Avoiding Online Reputation Management Can Potentially Damage Your Brand Name

Traditionally, big corporate houses reach people on conventional platforms like television advertisements, radio, press releases and newspapers. They can afford celebrities to endorse their products. The point being, they can control the disseminated information and manipulate it to their best interests.

But, with the advent of the digitized age, everyone has access to the Internet. Everyone has cheap and feasible promotional tactics to advertise their brand on social media forums like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

But, this boon comes with collateral damage to which every single business having a prominent online presence is vulnerable. Here, news spreads like wildfire and the probability of it reaching the masses becomes manifold if it is negative or derogatory. Unfortunately, it influences public opinion very quickly. Companies now don’t have control over what is being said about them.

As every cloud has a silver lining, this problem also has a solution-Online Reputation Management. Online reputation comprises of whatever is said or published about an organization on the World Wide Web.

According to research conducted by Reputation.com, businesses availing ORM services experienced growth 24% faster than their peers. It defines ORM as” how others see the organization when they look for it online”. It is a technique of spreading electronic Word of Mouth on the internet. Therefore, these are the following main factors that influence ORM:-

Online presence and reviews
Social media platforms
Surveying and analytics
Comparing OMR of competitors and scoring

On the basis of information control, we can divide OMR into two heads, namely:

Online Reputation under organizational control - it includes official correspondence platforms like the company website, social media accounts, press releases, advertisements in traditional and contemporary media that are managed and controlled by the organization.
O.R. outside organizational control - it includes surveys conducted by rating agencies like CIBIL, Moody’s, Fitch, etc., online review forums like Yelp, Amazon Customer Reviews, Twitter, Yahoo! Local Listings etc. and other social media platforms where consumers or frustrated competitors can express their unadulterated opinion about an organization.

ORM is invariably built online through these regulated and unregulated means, which makes a service provider vulnerable to continuous unexpected attacks and destructive criticism. That is why in ‘The System For Assessing The Online Reputation Of Banks’, P.Rajzak claims that “Organizations need to be informed about what is spread through the Internet about them.”

Need for Online Reputation Management

Kim van den Wijngaard & Peter Boermans in ‘Everything A Hotel Manager Should Know About: Online Reputation Management’ have observed that ORM is the opinion of a customer about the service provider. It is significant for three reasons:-

The company gets to know about public opinion.
They can positively react to critical reviews.
By indulging in a conversation about itself, the company gets an opportunity to take control of it.

How we can build a positive Online Reputation

There is no vindication to the blunder which your company can make by not going online and ignoring the importance of OMR. There are many online techniques through which a positive image of your company could be created. Here are some tactics:-

Become social media savvy - your positive and warm response to any comment on these platforms could potentially affect your brand. Start by:-

Advertising your brand on these forums.
Posting transparent and quality content more often.
Constant monitoring for damaging reviews.
Greeting visitors warmly and trying to solve their queries.

Handling negativity with patience and cool temperament - former employees, dissatisfied consumers and disgruntled competitors may post fake and ingenuine negative remarks about your organization. So, you need to look out for the following:-

Keep a tab on former employees- they may leak classified information.
Handle negative comments with patience and calm
Keep an eye open for satirical memes and videos for getting a picture of public opinion and anonymously try to control its dissemination.

Get hold of analytics applications

These applications tell you about the nature of traffic on your site by keeping track of the following things:-

From which site visitors were redirected to your site
The time they spend on the site
How deep they delved and accessed information from your site

Why do we need ORM - Monumental faux pas by negative OMR

There are many international brands that have tasted bitter gourds by ignoring the public opinions of netizens. This resulted in significant lowering of their overall prestige.

The JP Morgan Chase ORM disaster

Shaggy foresight and overconfidence regarding the brand name in the eyes of consumers led the world-leading financial services provider into deep mud in 2013. They started a Twitter Q&A session with Jimmy Lee, who is a top executive at the firm, as a bona fide attempt to increase their transparency. They were overwhelmed with Twitterati's negative responses. Next day, they aborted the exercise and declaimed it a PR blunder.

Nestle’s ORM failure

Nestle’s plan of not following the pro-environmental practices led them to face vehement criticism. They decided to ignore them. Netizens started posting satirical versions of their logo to show their disapproval. The movement turned very aggressive as it pressurized Nestle into closing their online profiles a few years ago.

The Guidebook for Online Reputation Management: Risk & Relief

The exemplary crowd on the other end of the screen is smarter with the implementation of advanced digital moves. The generation believes in five and dime on a digital interface, rather than the traditional means for finalizing the decision over the business by addressing Electronic Word of Mouth (EWoM) and its Online Reputation.

According to the report of International Telecommunication Union 2015, 50% of the world’s population or 3.2 billion individuals will be marking their presence over the internet in some or another way. Where, the crowd around 2 billion will be falling from developing nations along with 89 million of the population will be embarking their presence from least developed nations, which is expected to exceed with the number of coming years, exponentially.

Therefore, it is easy to anticipate that targeting such huge population may add up lucrative value to the business. Contrary to that, single bad review or negligence can drain all your effort to waste.

To overcome such anomalies, the online reputation management act as a drop of panacea. Which results in inflating the graph of business’s productivity.

Online Reputation Management– Risk & Relief:

Online reputation has set the standard for the selection of business in client’s cycle. Reports from different researchers show cast varied results, that define obsolete negligence in opposite to the favourable condition for business.

