thank you and express a desire to offer them more products and services with similar quality in the future. 

An unfortunate part of reputation management includes addressing fake reviews about your product or service. If a review has been written by someone who isn’t a customer, then it’s a fake

 review. Fortunately, most websites that host reviews allow you to fake flag reviews so they can be removed. You can also report reviews that contain inappropriate language or reviews unrelated to products or services you offer. 

6. Use Influencer Marketing

Influencers are people who have a great online reputation. They have large followers on whichever social media platforms they’re active on. Even if your business is not widely recognized, people will think highly of your products or services if an influencer promotes your products or services. 

Incorporating influencer marketing into your online marketing strategy is an important part of reputation management. Influencers tend to specialize in specific fields. One influencer may be considered a fashion expert, while another might be popular for their informative videos on music. You should try to find influencers most closely related to your product and service. 

Influencer marketing is a modern version of celebrity marketing that uses the vast reach of the internet to send its message to a huge number of people. You can harness the power of influencer marketing by reaching out to influencers and collaborating with them. You should tell the influencers about your business and what your message essentially is.

The goal with influencers should be to develop long-term relationships to be fully on board with your business and its goals. An ORM agency can help you create such relationships, and although you can do so yourself, the task may prove challenging. 

You can do several things to boost your influencer marketing campaign. You can give your influencers discount codes or coupon codes to share with their followers. The influencer’s followers will be encouraged to buy your product or services, serving as a good promotion strategy for your business.

Another thing that you can try is to ask your influencers to host competitions where the prizes will be your products and services. Contests and competitions will create more online awareness for your business, which will be great for your digital reputation.  

Using influencers is a great way to boost your online reputation, although it can be challenging to execute successfully. If you think the task might be too difficult for your business, then you can always hire an ORM agency to do it for you.