What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management is nothing but building customer perception online. Let’s say that you run a dental practice. If a person needs to visit a dentist but has no clue as to which dental practice will be the best for him, he will do a quick google search for the best dentists in his vicinity and select the best one from the options that pop on the screen.
If a customer is searching for a service that your business provides, how is he going to perceive its credibility? It’s simple, by your reputation. A lot of it has to do with the reviews and comments that people (past customers) leave about your business or service on social media. If they leave good reviews, you rank better and are at a good chance of attracting new customers. If they leave negative reviews, you need to manage those to be able to maintain your online reputation.
But before we delve deep into the ways to enhance your online reputation, let’s take a look at the building blocks for a better understanding of this concept.
Who Needs Online Reputation Management?
YOU. Or anyone who owns a business and is trying to establish its sound online presence. Whether you are a small business, just starting to build your customer base, or a large firm dealing with thousands of customers every month; managing your online reputation is of utmost importance. From healthcare providers such as dentists and doctors to attorneys, from home service providers to real estate agents, and from restaurants to investment advisers; everyone needs online reputation management.
Let’s try to understand it from a customer’s point of view. The buying decisions of customers largely depend on the first impressions that they have of a particular brand or business. People’s buying decisions are based on their detailed research of products and services on the web. In such a case, your online reputation, whether on google search results, videos, images, or social media mentions, is something that you must protect, defend, and endorse.
With an effective online reputation management strategy in place, not only can you regulate how your brand is perceived by the world, but can also restore any value that you have lost along the way. Hence, online reputation management for small businesses is quite crucial in the present competitive world.
The Importance And Need Of Online Reputation Management
The reason why you’re running a business in the first place is to generate revenue, reap profits, and become successful. But, how do you strive to achieve your goals? It’s simple: by creating good experiences for your customers. What consumers need is a good product/service that satisfies their needs and offers a stellar experience. These are the factors that determine the reputation of your business online. If a customer with good experience leaves a positive review for your business, you are likely to attract more customers. If a customer leaves a negative review for you, then you will know that you have room for improvement. There also exist a lot of myths around online reputation management such as you can delete negative reviews, you can’t control your online reputation, and having no online reputation is better than receiving negative feedback. So, you need to keep an eye on those myths and not let them affect your efforts.
Benefits Of Online Reputation Management
With a great online reputation strategy in place, you will have an edge over your competitors and will be able to portray your business and services in a more authentic way.
You Gain The Trust Of Your Customers
When you’re running a business, credibility is an important factor. People who want to avail services or buy products approach companies that they can trust. If a customer hasn’t heard about your business before, he/she may not contact you. This is where online reputation comes into effect. With a couple of great reviews, you can build trustworthiness and hence attract more customers.
You Are Subject To More Search Visibility
With a better online reputation, not only will you be able to gain more customers, but will also have the chance to rank higher on search results. What you need is a good SEO strategy in place. Since a majority of customers depend on online reviews to buy products and services, search engines factor those reviews into the SEO ranking of a business. So, considering that search engines use your information to help direct traffic to your site, your business must have enough reviews.
You Generate More Revenue
The better your reputation, the more profitable will be your business. Did you know that a one percent increase in your review rating can create a 5-9 percent surge in your revenue?
That’s exactly how impactful reviews are. So make sure that you do create a great online reputation management strategy to enhance the visibility and profitability of your business.
New to the concept? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back.
How To Manage Your Online Reputation?
Evaluate Your Own Image
Do a basic google search of your business. To understand how your customers are reviewing your business, you need to be on your feet and see how you’re being perceived online. For instance, if you are a dental practitioner, you will need a strong dentist reputation management strategy to ensure that you pose yourself as a credible healthcare provider. Ask yourself:
- What kind of online presence does your brand have?
- Does your brand have a good presence on social media?
- What is the most obvious thing about your company that you come across? Is it something that needs to be enhanced?
- How can your company receive better feedback from customers?
- What can your business do with negative opinions?
With the right combination of SEO tactics, feedback strategies, and content marketing plans; you can use this evaluation to create a stellar plan that gives your online reputation a sharp upheaval.
