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Digital marketers have a lot in common with Joan Jett — they both live fast, break hearts, and put out incredible content. But they differ in one key area: unlike The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, marketers have to give a damn about their reputation.
In the past few years, it has become more important than ever for businesses to manage their online reputations. Check out this overview of what reputation management is, why it matters, and the most impactful steps you can take to improve your brand’s image.
Online reputation management is a combination of strategies marketers use to shape people’s perceptions of a business. When done correctly, it builds trust and positively impacts buying decisions. Some of the most important facets of online reputation management include review management, social media monitoring, and online community engagement.
Reputation management and brand safety are related in that they both fall under the realm of digital marketing and public relations. Reputation management involves the overseeing of the public's perception of a particular business or organisation. Brand safety, on the other hand, measures the pros and cons of placing your brand name and/or ads in the specific channels. Depending on the industry you’re involved in, this includes avoiding inappropriate or offensive material like hate speech or adult content.
Your online reputation is a critical battleground for customer trust and business success. Here are just a few reasons why actively managing it is essential:
Positive online reviews, a strong social media presence, and engaging content create a trustworthy image for your business. Consumers rely heavily on online information, with many reading reviews before making a purchase. By proactively managing your online presence, you influence the narrative and establish yourself as a reliable choice.
The digital landscape heavily impacts buying decisions. Negative reviews, unanswered complaints, or an inactive online presence can deter potential customers. Conversely, a positive online reputation acts as a powerful marketing tool, attracting new customers and influencing conversions.
Keep in mind that your online reputation goes beyond reviews. Social media engagement, content strategy, and overall online presence contribute to your brand image. By actively managing these aspects, you can shape how customers perceive your brand, fostering positive associations and building brand loyalty.
Unfortunately, negative reviews and online criticism are inevitable. Proactive reputation management allows you to address these issues promptly, minimise damage, and demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction. This proactive approach fosters trust and demonstrates a professional attitude.
A strong online reputation will set you apart from your competitors. Positive reviews, engaging content, and a responsive social media presence highlight your brand's value and attract customers seeking a trustworthy business. In today’s competitive market, a positive online reputation can be a game-changer.
Your online reputation isn't built in a silo. It's a mosaic constructed from various online channels where customers interact with your brand. Here are some key areas that contribute to your overall online reputation:
Review platforms like Yelp, Google My Business, and industry-specific sites are invaluable resources for understanding customer sentiment and perceptions of your business. Positive reviews serve as powerful testimonials, building trust and credibility with potential customers. They showcase your strengths, highlight exceptional service, and can even boost your search engine rankings.
On the other hand, negative reviews can significantly damage your reputation if left unattended. It's essential to monitor these platforms regularly, responding promptly and professionally to both positive and negative feedback. By actively engaging with customers on review sites, you demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction and build a stronger online reputation.
Social media platforms offer an amazing dynamic space for customer interaction. Engaging content, positive comments, and responsive customer service all contribute to a positive online reputation. However, negative comments or complaints left unaddressed can paint a negative picture. Actively monitor your social media channels, respond promptly to inquiries and concerns, and use social media as a platform to showcase your brand values and personality.
Media mentions, press releases, and news articles can significantly impact your online reputation. Positive media coverage can boost brand awareness and credibility, while negative news stories can damage your reputation. Proactively build relationships with the media, cultivate a positive brand narrative, and have a crisis communication plan in place to address any negative press.
Beyond dedicated review sites and social media platforms, online brand mentions and discussions can also impact your reputation. Industry forums, online communities, and blog comments can provide valuable insights into customer sentiment. Monitor these channels for mentions of your brand, participate in relevant discussions when appropriate, and address any concerns raised in these online spaces.
Your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) also plays a role in online reputation. Negative news articles or misleading information appearing on the first page of search results can deter potential customers. Search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies that prioritise positive and accurate content ensure your brand's positive attributes are readily visible in search results.
When it comes to building a strong online presence, many people wonder if online reputation management (ORM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) are two sides of the same coin. While they do overlap in some areas, they are distinct strategies with different goals, purposes, and methods.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) focuses primarily on improving your business’s website visibility in search engine results. The goal is straightforward: rank higher in search results to drive more organic traffic to your site. This involves optimising your website’s content, structure, and technical aspects to appeal to search engine algorithms.
