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Online Reputation Management: What You Should Know

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Reputation Management|Online Reputation Management: What You Should KnowHave you ever wondered how celebrities or big brands manage their presence on the internet? With the increase in people using online resources, social media, and reviews, one bad review can have a huge impact on a business’s success or reputation. Online reputation management helps those with larger public profiles to maintain a good online presence and representation in an age where everyone and anyone can use the internet to give their opinions. Here are some basic facts about online reputation management to help you understand what it is and how it works.

What is ORM?

ORM, or online reputation management, is the practice of using various strategies to help influence the public perception of an individual, brand, or business online. Obviously, if you, an individual, brand, or business, have genuinely done something wrong, then reputations should be damaged, and appropriate action should be taken, as covering things up can get you in a lot of trouble. However, if a person or business is under attack when they have done nothing wrong, for example, a competitor or jealous individual, this can have hugely negative consequences. This is where online reputation management can be used to push negative online content off of the first page of search engine results. It is hard to completely remove something from the internet, so managing your online appearances and presence can help to reduce the number of people who interact with negative content.

Who is it for?

Online reputation management is typically used by big brands, businesses, celebrities, or entities whose success can depend on what is online. One of the most common types is celebrity reputation management, which helps to put positive content onto the internet in order to make sure these are what comes up in search engine results when the name is searched.

Technically, anyone can use online reputation management to monitor and manage their online presence, and there are different levels and specialisms depending on how influential you or your brand is.

You can work towards managing your reputation yourself or enlist the services of a professional company. Typically, the average person will manage their online reputation much more simply than a large brand or celebrity by responding to reviews and comments, both positive and negative, and managing feedback. Many people trust reviews that are left online and will make decisions about individuals, companies, or services based on the reviews and ratings they see when they search the name in a search engine. Knowing when and how to respond to comments and reviews is just one of the many skills and methods involved in online reputation management. It becomes harder to manage your online reputation when you are more well-known or influential, or the challenges you are facing are increasing. You may then require assistance. There will be different factors to consider for this and various questions to ask yourself. These include:

  • Do you have time to generate and publish the content that is needed to push negative articles or search results to the bottom of result lists? Positive content that is high in keywords and other SEO techniques need to be created and published frequently. One great way to do this is by writing a blog, but you yourself may not have the time or skills to do this.
  • Can you write to a high level to create effective and engaging content that does the job it is meant to do? Including important keywords in your content will help it pop up higher on search engine results, and it is obviously important to make sure it is grammatically correct and well-written, as is it associated with you.
  • Are you technologically savvy, with a good understanding of techniques such as SEO? As well as SEO, you will need to manage a multitude of sites and social media platforms. Understanding how to build a good website is vital, and you may need some assistance with this task.
  • How large is the reputational problem you are dealing with? It is some small comments, reviews, or a few unwanted images, or is it something much bigger?

When considering managing your online reputation, find out what your current online presence looks like to an outsider. Searching various spellings of your name, or the name of your company or brand will bring up the currently most popular search results. Look through them and see if they present you in the way you wish. It is also a good idea to set up Google Alerts with various phrases so that you are constantly aware of any new material that is being created. This can help you save time, as you need to monitor the internet and be aware of what is appearing. Furthermore, you will need to learn when it is best to respond to comments or reviews, and when it should be left alone, as sometimes replying can push the comment further up search results, which is the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

How does it work?

There are several methods and techniques involved in online reputation management. Generally, the aim is to push down negative content and get it off the first page of search engine results so that fewer people see it. Research has shown that around 95% of people only look at the first page of results when they Google something. The techniques used will vary depending on the client. For example, managing the online reputation of a celebrity is a big challenge because there is so much content being generated about them from different sources. These include news organizations and publications, social media, websites, and fan forums. If a publication is well known, then any information they publish will appear high up on SERPs, resulting in more people clicking on them.

