Everything You Need to Know About Online Reputation Management (ORM)
Today, appearing on the first page of Google is a significant accomplishment. Users tend to interact more with businesses that rank high on search results. Search engines have become more than just a source of information; they are also a platform people trust for credible and trustworthy information about goods and services. As a result, businesses need to maintain a positive online presence to stay connected with their audience and attract future customers.
Despite not knowing whose words they’re reading, customers rely on each other’s reviews. In fact, 85% of Americans trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations from friends, according to a recent survey. Additionally, 93% say they read online reviews to determine whether a business is good or bad. For many businesses that are just building their online presence, a negative review can be a serious blow if there aren’t enough positive reviews to drown it out.
This is where Online Reputation Management (ORM) comes into play.
ORM gives businesses the power to shape their narratives. In today’s tech-focused world, people trust what they read online. While online chatter has plenty of potential downsides, this is good news for many businesses. Once people get to talking about all the great things a company does, more customers will come running. Read on to learn more about online reputation management and how it can help your business.
What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management (ORM) is the process of monitoring, managing, and influencing how consumers perceive your brand online. While ORM is typically used to manage a brand’s image, it can also alter how users perceive an individual or organization. Online reputation management features a robust combination of strategies and techniques that aim to improve the online image of an entity and soften the blow of negative information. In some scenarios, ORM can even prevent negative feedback altogether. Ultimately, ORM aims to protect and improve a brand’s online reputation and credibility across the web.
To accomplish this, organizations will use ORM tools to assist them in monitoring and tracking mentions of the brand across various online channels. These online channels include search engines, social media, message boards, and review aggregators. Information from these online channels can also help identify and hone in on potential issues and address them before they have a chance to become more widespread and damaging. Businesses can also use ORM to promote positive content about the brand, such as positive testimonials and media coverage, counteract negative information, and reinforce a positive image.
ORM is becoming increasingly critical in the digital age, where the internet has become a primary source of information for many individuals. A brand’s online reputation can significantly impact its overall success, as negative information and feedback can quickly spread and damage its image. By managing and monitoring the brand’s online reputation, ORM protects and enhances a brand’s credibility and trust among its target audience.
Why Is ORM Important?
Online reputation management is vital for businesses to consider for several reasons, such as protecting brand image, improving SEO, and increasing customer trust and credibility. Read on to learn more about the different benefits of online reputation management (ORM) below.
Protects brand image: ORM enables you to have more control over how your brand is perceived online. Negative feedback can spread like wildfire and hurt your brand’s image, leading to a loss of credibility and trust among your target audience and customer base. ORM helps to lessen the impact of negative information by promoting a positive image of the brand.
Helps SEO: ORM can improve the ranking of your business’s website in search engine results by displaying positive information and diluting negative content. ORM can help SEO by increasing the brand’s online visibility and reaching a wider audience.
Increases customer trust and credibility: Effective online reputation management can increase trust and loyalty among customers. When prospective customers see that a brand is proactive about managing its online image and responding to any complaints or negative feedback, they are more likely to trust the brand and give them a chance.
Supports crisis management: In a crisis, ORM can help brands navigate and manage the situation by continuously monitoring the spread of negative feedback and information and taking steps to soften their impact. With ORM and proper crisis management, a business can prevent further damage to its brand’s image and reputation.
How Is ORM Different From SEO?
ORM and SEO are similar but distinct fields of digital marketing. While both play a critical role in managing a business’s online reputation, they have unique objectives and focus on different aspects of a company’s online visibility.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to optimizing a webpage and its content to improve its organic ranking on search engines like Google. SEO aims to make the website visible to users all over the internet. SEO services exist to drive more organic traffic to a website by ranking higher for relevant keywords and improvising user experience on each webpage.
Online reputation management focuses solely on maintaining and improving a brand’s reputation and image online. SEO focuses on content and how a website works behind the scenes, while ORM is on the front lines, constantly monitoring and managing the brand’s online presence. Effective online reputation management (ORM) ensures that when someone searches for a specific brand online, they find a positive and accurate representation of its products and services.
What Do Online Reputation Management (ORM) Tools Do?
Since your online reputation matters greatly, it is no surprise that so many companies and software developers promise to help you manage it. With so many online reputation management (ORM) tools on the market, it can be challenging to decide on one.
Not all reputation management tools are created equally. Some come with so many bugs that they rarely work as advertised, and others require so much effort to use that they’re a waste of time. Other online reputation management tools may not have all the solutions your business needs to adequately keep a pulse on what customers are saying.
Your reputation management tool should offer the following services in a perfect world.
Review Gathering
Simply put, these tools will help you get more reviews. However, you must watch out for tools and services that use unethical practices. Unethical review-gathering practices include strategies like flooding sites with fake reviews.
Feedback Solicitation
Feedback solicitation services will help you gather customer input that you can use to identify both strengths and weaknesses. It can be difficult to request feedback from customers across multiple platforms, and thankfully, there are services that help business owners automate the process and collect as much feedback as possible.
Review Notification
By letting you know when you get new reviews, these tools allow you to manage your time more efficiently. Instead of refreshing your review pages multiple times a day, you’ll know exactly when a review comes in. Take action right away if you get a fake or inaccurate review.
Testimonial Creation
Testimonial creation tools make it easy to create a page on your website that displays some of your most recent reviews. You may also be able to link them to your social media pages so you can automatically share rave reviews with your Facebook and Twitter followers.
Many online reputation management products offer one or two of these tools. ReputationStacker offers all of them and more.
How Reputation Stacker Can Help Your Business
ReputationStacker’s primary function is to help businesses get more reviews and actionable feedback from their customers so they can optimize the overall customer experience.
Regardless of what your business is, ReputationStacker has different levels of plans so you can find the one that is right for your business.
Included with all Standard, Plus, and Professional plans is ReputationStacker’s online review monitoring. The system automatically tracks your reviews on all the major review sites and the most popular industry-specific resources.
ReputationStacker can create a feed of your reviews and automatically post them on your own website and share them on your social media pages, leveraging what your customers are saying to bring even more customers into your business.
ReputationStacker’s ability to collect customer feedback is one of its game-changing benefits. Finding out what your customers really think about you can be uncomfortable in the short term, but it’s the best way to grow your business. Showing customers that you truly care about what they think and what they want is an easy way to earn their loyalty, too.
For more information about ReputationStacker or to get started on building your band’s reputation across the web, contact us today to learn more.