Online reputation management (ORM), on the other hand, is all about shaping and maintaining your brand’s image online. It’s a broader strategy that includes managing reviews, addressing negative feedback, and influencing how your brand is perceived by the public. ORM aims to ensure that when people search for your brand, they find positive and accurate information.
In essence, while SEO and ORM can complement each other, they serve different purposes. SEO helps you get noticed, and ORM helps you make sure you’re remembered positively. Here’s a simple way to think about it: SEO is like arranging your store’s front window to attract passersby, while ORM is more about managing how customers feel about your store once they’re inside. Both are crucial for a successful online presence, but they tackle different aspects of it.
Read on to learn our top 10 tips for online reputation management.
It’s pretty self-explanatory, but basically reactive reputation management involves responding to negative reviews or feedback posted online. If your business includes a review section on its website, Facebook profile, or Yelp page, you should monitor these areas so you can react appropriately. Responding to negative comments shows accountability, and that you’re willing to resolve issues customers have with your product or service.
Proactive reputation management entails actively promoting and maintaining a positive image of your brand. For example, if your business makes a mistake, the proactive strategy would be to get ahead of the bad press by reaching out to customers, explaining the situation, and providing a plan for how you're going to fix it.
Managing your online reputation takes a wide array of tactics and strategies. It also takes testing and optimisation to hone your approach. Keep reading to learn our top tips for improving your online reputation.
Before you can manage your reputation, you have to understand it. The best way to do this is to check out your online reviews. This may feel daunting with the countless review sites on the web, but according to research, there are 4 usual suspects that the bulk of consumers use for their research. Google is the site of choice, with 63% of consumers checking its reviews before they visit a business. 45% of consumers check Yelp before visiting a business, 30% check TripAdvisor, and 23% check Facebook. It is best to focus your effort on these 4 sites. Your industry may also have more specialised review sites that you’ll want to pay attention to, for instance, hospitals will want to keep an eye on Healthgrades and home improvement providers should be stalking HomeAdvisor.
So, what exactly are you looking for in your audit? First, check that your store locations, contact information, and hours are up to date on each review site. Then, see what customers are saying. Are there positive reviews you should thank customers for? Any negative reviews to respond to? Are there certain store locations with more negative reviews than others? Are your reviews better on one site than another?
With this information, you can begin forming a plan to improve your reputation.
You should also create a system for responding to reviews on every platform. Having a clear, uniform approach with designated parties responsible for responding will help ensure that no positive review goes unnoticed.
Of course, it’s much easier to respond to a positive review. Simply thank the customer and reiterate the positive quality they mentioned. For instance, a response to a positive review for a hospitality company could read:
“Thanks! So happy you had a great stay and enjoyed the local attractions our staff recommended. We hope to see you again soon!”
Responding to a negative review is more difficult, but that’s why it’s even more important to have a process in place. Always treat the exchange as a conversation and see it as an opportunity for growth. In general, you should acknowledge the issue, apologise, and never get defensive. You can also request to move the conversation offline to follow up further. A response to a negative review for that same hospitality company could read:
“We’re sorry to hear that you had a negative experience during your recent stay. We’re dedicated to providing the best experience possible. Please call our office — our team is happy to discuss this with you further.”
The sooner you can respond the better — according to a recent survey, 53.3% of customers expect businesses to respond to their online review within 7 days.
Review sites are often a place for your brand’s most frustrated customers to vent. According to a recent study, a consumer is 21% more likely to leave a review after a negative experience than a positive one.
The question is: how can you get more of your satisfied customers to share their experiences? Below are a few tips to help you get started:
Another common way for customers to leave feedback about your business is via social media. To effectively manage your reputation, you should monitor all of your social media channels and respond to comments about your business.
If you’re responding to a positive comment, be sure to thank the customer. If you’re addressing a negative comment, don’t get defensive. Reply with a genuine apology and ask to speak more about it via email or phone. This will control the damage and ensure they stop trashing your business publicly, where other potential customers can see. Timing is everything — if you don’t promptly respond to negative posts, they can quickly go viral.
