“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it,” said Benjamin Franklin. And it’s true.
Consider this: Your brand reputation, that you carefully built over the years, could fall in an instant. For example, say you launched an advertising campaign that generates a lot of negative reviews and sentiment around it.
By the time you get control over the situation, it might be too late.
This is where online reputation management (ORM) techniques can help.
In this blog, we take a look at online reputation management tools and strategies that you could apply for your business.
17 online reputation management techniques
It is important to choose your online reputation management strategies that can have an actual impact and help your company. You must choose tools and techniques based on your industry, product, service, and situation. Here are some of the best online reputation management strategies:
1. Collect customer reviews
9 out of 10 people prefer to read online reviews when they discover brands. This makes customer reviews one of the best strategies to influence people’s perception of your brand. Here are some tips to make review collection a part of your online reputation management strategies.
- Collect reviews from your past and existing customers
- Keep all your reviews — from 5-star to negative reviews
- Address and respond to all kinds of reviews
- Create campaigns around review collection. For example, offer reward points in return of customer reviews
2. Improve customer service
While you may be offering top-class products and services, if your customer service is not right, your online business will find it hard to grow and succeed. In today’s digital world, a single poor interaction can break your reputation.
Here’s how you can provide top notch customer service:
- Make it easy for customers to reach out to you
- Provide customers with many channels to reach you — phone, chat, email, messenger, etc.
- Respond to customers who reach out to you on social media public posts
- Always respond to customers
- Ensure timely and quick responses
3. Respond to negative reviews
100% positive reviews could seem less credible to online consumers. In fact, studies show that 96% of consumers specifically look for negative reviews. One of the best online reputation management techniques is to address negative reviews, especially those that are public.
Here’s what you can do:
- Do not avoid or ignore negative reviews
- Respond to negative reviews to solve the customers’ problems
- You can also combine your SEO strategy in your response
Example: Stamford Plaza Brisbane responds to a negative review.
4. Expand the online presence of your brand
Today’s savvy customers use many different channels. They are spread all over the internet. And hence, you must look at targeting them on multiple channels. If your presence is limited to a few platforms, expand your presence.
Do this:
- Conduct surveys to find out your customers’ preferred platforms
- Figure out ways to expand your presence on those platforms
- Create different strategies for each platform — duplicating strategies and content on multiple platforms does not work
5. Set alerts for your brand name
It’s practically impossible to manually skim through the internet to look for mentions of your brand name. For example, there may be many articles, customer reviews, and listicles of your brand appearing on a regular basis. But tracking them manually is not feasible. But setting alerts for your brand name can add to your online reputation management techniques.
- Set alerts on search engines such as Google
- Take a look at the links as soon as you receive notifications
- If it’s a negative review, respond to the concerns immediately
6. Collaborate with influencers
Influencer marketing can be an effective online reputation management technique to employ for brands. When done right, it can elevate your brand reputation. For example, influencers can help improve your brand awareness, help build connections, and engage with customers.
Here’s what you can do:
- Collaborate with influencers who can influence customers in your industry
- Consider macro influencers depending on you brand and product
- Manage your influencer campaigns well and be consistent
7. Collect user generated content
90% of consumers are influenced more by user generated content than other promotional campaigns. There are many ways to use user generated content as an online reputation management tool. Here are some:
- Create campaigns to encourage customers to share content
- Share user generated content via different channels – email, social, website, etc.
- Collect photos, videos, social posts, reviews, etc.
- Stay authentic with user generated content
8. Make social causes a part of your brand
People are more aware than ever before. And their awareness extends to brands they buy from. 86% of consumers prefer to purchase from purpose-driven brands. People like brands whose values match with theirs. This makes social causes a key online reputation management tool for your brand. Here’s what you can do:
- Pick a few causes you really believe in
- Collaborate with non profit organizations to create campaigns
- Talk about the causes
- Make the causes a part of your brand story
- Involve customers to participate in supporting the causes
9. Include social in your reputation management strategies
Social media is a power space for brands to grow their reach, awareness, and enhance reputation. Most of your customers are on social media and you can use that platform to enhance your online reputation. Here’s how:
- Create presence on various social platforms
- Stay consistent with posts and campaigns
- Incorporate social listening online reputation management tools
- Make it a two-way channel – interact with customers
- Create special campaigns to engage customers
- Use social media ads strategy to enhance engagement
Example: Nike has a dedicated Twitter account to support customers to solve customer problems.
