How to Use Online Reputation Management for Brand Building

How to Use Online Reputation Management for Brand Building

Today’s scenario is such that businesses must zealously protect their online reputation management or risk losing customers to the competition.

Sadly, many marketing professionals and business owners still underestimate the importance of online reputation management and fail to realize what havoc negative reviews can cause to their brand.

The bulk of today’s consumers takes seriously onsite reviews before making their purchase decisions. In the light of this, if you aren’t managing your brand reputation you may be losing sales and your customer base will sooner than later shrink.

Experts opine that Google search is now deeply embedded in every aspect of e-commerce and brand survival.

Google has become the most famous and most powerful analysis tool that consumers use to research companies and products. Brands leave digital footprints across the World Wide Web, and unless you regularly monitor your brand, your reputation will be at grave risk.

Further, review sites like Yelp, Topix, RipOff Report and hundreds of anonymous websites are competing to define who you are in a digital context.

It is common knowledge that visitors are terribly impatient and don’t look beyond the first-page results on search engine results. Unfortunately, it is the negative comments that search engines more readily pick up than positive reviews.

With the advent of the internet, more and more businesses are switching over to online marketing and setting up e-commerce sites. Thus, to succeed in your marketing efforts your online reputation has to be impeccable at all times.

The journey is irreversible, and we all should reconcile to live and work in a digital context. If you get negative feedback via social media channels, promptly deal with the issue in real time.

Never ignore the complaint assuming it will go way; the longer it stays on the internet, the greater will be the damage.

Use Google Alert to monitor all mentions of your brand on the internet. Use a commercial software application for brand monitoring if you are spending time and marketing resources on the social web.

If you are publishing content regularly, then there are several standalone application for protecting your online reputation.
• Trackur is powerful and yet affordable.
• Cision is a proven application and used by PR pros all over the world.
• Radian6 is extremely powerful, with robust features and functions.

Do not be unduly scared of negative comments. Remember risks and rewards are two sides of the same coin. Negative comments and feedback give you an opportunity to engage with the customer.
You can turn some of these complainants around and win their loyalty and make them brand advocates for your business.