Happy employees are low-hanging fruit when it comes to brand advocacy. They’re knowledgeable about your product or service and they would be more than willing to tag you on their own social media accounts. Even old-fashioned word of mouth can be effective, and since each of them has different social media friends and followers, they could be exposing you to new audiences you haven't reached yet. It doesn’t hurt to incentivise participation so that others see the benefits of following suit.
Search engines are one of the most common avenues people use to research purchases. To win business, you’ll need to ensure the search results paint a trustworthy picture of your brand.
The first step of your SEO strategy should be to own page one of the search engine results for all branded terms. This allows you to control the message when someone searches for your company, rather than chancing a negative media mention appearing. To accomplish this, use a keyword research tool to check the most common branded searches for your business then, if you don’t already have a page for those terms, create one.
Another SEO strategy that can help you improve your reputation is to blog regularly — in addition to helping you snag search rankings, this demonstrates expertise and thought leadership in your field. It can help you build a loyal following and a community of customers who will speak highly of you online.
When a business puts its money where its mouth is, the customers take notice! This includes being consistent in your messaging, demonstrating your values through your actions, and ensuring that your online presence reflects your brand's core values. This will establish trust with your audience, build a positive reputation, and create a loyal customer base. Including a mission statement, values, and goals and then showcasing how you live by each of them will do wonders for your online reputation. Finally, having a strong brand reputation can help you differentiate your business from the crowded online marketplace and attract new customers, while also improving your overall credibility. Patagonia is a great example of this — as an outdoor apparel brand, they gained an incredible reputation boost when their founder donated $3 billion to fight climate change.
Earned media is an integral piece of your brand’s online presence. People’s first impressions of your company can often come from reading an article about you in the press. Therefore, a great public relations strategy can help you ensure your online reputation is sparkly clean.
The most important part of your public relations strategy is to be authentic. People can sense when a brand is putting on airs — and it turns them off. If you’re overpromising on what you can deliver or promoting values your brand doesn’t truly uphold, this can cause a lot of harm to your reputation. People may tear you apart in online reviews or on social media. Instead, ensure that you’re promoting a message that aligns with your brand’s core values when you pitch to the media.
You should also actively monitor media mentions so that you can anticipate and quickly respond to any PR crises that may arise.
While it’s impossible to eliminate negative brand mentions entirely, your company can still use technology to help prevent them. Conversation intelligence platforms like Invoca analyse contact centre conversations with AI and gather valuable insights at scale. This allows you to quickly identify calls where customer experience issues take place.
You can then drill into the call recordings and transcriptions to understand what the issue was and if your agent correctly resolved it. If the issue was not resolved, you can quickly call back the customer and make amends — perhaps by offering a discount or special offer. This can prevent negative reviews and other blowback that could harm your reputation.
Spectrum Retirement’s use of Invoca is a great example of using conversation intelligence to stay ahead of negative reviews. When their facilities were locked down due to the pandemic in early 2020, they used Invoca Signal AI to spot conversations where people had issues or concerns related to COVID. They were able to proactively respond to them, which resulted in 160 positive reviews across their review site portfolio in the first six months of the pandemic. This could have easily been 160 negative reviews from frustrated family members and prospective patients, but they turned it into an opportunity to provide a caring and compassionate ear during an extremely difficult time.
Conversation intelligence may also help you identify issues that have the potential to impact future customers. For example, maybe there’s a problem with your online shopping cart that’s causing frustration. You can then take the right actions to fix the problem and create a better experience for everyone.
Managing your online reputation isn’t about hiding your flaws and deceiving your audience — it’s about genuinely listening to them and responding to their concerns. If you keep your audience happy, you’ll prevent negative reviews from ever occurring. But this can be challenging, especially since expectations for the customer experience are at an all-time high.
Each time you receive a negative review or social media mention, you should follow up to understand the root of the issue. What made the customer unhappy? Was it an isolated issue from a single employee or location? Or was it a larger issue that could impact your entire customer base?
You should then take the necessary steps to correct the issue. For example, if an agent didn’t correctly resolve a billing issue and it frustrated the customer, you should give your team additional training in that area. You should also follow up with the customer and give them a discount or special offer to smooth things over.
If you listen to customer complaints and right your wrongs, a great reputation will naturally follow.
To learn more about how marketers can use Invoca to enhance their digital marketing strategy, request a demo of our platform.
