The concept of Online Reputation Management is still confusing for a lot of people. Most tend to confuse this concept with social media monitoring/analytics and a lot of them tend to mix it up with Public Relations. What most people fail to understand, are the dynamics of ORM, which is widely divided into two main dimensions namely engagement based ORM and customer support based ORM.
The difficult part about reputation management is that it is determined by your customers more than your efforts. However, it is in the company’s hands to make sure that your brand is perceived in a positive manner. Along with great actual service, making sure that every negative conversation about your brand is dealt immediately can help increase the positivity around your brand.
Let’s understand what Online Reputation Management means!
Google your brand. What do you read about yourself on the first page results of Google? Is it good or 9 out of 10 posts about your brand is negative? This is what determines your online reputation. If most conversations about your brand has been mentioned positively, you are a likeable brand and have a good brand reputation online.
On the other hand if your brand has been spoken negatively about in most cases, your brand’s reputation needs repair. This can be achieved by monitoring the brand’s online activities and the way people are reacting to the same. In case of negative conversations about your brand immediate actions to curb the problem should be taken.
In addition to googling your brand, try searching your brand name on Twitter or Facebook, do you see any difference? Twitter and Facebook are becoming increasingly relevant compared with Google for finding out what people think about your brand. This is because Twitter and Facebook are more real-time than Google.
But why do you need Online Reputation Management?
Selling on Internet has changed over the past years. From a top down approach, where customers could only purchase online and not share their experiences, the increasing use of social media has led to a market scenario where selling is led by customer choices. In fact it wouldn’t be wrong if we say that each customer is being paid attention personally by customizing communications to suit their time and place of availability.
With so much investment going in to reach each customer, losing even one can affect the company’s business. Therefore, online reputation management! It helps keep track of what each customer/prospect is talking about your brand and allows you to interact with them directly. This also helps in taking care of your unhappy customers and responding to them immediately to solve their problem and reducing the negative comments/reviews about your brand.