Online reputation management (ORM) is a strategy and process of monitoring, identifying, and influencing your digital reputation and credibility online. An effective online reputation management strategy can also provide you with new opportunities and insight on increasing your brand awareness.
There are many other reasons why it’s important to have an online reputation management process in place to help you with your social media and other digital marketing campaigns, but here are just a couple of reasons to consider getting one.
- Show your best side
Current and potential investors, corporations, banks, and the general public are all going online to research your business before doing business with you. Look at investors as simply being consumers on a different level. These investors don’t know your company well enough and will often make decisions on the information that is available to them. Once again if you have a negative reputation online, it will show. Do you want to be associated with a business with a negative reputation? - Online insights
Gossip, speculation, and rumors have destroyed great names in the past and many businesses have lost the confidence of their target market due to this. Today it’s very common to see a celebrity or business with an associated scandal to simply vanish. Quite often this happens by an abundance of all the negative information floating around about them.
During a crisis online it is very common to have inside information available, but is often leaked to external sources before reaching all of the essential channels. Back in the day it was easy to remove the issues internally before they went out to the public. In today’s technology driven lifestyle with access to the social web in our pocket, news travels fast, especially if it’s negative. It can take seconds to collapse a brand that took years to build.
- Recruitment
Having professional staff is the foundation for a successful workforce. The top individuals in every industry are forever head hunted and by knowing that, they will most likely research your company and look at all the facts concerning your brand before they accept any position at your company. If you know what your competitors, clients, and employees are talking about online, it can make a big difference in hiring someone with a good reputation.
Online reputation management is not a simple buzz word. It’s a reality and if you are not serious about protecting your reputation online, why are you still in business?