According to the stats of Zingal Labs, 50% of the company’s market value is extracted through the designed inputs for the purpose of a company’s reputation.

Well-versed, ‘The first impression lasts forever’ signifies the appearance of companies on the first page of SERP. It may flicker down if has context combined with negative reviews.

Let’s discuss a detailed structure for possible quests, that revolves around the concept of online reputation management;

Do Google suggestion Damages the Reputation of the Company?

Google suggestions, where it simplify and altercate the best at fast speed turning it as a nightmare for the companies, highlighting the aspect that could further malign the reputation of the company.

Reports from Igniyte quotes that, 70% of consumer tends to avoid purchasing the product if they find the irrelevant concerns behind the name of a company.

If irreverent auto-complete pops-up, it may automatically lower the trust value and the reputation of a company.

Does Positive Review Make Your Business Grow Exponentially?

The digitalized era has opened up the belvedere for inflation in ranking arrangement of business amid the tough competition of the market.

The customer is somehow more technological advanced. The customer analyzes the input and output flow of reviews pertaining to the particular product or an organization.

Therefore, positive review for the product and your business, act as a highly decisive context, which can bolster the one to grow business at an exponential rate.

According to Status Labs, in the year 2017, 97% of consumer believes to follow the review posted on the online terrace for proceeding for local business.

Where 49% of consumer quotes that they move for their business needs that are equipped with at least 4 stars of rating. Also, 60% of customers reported that they shun the business property adhering the negative reviews for its product and services.

Therefore, the customer holds the full authority to scale your business, based on the driven judgement from the incurred review through the online portal.

Online Reputation Management FAQs

What is online reputation management?

Online reputation management is the practice to serve fabricated reputation of an individual, company, product and customer service on various digital platforms.

Today, the exemplary crowd on the other side of the screen is well aware of resources from electronic word of mouth (EWoM). The review available on any social media is enough to tarnish the brand image, which could further lead to a loss in the rate of productivity.

According to the reports of Vendasta, 45% of crowd quotes that they have dropped the decision of buying any product or doing the business after witnessing unfavourable online search’s result for an organization.

Therefore, it is mandatory to involve the services of online reputation management in your business cycle, with the purpose to guarantee your success of the business with inflation in the graph of productivity and customer satisfaction.

How to fix a damaged online reputation?

In the era of digitalization, each individual is carrying the personalized device to monitor the value of a product by comparing it from various resources. Therefore, even a single review is enough to damage online reputation.

According to the stats of Status labs, 41% of organization have experienced a negative and damaged online reputation situation, which have cost them the loss of brand value along with revenue.

Therefore, the organization can avail services from an efficient online reputation management firm to repair your online reputation by admiring the following steps:

Identify the source of the problem maligning the online reputation.
Fix the negative source in content.
Submit content removal request to Google for removing the concerned issue.
Optimize your content present on the various depot of the digital platform.
Gather positive review on the website by delivering quality assured services to the customer.

What are the possible reasons for bad online reputation?

Maintaining a strong online reputation is the need of an hour. The most likely reason for viewing a bad online reputation is the review posted by the customers. But what let them have bad experience from the business? Well, the review has a power to inflate and deflate the graph of trust for online reputation.

According to stats of Moz, a single bad review is enough to cost you the loss of up to 22% of potential customers. Whereas, the risk of loss in customer count further increases to 59.2% with the rise of three bad reviews. Also, the loss of customer exceeds the number of 70% with four or more negative comments and post.

One should try its full attempt to cut possible reasons for bad online reputation. The possible reasons are:

Bad customer service.
The issue with the quality of the product.
Terms and condition issues.
Objectionable content.

What does an online reputation manager do?

According to Careerarc, 96% of organization dealing with customer-centric business quotes that the brand and reputation can affect the cycle of revenue, yet only 44% of business monitor the resulting impact.

To create the subtle impact of online reputation management on the business, the online reputation manager act as a helping hand with the expertise of years.

The responsibility of an online reputation manager consists of several sets, that bolsters in burgeoning the image of your service and business, such as;

Fabricates brand’s image.
Introduce brand loyalty programs by regular customer engagement.
Implementing reputation practices among the employees of the organization.
Handle social media accounts for delivering promised values.
Conduct an online survey for addressing the queries of a customer by the instant response.
Helps in catering customized website experience for the customer.

What is online reputation software?

Online reputation is one of the primary concern pushing the organization to cast the input in the business.

According to stats of Status Labs, in recent years the bunch of US recruiters and HR are surveyed over the concern of their hiring decisions based on the results of online reputation. To which they concluded with the statement that 85% of positive online reputation stimulates their decision for hiring at least to a range. Whereas, 50% of US recruiter and HR professionals said that strong online reputation benefits them in hiring terms to an inordinate level.

But what lets businesses and clients monitor to assimilate their decision with the power of online reputation? Well, the implementation of online reputation software in the process of online reputation management helps upto a great extent.

Following are some famous online reputation software, used by online reputation manager:

Trustpilot
Reputation.com
Yotpo
Review Trackers
Vendasta

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It Is Time For Your Business To Break A New Dawn!

The Ace of Spades in Online Reputation Management

Avoiding Online Reputation Management Can Potentially Damage Your Brand Name