Online Reputation Management is where your reputation online matters and counts. It is the process of monitoring the reputation of an individual, company or online brand with an aim to wipe out all the negative comments from search engine results pages (SERPs).
Online Reputation Management (ORM) has expanded widely so much that ORM companies have recently emerged. The ORM market grew by a substantial 40% which has an estimated value of $200 million.
To understand the reason behind the popularity and demand of Internet Reputation Management, there are certain factors to be considered as under:
The first and foremost thing which is highly important is the reputation. Because a potential customer would rather choose your competitor than you if all he comes across are negative stories, comments, and reviews about your business on the internet. Today with the support and help of internet, it has become very easy to post comments, views, opinions online. At present, there has been a meteoric rise in the use of social networking sites, blogs, forums, customer review sites, which means online platforms have expanded like never before for individual or groups to post damaging/negative comments about your business.
What do to to protect your ORM?
Basically, it is difficult to keep a track of everything that is being said about your business and cannot be monitored. All you can do is start using tools like Google Alerts and Social Media Search Tools as well as top search engines to keep track of everything that is being said about your business.
The questions that may rise are, if negative comments hover around then can we respond and salvage the situation? Can comment be edited if it is inaccurate or can the inaccurate complaint be publicly corrected? If the complaint or negative feedback is deserved can we apologize or explain and achieve service recovery?
The next step is to make every attempt to swamp the negative reviews with a mass of positive ones. The existing positive content can be used and promoted via SEO services. Create new and positive content, articles and later use SEO tactics to promote it over the internet which will result in the drop of negative comments from the search results, once the positive reviews take over.
What not to do
There are certain things those if carried out can damage your online reputation. Hence, keep the following points in mind:
Do not pay attention to what people say – This is probably the biggest mistake you can make when it comes to enhancing your reputation. But, listen to your customers, their likes and dislikes, that will help you in understanding consumer demand.
Be patient – When responding to criticism or feedback of customers, it is mandatory to remain respectful. Responding in a disrespectful manner will damage your reputation further. However, whenever the comment is inaccurate, always make it a point to respond in a dignified manner and not be sarcastic or attack the individual.
No fake reviews – Planting fake reviews is big 'no no', they can be easily spotted, look artificial and damage reputation.
Hiring and getting professional set of Search Engine Reputation Management Services is preferred by many businesses today, as it's a matter of creating an impression on the customer through your reputation!
The author writes about the popularity of Online Reputation Management and its significance in the lives of website owners along with certain guidelines on Internet Reputation Management.