Online Reputation Management: How to Manage and Monitor Your Reputation on Social Media

It’s tough to do business these days without having presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites. Businesses of every size and across every industry can benefit from social media reputation management.

By evaluating Online Reputation, you will get the answer of most important question you may think of "What people think about my business?"

There are a many misconceptions about online reputation management. Some think it’s just social media monitoring, while others believe it has something to do with public relations. In this article, I will explain role of **Online Reputation Management and **how to research, manage, and protect your brand’s reputation with social media.

What is Online Reputation?

Google yourself. What do you see? Are you represented fairly?

Everyone has an online reputation; Good, Bad, or Low. Online reputation management (ORM) means taking control of the online conversation and interactions. Your online reputation determines how others distinguish your business when they search for it online. Consequently, online reputation management (ORM) dynamically influences what information people will find. Its techniques and strategies ensure that people find the right materials when they look for you on the Internet.

The purpose of online reputation management is to create balance, counteract misleading trends, and allow you to put your best foot forward. ORM is not only about managing content in search engines, though. It’s also about managing negative business reviews and encouraging happy clients to contribute more positive feedback.

Did you know that according to BrightLocal, “85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations”? What’s more, “49% of consumers need at least a four-star rating before they choose to use a business.”Online Reputation Considering these statistics, the importance of your online personal and professional reputation can’t be understated. Here are the four distinct digital marketing channels involved in ORM, channels also referred to as the PESO Model.

Paid Media

Paid media includes all marketing efforts that require payment to feature your business on external websites and networks. This includes PPC advertising with Google AdWords, display ads on Facebook, and sponsored posts on industry/influencer blogs.

Earned Media

Earned media describes the coverage of your business on external web entities for which you didn’t pay. It requires you to stand out from your competition with great content, products, or services that users consider worth sharing, mentioning, reposting, and reviewing.

Social Media

When it comes to social properties, it’s important to dedicate the resources to stay active on them by engaging in conversations and publishing fresh content regularly. As a general rule: not having a profile on a certain network is better than having an inactive one.

Owned Properties

Your business websites and blogs are properties owned by you, which means you have full control over them. Of course, the more properties you own, the higher your chances to effectively build your digital presence.

How Is Reputation Management Different From PR?

Both public relations (PR) and online reputation management have the same goal: portraying the company in the best possible light. The main difference between the two is how they achieve that goal.

PR firms work externally, such as through advertising and coordinated media promotional efforts. It’s mostly a proactive effort to strengthen brands instead of minimizing attacks on companies (though PR firms do sometimes handle damage control).

Online reputation management, on the other hand, is most often reactive. It involves looking for and responding to potentially damaging content from other people or companies.

Most of the work that goes into ORM is handled internally by brands rather than by an external firm.

Why Do You Need to Manage Your Online Reputation?

The hits a brand takes online can be numerous, but they’re often small attacks—a negative comment here, a low star rating there. None of these blows is worth a full-scale PR campaign, but they add up quickly.

You need online reputation management to take care of each of these little fires before they amount to serious damage. ORM is also important for maintaining transparency—a vital ingredient of brand loyalty in 2020.

With online reputation management, your business combats negative claims by addressing them directly and openly.

What is Social Media Reputation Management?

Social media reputation management is the process of tracking, monitoring and ultimately eliminating negative social media material about your brand to improve your name or standing. If done properly, social media reputation management builds your credibility to customers, which strengthens their trust in your brand.

7 Keys to Success in Social Media Reputation Management

If you’re just getting started with how your company manages social media reputation, read on for your keys to success and some important points to consider.

Resolve Issues that Affect Reputation

Not every piece of feedback is positive. If customer issues come up on social media and online review sites, make sure you address the situation and get back to them.

Says best-selling author and customer service expert Chip Bell:

In the customer’s mind, the clock starts when he or she posts a negative review, and your reputation drops with every hour you delay providing a response. Be honest, be apologetic, and offer the aggrieved customer an easy way to access you. Bad reviews that remain unanswered signal to other customers you are disinterested. It also fuels the perception that the negative report by an angry customer was probably accurate.

When responding to negative reviews and social media comments, be as specific as you can about the customer’s experience and communicate any changes or improvements you have made as a result of their feedback. The sooner you can get back to your customer, the greater your chances of improving the situation.

Post Engaging, Relevant Content

In uncertain times like the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important not to let your social media pages go stale. Build your pages up and regularly post relevant content and updates like news, announcements, special offers, photos, videos, and links. As you do so, avoid being overly self-promotional. Take advantage of user-generated content and see how you can use it to improve your online reputation.

Also, be sure to show your willingness to engage with your community of fans and followers by liking, commenting on, and responding to their activity on your profiles.

Use a Social Listening Tool

It can be extremely difficult to track every single conversation about your business happening on every social media channel, especially if you’re managing a business with multiple locations.

Investing in a social listening tool like Hootsuite can save you plenty of time and effort. With it, you can schedule posts, track conversations and mentions, monitor online reviews, and even create customizable streams so that you’re able to effectively listen to the voice of the customer on social media.

Focus on Increasing Reviews, Not Likes and Followers

We’re not saying you should delete your local business page on Facebook or stop checking people’s follow activity, @mentions, and DMs.

By all means, continue to take control of your social media presence and engage with potential and existing customers. A strong social media strategy can also improve your performance on search engines and give you more control over what’s being said about your business online.

At the same time, pay equal amount of attention to your online reviews. As part of your social media reputation management efforts, make sure you tune into what customers are saying on business review sites like Yelp, Google, Tripadvisor, and Facebook. Apart from monitoring reviews, invest in efforts that generate more feedback and reviews, instead of simply increasing your likes, hearts and followers.

Pay Close Attention to Google and Facebook

Among the top two sites where customers post online reviews are Google and Facebook. According to the Online Reviews Survey, Google is the online review site where consumers are reading the most reviews: 63.6% of consumers read reviews on Google before visiting a business.

While it’s important to focus on as many social media channels as you can, pay special attention to Google and Facebook, two platforms where the largest share of consumers are reading and posting feedback about your business.

Share Your Best Reviews on Social Media

If you consistently receive five-star ratings and glowing reviews on review websites, don’t hesitate to show them off. Share your best reviews on your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram profiles, or even on your company blog.

Remember: the impact of user-generated content is more powerful and effective than loud sales messages or promotional brand content. Sharing positive reviews on social media drowns out negative noise, and it can even make a positive impact on your search visibility.

Transform Social Media Data into Insights

Savvy brands are extracting insights from social media comments and customer-generated reviews in order to gain insights on the customer experience.

By tapping into your precious social media data, you can support the objectives of your social media reputation management strategy and make smart business decisions that will earn the trust of potential and existing customers.

The world’s most successful brands tap into their data in order to achieve a more accurate view of the customer experience. Through customer experience analytics, they have the ability to understand — in seconds and at scale — what customers really mean whenever they share their thoughts in their own words.

Feel free to share your experiences or tips in the comments below!