There are different ORM methods that are utilized depending on the client and the situation, but some general methods include:

  • Generating new content frequently. The more positive content you create, the more likely it is to be engaged with and land higher up in search results. The whole idea is to flood results with content that is positive in order to push negative articles further down. This is where using an agency to manage your online reputation can be helpful, as you may not have the time, means or ability to create the volume and frequency of online content that is required.
  • Maintaining a positive online presence. Having a good website is one way of doing this and is especially useful if you, your brand, or business relies on a website over other platforms such as social media. A high-quality website will help it to appear higher up in search results, will be informative, grammatically, and technologically correct, with links and an easy to navigate layout. Writing a blog that you regularly update, interacting with reviews and comments, and encouraging people to leave reviews will help build your site. Furthermore, having your or your brand or business’s name in the website URL is important as it can help the site rank high for keyword content.
  • Claiming online properties. This involves making accounts and profiles on the various forms of social media, as well as a Wikipedia page and domain name for your website. These are popular and established platforms and websites to have accounts on, and are therefore more likely to appear on the first page of a search engine result. Furthermore, by having accounts on these platforms and sites, it is harder for people to create fake accounts and pretend to be the individual or brand.
  • Creating links. Links on your website or other accounts need to be functioning and up to date. Linking to other webpages that you want readers to see can help the flow of internet traffic between the two sites, as well as giving credibility to the receiving website. Links to your socials should be on your website and vice versa.

Jobs

If you would like to work in online reputation management, it is generally seen as a type of digital marketing. There are plenty of digital marketing agencies all over the world, and many offer online reputation management services. Other services they may offer include content creation, SEO, and website design. You need to have a good level of understanding of digital techniques such as SEO and have a great eye for detail. There are many skills you need to succeed in digital marketing, and online reputation management is a great way to combine many of them, such as SEO and content creation.

Managing your own reputation is a good way to save money, but it can be time-consuming, and you may not have the skills required to complete the job effectively. As previously mentioned, there are many factors to take into consideration that will affect whether you choose to do it yourself or work with an agency that can manage it for you. If you or your brand or business have been negatively impacted when you have genuinely done nothing wrong, ORM can help to rebuild your reputation online.

How to Boost the Reputation of Your Business

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Business Reputation|How to Boost the Reputation of Your BusinessIf your business’s reputation has been struggling recently for whatever reason, now is the time to do something about that. You can’t simply let things continue to decline otherwise your business will really pay the price. Instead, it’s time for action to be taken. We’re going to talk today about some of the ways in which that has to happen, so read on to find out how to boost your business’s struggling reputation.

Go Back to Basics with Your Approach to Customer Service

First of all, you should go back to basics with your approach to customer service. Your business and its customers need to be on good terms if you want your reputation to be as strong as it possibly can be; it’s as simple as that. So look at how you approach customer problems and how you communicate with customers. Your tone and approach will dictate how people think of your company.

Be Transparent

Being transparent and upfront with your customers is one of the most important things you can do when it comes to finding success and managing expectations. If you’re honest with customers about problems that arise and you generally try to run your company in a transparent kind of way, it’ll make your life a whole lot easier than it might otherwise be.

Revisit Your Approach to Branding

Revisiting your approach to branding might also be a wise move. People will make judgements about your business before they’ve even used your products or tried out your services. That’s why it really does pay off to make people’s first impressions as positive as they can be. And the easiest way to do that is to do something new with your branding. After all, this is what people see first.

Make Charitable Contributions

Making charitable contributions is a good way of improving the image of your brand and it always has been. People like Haval Dosky talk about this and how important it can be to a business’s reputation. You should find charities that seem relevant to your business or that you think will be close to the hearts of your target customers and do what you can to support and give to those charities.

Be a Better Employer

People quite rightly and understandably tend to judge businesses based on how they treat their staff. If you want to make sure that people develop a positive view of your business, you should start by being a better employer and treating your staff right. If people find out that you have a toxic work culture or that your staff are paid poorly for their work, this will inevitably damage your reputation moving forward.

The reputation of your business matters because it’ll help or hinder your efforts to attract more customers and clients in the future. That’s why it’s something that is worth working to improve and something that you really can’t afford to overlook. Now is the time to make the kinds of changes discussed above.