10. Consider your location and region
Your location and region can have a huge effect on the success of your online reputation management strategies. For example, in the European region, customer reviews work extremely well to improve trust and credibility, while in MENA, how-to articles and comparison websites do the trick. Here’s how to keep location at the center of your strategy.
- Consider the local and regional regulations and rules
- Consider cultural nuances when creating your strategy
- Follow rules of how to use customer data
- Being compliant with regulations and having a high cultural quotient can help you win customers hearts and trust
11. Create and promote new content
Let’s say there was a negative review of your brand on YouTube a few years ago. If the video still keeps appearing on the first page even after a few years, it means you haven’t done much to create and promote new content to overshadow the old content. Here’s what you can do as an online reputation management technique:
- Regularly conduct search for your brand name in incognito mode
- Look for negative and poor reviews about your brand
- Respond to them
- Also create fresh, positive content around those keywords that show negative content
- Optimize your content pages for those keywords
12. Ensure your teams are on the same page
Reputation management cannot work in silos. For your online reputation management strategies to succeed, all your different teams have to be on the same page and work towards the same goal.
For example, if one team sets a goal, and another team cannot reach it, the company’s reputation can take a hit. Here’s what you can do:
- Create an online reputation management plan and involve all your teams
- Ensure every team member understands the goal and importance
- Ensure there is efficient internal communication within the company
13. Choose an efficient online reputation management tool
To get your online reputation management plan right, you will require an online reputation management tool or software that will automate and do all the tedious tasks for you. Not only that, the tool will also help you do all the repetitive tasks, monitor constantly, and organize all the findings for you to use.
Here’s what you must consider in you online reputation management tool:
- Ensure it is intuitive and smart enough to understand different tones and languages
- Find a tool that can help you track and identify trends in your brand perception
- Choose a tool that can help you communicate and interact with customers
- Pick tools that can schedule and publish as well as monitor
14. Gather data from external and internal sources
You may have employed various online reputation management strategies — for example, tools that help you gather data from external online sources and internal data collection tools such as surveys, research, etc. For the best results, combine external and internal results to analyze the data.
Here are some tips to do this well:
- Track brand mentions, product mentions, etc. on external platforms, such as third-party sites, external social media groups, etc.
- Conduct customer surveys and research to collect information from your customers
15. Enhance the overall customer experience of your brand
For 87% of brands, customer experience is a competitive differentiating factor when it comes to online reputation. Hence, it’s critical to get your customer experience strategy right in order to keep your brand reputation on top.
Here’s what you can do:
- Ensure you provide a good experience across customer touch points
- Be proactive in helping customers, addressing their problems and complaints
- Ensure the best customer service experience
- Be available to customers and make their online experience easy
16. Be proactive and futuristic
Enhance your online reputation management strategy by shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach. In short, don’t wait to respond to negative reviews and issues. Instead, proactively promote the positive aspects of your brand to create a positive brand reputation.
Here’s how you can do this:
- Look for trends in content and campaigns and create your own unique campaigns
- Consistently create and publish positive content
- Look for buzzwords and trends and align your strategy to promote your brand
17. Maintain transparency and authenticity
Nothing works better than being honest and authentic. If your brand is not authentic, customers will see it in one way or the other. Hence, instead of trying to portray your brand as something it is not, be confident and be yourself — 86% of customers like brands that are transparent.
Do this:
- If you’ve made a mistake, be open about it, apologize and mend what’s broken
- Be consistent about promoting your brand values
- Promote transparency and authenticity internally as well as externally
How to choose the best online reputation management techniques for your brand?
Managing online reputation in an ever expanding and active digital landscape and it can get tough. This is why you require an efficient online reputation management tool such as Radarr — it uses AI for social media monitoring and listening, so you can take control of situations before they escalate.
Reach out to us to book a Radarr demo and to know how Radarr can help build your brand reputation.
