Online Reputation Management Tutorial for a Newbie

In this online reputation management tutorial, we are going to share ways on how to take care of your online reputation. A study has shown that 90% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision. 60% of customers will not buy from a brand with negative online reviews.

Online reputation can make or break your business and Nestle, one of the biggest food and beverage companies almost went down some years back when their product baby milk formula was criticized and to respond to the criticism, Nestle had to invest a lot in online reputation management.

What does this mean to businesses and companies?

Investing in online reputation is a must for companies and businesses of all levels, especially when it comes to online marketing. Therefore, it is important to learn how to handle online reputation the right way. That’s exactly what this post will talk about.

What is Online Reputation Management?

Have you ever searched your name, or your company on the internet and seen how people are talking about you? Are people commenting negative or positive about you or your company? If people are talking negative about you, then you need to invest in online reputation management.

In its simplest term, online reputation management or ORM is the process of implementing strategies that influence the way people see you out there. It’s what can make or break your business’s success. These days, customer rely on multiple sources (online reviews, social media and posts, and the quality of your website, and the content you share regularly) before they can trust and buy your products or services.

It is, therefore, necessary for individuals and brands to build and maintain a positive online reputation since customers will do business with people they trust. That’s where online reputation management comes in.

Why Your Businesses Needs Online Reputation Management Now Than Ever

Besides being an evolving process, here are some of the reasons why your business needs online reputation management.

• Mobile search has surpassed desktop

48% of customers use mobile to search for products or services on the internet and 78% of these searches done locally result in a purchase. From the stats, you can confidently tell that mobile search has beaten desktop and customers who use mobile devices to search for products or services have one intention- to buy.

So why are we mentioning this factor in online reputation management?

Given that customers trust online reviews it means that you must make sure your reviews and ratings should display clearly on small screens as it is on large screens.

Therefore, as you work on building a positive online reputation, make sure mobile searchers can view your ratings and reviews without a problem.

• Positive online reputation management equals an increase in sales

As you have seen above that customers check online reviews before making a purchase decision, 52% of customers expect businesses to be proactive when it comes to responding to their reviews and queries.

If you have a negative online reputation, chances are that you will not be able to convert visitors into potential and repeat customers and that means fewer sales/revenue to your business.

• Builds brand credibility/trust

Customers are likely to trust companies with a positive online reputation than those with a negative one. A negative review can turn customers away. With good online reputation management strategies, you can be able to resolve customer complaints fast which can help to restore your reputation. This way, you build your brand’s credibility and trust.

• Helps to attract the right recruits

70% of job seekers will not take a job opportunity offered by a company with a negative online reputation. Job seekers look for online reputation before they can accept a job offer. If you have a positive online reputation, you stand a better chance of getting more options when it comes to recruiting candidates.

These are just a few of the reasons why your business needs an effective online reputation management strategy now than ever.

Now that you have known what’s online reputation management and why your business needs it, let’s find out how you can take care of your business’s online reputation.

Online Reputation Management for a Newbie

1. Make Sure Your Business is Visible Online

Before customers buy products or services, they turn to the internet to search for brands that sell those products. Once they find the brands, they look for information about the products they need before they can make an informed decision.

If your business cannot appear on those searches, then you are missing out a lot of sales. Therefore, as you work on taking care of your online reputation, ensure your business can be seen online. Make sure your business can appear on search engines, social media, online directories and anywhere else where customers can see it when they search for businesses related to yours.

2. Fix Your Business’s Local SEO

Google, Yahoo, and Bing are still the most used search engines by customers when searching for products or services. For that reason, it is important to make sure your local SEO is working perfectly so that you can appear on the top results of local searches. This guide will help you work on your local SEO the right way.

3. Respond to Reviews and Queries

Don’t let any review or query (whether positive or negative), go unanswered. Responding to customers’ reviews and queries show that you value their interaction with your brand. It also shows them that they are dealing with a real person and not a robot. Just saying “Thank you” to a positive review can help to build a good rapport with your potential customers.

4. Publish Content that’s Worth Reading

Content is still king but it must be high-quality content that informs, educates, and entertains your target customers.
Therefore, when creating content, whether for your website, blog or social media, make sure it’s high-quality. Your blog posts should be detailed enough. Adding visual content is also a good way to make your content attractive. If you can’t handle content creation yourself, you can hire writing experts from assignment geek, and other platforms to help you out.

5. Monitor Regularly

Having responded to reviews and queries, you should set up alerts so that you can get notified anytime your business is mentioned.

Remember, people will always talk about your business whether in bad or in good faith. You should make sure you don’t miss any mention of your business by monitoring mentions regularly.

There are plenty of tools you can use to actively monitor mentions and react on time which includes Ahrefs Alerts, Mention.com, Brand24, Google Alerts, etc.

6. Deliver What You Promise

So, on the homepage of your website, you promised to deliver top-notch products or services, but when a customer orders your offers she or he gets the opposite. This will ruin your online reputation.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid overpromising, especially if you are pretty sure that you can’t deliver to the customers’ expectations. Just be honest.

Final Words

Online reputation management is not about removing or giving a blind eye to negative reviews, it’s about building and maintaining trust with your potential customers.

It’s about making your customers your brand ambassadors and to achieve this, you need to respond to their reviews and queries at the right time and the right way. Trust is an asset that drives sales, build and protect this asset for your business’ online reputation. We hope this online reputation management tutorial will help you in building a positive online reputation.

We would be happy to hear the strategies you use to take care of your business’s online reputation in the comment section.