Build Better Customer Relationships
Whenever you sell your product or service to your customers, make sure to ask them to review your product/service. Even if you have a few negative comments, the incoming positive reviews will eventually outweigh the negativity.
Even if you get a bad review, always ensure to respond to it in a polite manner, starting with an apology and then followed by addressing their concerns. Doing so will not only throw in a good word for you online but will also draw in more customers.
On average, a review of 3.3 or more is where the customers feel safe to engage with a business. To encourage your customers to leave a review, you can ask questions like:
- How would you rate our service?
- What kind of experience did you have with us?
- Did our product/service resolve your needs?
Market Your Reviews
When you have enough reviews that showcase your business in a positive light, make sure you show those reviews by sharing those on your social media as well as your website. These reviews will act as proof and will be valuable marketing items.
Make sure that they don’t just appear on review sites but also on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Use Search Engine Optimization
When it comes to boosting your ranking on SERPs, SEO is all you need. With a strong SEO strategy at your disposal, you can have positive comments rank higher than negative ones and minimize the impact of bad coverage that might harm your business.
Let’s say you’re a healthcare practitioner. How will you make sure that you appear on the top of the SERPs? It’s simple: formulating the right set of tools and strategies. Strong action plans for online reputation management for doctors can help healthcare practitioners attract more patients and establish their credibility.
To influence your reputation through SEO, you can build good quality content and use ample and relevant backlinks.
Frequently Asked Questions
A business owner’s attention is always divided between sourcing good products in the market and building a good online reputation. These are the only two factors that help businesses generate revenue in the long run. So businesses build Reputation management strategies that help them showcase their products and win customers’ trust. These reputation-building strategies are mostly organic as they give better results in the long run. Reputation management strategies such as reviews, surveys, feedback, etc. ensure that the brands unlock their true potential through efficient customer engagement.
If you are a business owner and want to manage your company’s online reputation for business scalability, then keep these tips handy: 1. Do not gate reviews. Whether your products get positive or negative reviews, always add them in the review section to build authenticity 2. Make sure to acknowledge positive reviews and also promote those on various platforms to garner traffic from potential customers 3. Do not ignore negative reviews. Always reply to negative reviews with politeness and try to solve such reviews ASAP if possible 4. Curate periodic analysis reports of reviews to understand the online reputation and perception of your specific products.
Business owners need a positive online reputation for better company scalability. Businesses can manage online reputation using online reputation software available in the market. You can check Emitrr for the same. Emitrr is an online management software that garners reviews and accumulates them from different social media platforms for showcasing, requests for customer feedback, follow-up automation, and much more. Emitrr as an online reputation platform helps you to efficiently market your product by building your brand reputation and bringing organic customer attention.
The best strategies to build a robust brand reputation and win customer’s trust are: 1. Analyze your online presence and see what key factors about your brand are attracting customers the most 2. Evaluate your social media game and see how much customer engagement you are garnering from there 3. Build solid customer relationships. Ask for reviews and send them feedback forms to understand their expectations of the brand. In case of a bad review, don’t panic and try to solve your customer queries as quickly as possible 4. Showcase genuine, good reviews online and on social media platforms to market your brand better 5. Implement SEO practices to increase your visibility and appear high on SERPs.
Conclusion
Online reputation management isn’t something that can happen overnight or with the flick of a wand. It takes effort to constantly monitor your online presence by implementing effective brand reputation metrics, make repairs wherever necessary, and above all, deliver a good customer experience. With the Emitrr software, you can send review requests to your clients, and collect more reviews that will help establish the credibility of your business.
Our capabilities for reputation management include : Review requests and Review Management. When you ask your customer to leave a review, you’re taking a step forward to enhance your service, and at the same time, you’re letting people know the kind of quality you deliver through the same.
Through Emitrr, you can easily send review requests/invites to your customers. Also, you can see the number of requests sent, and the total reviews received, along with a detailed breakup of the reviews by their rating.
Moreover, you can see the reviews that your customers have left for you and can get a fair idea of the total reviews as well as the average rating. All the reviews that you have for your business will be integrated into one single place so that you don’t have to hover over different sites or platforms. You can simply check your dashboard and reply to the comments or reviews from there itself.
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