Reputation And Entrepreneurship- What Startups Can Do To Enhance It

StrategyDriven Starting Your Busines Article |Enhance Reputation |Reputation And Entrepreneurship- What Startups Can Do To Enhance ItStarting up a new business is never easy but this wouldn’t dissuade someone born with an entrepreneurial streak. When you establish your dream venture, there’s always a lot to handle. Apart from the financial challenges and hard work to be invested, you need to be very careful about managing your reputation at all times. One slip at this stage can throw your reputation off track and your company may never be able to take off.

On the other hand, a solid reputation right from the start can build the trust, credibility, and loyalty of your customers. Also, it can present you as a reliable prospect for suppliers and partners. Together, these factors can give you the growth push that your startup needs. It makes sense to put all the effort you can in building your reputation. Here are some measures that can help you enhance the reputation of your entrepreneurial venture.

Invest in consistent branding

Branding serves as the bridge between a business and its customers. It is all the more important at the startup stage when you want the potential audience to know, recognize, and recall your business. Investing in a consistent branding initiative makes it possible to build a reputation for your product and brand. Start by creating a compelling narrative that highlights your value proposition. Encourage the first customers to stay with your brand and propagate it with word-of-mouth recommendations. Incentivize them for spreading the word around because people tend to trust other people rather than brands. Ensure that the tone of voice and messaging is consistent across all the branding channels.

Have the right people on board

While a great branding plan gets you a head start with your reputation, you cannot sideline the value that people can add to your brand’s presence. This is one more reason why entrepreneurs should prioritize having the best people in their team. Hard skills do matter but you should onboard people who are great with interpersonal skills as well. Customer-facing roles, in particular, require extra care and attention. After all, these are the people who will interact with your customers. Moreover, those dealing with suppliers, vendors, and partners should also be capable of keeping up your reputation with positive and friendly interactions.

Steer clear of legal issues

Legal hassles are one of the most common reasons why any business may face reputational damage. Startups are at a higher risk because they aren’t aware of the issues they may come across, from intellectual property breaches to founder disputes, workplace discrimination and more. The legal risk can be unexpected, like personal injury cases from customers and third parties. The injured victim will probably get a law firm offering top-notch legal solutions to represent them for a compensation claim. While lawsuits have financial implications, the loss of reputation can be a bigger issue. So you must do everything you can to steer clear of them in the first place.

Get the basics right

Besides avoiding specific legal issues, getting your basics right is equally important to protect your reputation as a startup. This is something that a majority of founders overlook and end up paying a heavy price. Double-check your calculations while doing sales figures, financials, and taxes. Go the extra mile with product design safety and testing and avoid service errors that may bring bad reviews. Do everything possible to keep customers happy because a single bad review can send your reputation plummeting. Even if you do get a negative review, address it immediately and try winning the customer’s favor.

Grow at an optimal pace

It may be great to experience booming growth and have a huge customer base quickly. But an unrealistic speed of growth can actually lead to unrealistic expectations that you may not be able to handle in the long run. Your efforts should be to move ahead at a consistent yet optimal pace, focusing on long-term relationships rather than only immediate revenues and profits. Keep a close eye on your growth graph and ensure that you are always on the right track. The processes you have in place should be scalable and reproducible with other people, rather than being dependent on only a few people.

Your reputation depends on your business and it works the other way around as well. So it becomes important to follow the best practices and be committed to giving the best to your customers. Avoid every small slip and admit your mistake even if you make them. A proactive approach towards resolving issues goes a long way in giving you a healthier reputation.

Corporate Coup: Protecting Your Business From The People Within

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Protecting Your Business|Corporate Coup: Protecting Your Business From The People WithinIt’s hard to imagine your employees doing something that could hurt your business. These people benefit from your relationship with them, and they will usually work as hard as they can to make sure that the company is moving forwards. Of course, though, it isn’t always easy to guarantee that your team has the right things at heart, and malice doesn’t have to be at the root of the damage they can cause. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring the damage your employees could do to your company, along with some of the tools that you can use to make sure that you can avoid it all.

