Reputation Management Habits to Start Now
A solid online reputation management strategy is critical to driving customer loyalty among your target audience. After all, the first thing a customer sees when they conduct a Google search about your business name is the first page results, often filled with customer reviews.
Reputation management activities like social listening and analyzing customer feedback can help you discover what’s being said within your brand mentions. Valuable tools help you evaluate if you have a good reputation or if there’s room to improve in areas where you’re seeing negative feedback about your brand.
Automatically request reviews to amplify your online reputation
What is reputation management?
As we’ve explained previously, online reputation management (ORM) is an ongoing practice with key reputation management activities involving monitoring and managing your company’s online presence across:
- Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn
- Online reviews on sites like Yelp and Tripadvisor
- Search engine results related to your brand name
The goal of these reputation management activities is to make sure that what is being said about your business aligns with your brand values and reflects your intended brand image. This includes all mediums: word-of-mouth customer feedback across channels and public relations efforts through media and news coverage.
The difference between a “brand” and a “reputation”
Your company’s brand is what you have to say about your business. For instance, your slogan or positive content on your company blog may mention your brand attributes and values, using phrases like “trusted” or “high quality.”
Your company’s brand reputation is what the public has to say about your business. For instance, bad reviews may call your products “unreliable” or state that your services are of a “poor quality.” In a perfect world, positive reviews mirror the messaging you use to describe your brand.
What is the role of reputation management?
There are many benefits of and purposes for conducting online reputation analysis and ORM, including:
- Reveals a clear picture of what potential customers see when they research your company via search engines, social media platforms and review sites.
- Gain insights about the customer experience: Using monitoring tools, business owners can understand customer sentiment and unlock key customer feedback trends and themes.
- Strengthen your digital marketing strategy and social media marketing strategy: By finding opportunities to improve your online presence and strengthen your social media presence and listings on review sites and Yelp.
Why is reputation management important?
Here are some of the top benefits of online reputation management activities for small businesses.
1. Strengthening customer trust. Online reviews influence the majority of consumers’ purchase decisions (93%). Brands are in the dark when they ignore what potential customers see when researching companies via search engines.
On the other hand, companies that take the time to respond to both positive reviews and negative reviews have the chance to shape public perception. They can also improve the customer experience by addressing customer support issues and encouraging new customers to give their products or services a try.
2. Boosting customer reviews on review sites and social networks. If customers see business owners respond to reviews, they may be inspired to leave their own reviews knowing that customer feedback is valued.
3. Improving business visibility through search engine optimization (SEO). Have you ever wondered: Does responding to reviews help SEO? Yes, it can. According to Google, managing and responding to your reviews helps ensure your Business Profile is accurate, complete and engaging, which can help maximize your local SEO ranking.
Reputation management activities
Ready to step up your online reputation? We recommend putting four online reputation management activities in motion right away. These efforts will help you improve your digital marketing KPIs, boost your brand perception among potential customers and even increase your star-ratings on social media channels and review sites.
1. Conduct cross-channel customer listening in real-time on an ongoing basis.
Key channels to keep in mind include:
- Customer reviews on review sites
- Search engine results
- Comments on social media platforms, blogs, forums and articles
2. Analyze the customer feedback you receive regularly across social media channels and the other platforms listed above.
3. Respond to customer feedback across channels — start with existing feedback and then keep up the habit on an ongoing basis with new customer feedback as you receive it.
- Measure your online reputation by paying attention to digital marketing KPIs like:
- Customer reviews and ratings
- Counts of social media followers
- Website traffic data
- Sales data
Manage your online reputation with Broadly
Looking for online reputation management and customer feedback monitoring tools to help you keep tabs on your customer reviews?
Broadly offers automated social media monitoring technology to help you keep track of your brand’s online reputation. Our tools help you monitor good and bad online reviews and customer feedback across various channels.