In case you have been introduced to the idea of reputation management and did not get a clear perspective of what it is then you must understand the basics behind it to fully reap the rewards that it offers. Getting well-acquainted with reputation management can be highly beneficial for your company. In this blog post, we will explore different resources that can be helpful to your quest to master the art of reputation management.
The Definition of Reputation Management
Before you get started first, you need to know what reputation management is. As the name suggests it is all about building and sustaining the reputation of a brand. The image of any brand is built on the trust and opinion of the customers which is highly important. A brand can acquire a good or bad image depending on what the people think about it.
Your product or service could not be the only thing that the people associate with you. The association could come from a news story in which your brand was involved or even mentioned. In this particular scenario, it is not preferable for your business and brand image.
To keep your brand image intact, you must control and mold these external influences according to you. This is how you establish reputation management.
With vast digitization and internet access all over the globe, online reputation management has taken over its offline counterpart opening up fresher and bigger possibilities to the organizations.
With the increase of digital devices, all the press, media, and social platforms easily accessible to us, there are higher chances of establishing a positive brand image through proper knowledge. Compared to maintaining the brand’s offline reputation, online reputation is easier and more effective.
The Significance of Reputation Management
In today’s online world words travel even faster than light. Thanks to online press and social media you can create brand awareness and spread the words effortlessly. This could be both extremely good and bad for a business depending on what type of brand image they can form. Your brand value could double up or decline severely becoming a viral sensation overnight.
Creating a brand image is easier than maintaining it. The secret is to make your brand attractive and irresistible in the eye of the customers. If you observe closely you will understand that top brands employ popular faces like celebrities, sportsmen, or famous public figures to endorse their brand and people almost immediately associate them with the brand hence forging a stronger connection with the brand resulting in the creation of a poerful brand image.
Their reputation would drop as soon as they stop endorsing their product or service through these prominent figures and the public will move onto the next thing without even batting an eye.
For smaller businesses, it’s most important to maintain a good image rather than pushing on building one because the general public is not very forgiving to the ones who do not put much effort to sustain their brand value giving them negative reviews ruining their reputation in the process.
This is where reputation management comes handy helping you react and contain the situation neatly and efficiently with quick responses.
How to Manage Online Reputation?
Manual monitoring of online reputation is restricted to small businesses and offers extremely low growth at increasing your reputation. If you have a medium to larger business and want to acquire the needed push in your online reputation management you must use the following resources garnering the best results.
Google Alert
Creating a Google alert whenever your brand is mentioned is a clever and effectual way of keeping tabs on the matter.
How to Create a Google Alert?
All you have to do is to open Google Alert and write down the specific words that you want to be alerted for. Choose the frequency of the alert and the sources you want Google to search. Enter your email address and be alerted whenever the words that you have entered are mentioned anywhere on the internet.
How Does It Benefit You?
After you start receiving alerts you need to identify the negative ones upon which you need to work. You could clear out the air by contacting the author and express your thoughts on the matter respectfully. Solve it with the help of your reputation management team. Create your blog post clearing out the misconceptions availing the audience with the right information.
Social Media
People now spend most of their time on different social media platforms and they have become the opinion-makers of society today. Reputation is built and ruined every minute in there and even mainstream media depend on these platforms to understand the views of the general public.
They could be highly impactful for your reputation management. This is why you must keep a tab on them to see where your brand name was mentioned and whether it was in a good or bad light. And your brand name is not always mentioned with a tag so it could be difficult to find out where and when, and how many times it was mentioned. There are different tools available in the market that could help you to help you with this complex process.
Social Media Management
An active and well maintained social media not only attracts the customers but ranks higher in the search results as well. Customers see your brand’s social media page as a medium to express their views and queries about the products or the services. A fully managed social media will build a higher reputation highlighting your credibility and separating you from the crowd.
Professional Reputation Management Services
Companies could fail at their actual job which is delivering the quality product by concentrating their full time on reputation management. Professional reputation management services offer tried and tested strategies at boosting your brand image effectively. They not only focus on establishing and upholding a positive brand image but also ensure a higher amount of online visibility amplifying your sales.