Damaged Reputation

When a customer interacts with the people working for your business, they will often see it as though they are talking to the company directly. Anything they hear will be taken as fact, and it can be all too easy for your employees to make mistakes that reflect badly on your company. Of course, in most cases, you can view this sort of issue as your fault, as you should be giving your team members the right kind of training to deal with the customers they speak to. There are loads of companies out there that offer customer service training, making it nice and easy to handle this without spending loads of time on it.

Being Taken To Court

Being taken to court by an employee can happen for a number of reasons. They may have been treated unfairly, they could have been injured at work, or you could have broken their contract, and each of these issues can end up costing a small fortune. You need to base the action you take at this stage on the type of company you have. For example, if you have a property development firm, you should contact a construction accident attorney to figure out how to protect yourself from being taken to court if someone hurts themselves.

Whistleblowing

It’s quite common for businesses to break the law, and this sort of activity can easily go unnoticed. Of course, though, whistleblowing has become more and more common in recent years, with a lot of people feeling that they have a responsibility to speak out if they see the law being broken. Your team can whistleblow to your local authorities, and this could leave you dealing with expensive lawsuits to deal with. The best way to avoid this is by simply obeying the law. Alongside this, you could also ask your employees to come to you if they ever notice that you’re doing something wrong, giving you the chance to solve the problem before any legal body has to get involved.

It’s strange to think that your employees could damage your business. Thankfully, most of these issues are quite rare, with many businesses going for decades without having to face them. Of course, though, it helps to be prepared, and you can only get yourself ready for the things you can predict.

How to Advertise Your Business to Generation Z

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Generation Z|How to Advertise Your Business to Generation ZMove over Millennials, because Generation Z is here. These new kids on the block are slowly but surely leaving college, getting jobs, earning their own wages, and taking control of all the world’s buying power.

Gen Z is set to have the buying power in the palms of their hands for at least the next ten years, so if your business is to survive throughout the ‘20s, you’re going to have to consistently find a way to appeal to this young audience. To do that, you’re going to have to advertise your company in a way that engages and interests them.

To find out how you can advertise your business to Generation Z, be sure to read on.

Work on your online reputation

Many experts have determined that the first Generation Zers were born in 1995 and the last were born in 2012. This means that this generation, also aptly named the iGen, has grown up blissfully unaware that there was once a world in which the web did not exist. Having had the internet quite literally at their fingertips for as long as they can remember, one thing is for sure: Generation Z is incredibly well versed when it comes to searching the web, so you won’t be able to pull the wool over their eyes in this instance. They will search your company online, they will find what they’re looking for and, ultimately, they’ll decide whether to bring you their custom based on the information/content that they unearth.

If you’re to stand a chance of advertising your business in the best possible light via the web, you’re going to need to work on your online reputation. Fortunately, there are companies out there that can assist you in this instance, meaning you don’t have to go it alone.

Typically, a reputation management company such as Reputation Rhino will leverage the following tactics in their bid to boost your online presence by:

  • Monitoring online mentions
  • Publishing professionally written content
  • Interlinking high-impact content
  • Optimizing social media profiles
  • Editing or removing negative content

Work alongside influencers

Generation Z spends most of their time scrolling through their feeds and keeping up with the updates on their timelines. The fact that they use social media so regularly means that you must advertise on the likes of Twitter and Instagram if you’re to stand a chance of reaching your young audience.

When you do decide to market via social media, a good piece of advice is to work alongside influencers. These are people that post photo and video content promoting certain products and/or services.  You can also collaborate with Twitter and Instagram marketing agencies.

When looking for an influencer to collaborate with, it’s important that you don’t set your sights too high. Don’t attempt to partner up with world-famous celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo, Kim Kardashian, or Ariana Grande because, even if you do miraculously get through to their PR teams, they’re going to charge boatloads of cash to advertise your products for you. Instead, set your stall out a bit lower and seek to reach out to ‘micro-influencers.’ These are people that have a social following of between 1,000 and 100,000.

To set your business up for a decade’s worth of success, you’re going to need to start appealing to Generation Z as soon as you possibly can.