The Internet’s capacity for instant publishing, search and find has made shaping public opinion more malleable than ever. It’s possible to sway public opinion with what is written on the web about people, businesses and their brands. Online Reputation Management is about controlling how people perceive you or your business. Managing this perception can be essential to your success and a negative online reputation can seriously injure your ability to succeed.
Here are Ten Reasons why you could need Online Reputation Management:
1) DAMAGE CONTROL: A disgruntled employee or customer can do a tremendous amount of damage to your image or reputation within only a few hours. Within days, the blogs have spread across a dozen websites and a negative buzz is being created and spread. Reputation Management researches the extent of the spread and prepares a plan for a campaign that will counteract it.
2) BUILDING A BUZZ: Your business brand, product or service may not have a distinct enough Internet presence or buzz. When someone types your name, there is little evidence of your presence to be found beyond the basics of your own website and a few adverts. In order to create a buzz you need people to be talking – typing and chatting about you online. Building an online reputation means making you easy to find on the Internet and making what people find there positive.
3) OPINION MAKERS: People talk about your image or brand. These people are your loyal customers and also your harshest critics, and they did this talking in the public forum of the Internet. You need online reputation management to assess where the most powerful voices of support and dissent are coming from so that they can be encouraged or their impact can be strategically diminished.
4) SAVE MONEY: There are several ways that Online Reputation Management can save you money. In the first place, a negative reputation hurts your sales, damages your credibility and persuades customers to go elsewhere. This costs you or your brand money. The second way is that Online Reputation Management is a very cost-effective method of promoting your image or brand. With no design and print prices for spreading your message, positive reputation can be delivered for less than a print campaign.
5) TAKE COMMUNITY ACTION: We’ve established that people talk about you or your brand. We’ve also established that Online Reputation Management can discover the most vocal supporters and encourage them. However, the next step is to become a optimistic and encouraging voice within those vocal communities. Reputation Management can be used to observe and manage the communication of your relationship with loyal customers and critics alike. This can be done overtly by directly communicating with fans and critics on your behalf, or by subtly inserting positive voices into online communities.
6) QUICK COUNTERING: You may need to limit the impact of a news story or
virally spread rumour. Online Reputation Management allows that countering to occur immediately, with lightning fast online responses, restoring good opinion, correcting rumours or admitting the truth. This is clearly a much speedier way of responding to breaking news and its consequential relationship to public opinion, rather than slowly trying to change the tide of public opinion through press, media or print.
7) RESTORING CREDIBILITY: Your credibility can easily be damaged by someone with a grudge or even a competitor who has hired a blogger to stir some negative PR into the mix for you. A news story can surface and the damage is quickly done and soon people are avoiding your brand because you have lost credibility in the eyes of your clients or the public. Online Reputation Management can use a range of methods to restore your credibility.
8) NEGATIVE SEARCH RESULTS: Someone is looking for information about your brand, they type in to the search engine your company’s name and Google brings up a list of highly negative and damaging comments. It’s frighteningly easy for a disgruntled fan, employee or customer to start spreading a negative image of you or your brand by using the web. Online Reputation Management can knock those negative search results back into the lower rankings where they belong, at a safe distance, beyond risk of damage to you or your business.
9) STAY ALERT AT ALL TIMES: People can write something on any part of the vast Internet at any time and it immediately becomes set like concrete into the fabric of the web. Google will pick up on it before you do and others will start to read it. By employing an Online Reputation Management campaign, we can alert you the moment someone posts something about you or your brand, at any time of the day or night. Stay ahead of the game by staying alert to your supporters’ thoughts or concerns. Stay ahead of the competition by instantly being able to counter you detractors.
10) FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE: Whilst we don’t advise that you engage in this activity, a very effective way of increasing your own brand’s reputation is to actively damage your competitors’ reputation. If you find out that your competitor has been employing nine-year-old children to complete the sewing on its most recent clothing range for less than ten pence per day, it’s your moral obligation to spread the word, isn’t it? Just remember this is a method that cuts both ways.
The effects of bad publicity can be felt throughout your business and into your bank account. Online Reputation Management offers the opportunity to test and evaluate your current online presence and reputation. From that initial assessment, you can build a positive campaign around your image or brand. Discovering damaging or dissenting voices before they do further damage, Online Reputation Management can counter those voices by listening carefully to the complaints before strategically spreading a positive message across the web.
If you feel that you could benefit from the proven approaches offered by Online Reputation Management, contact Nikki at Nikki@NikkiPilkington.com
Nikki Pilkington is owner of UK based SEO and Internet Marketing company NikkiPilkington.com , and writes articles, hints and tips to help people looking to promote their website for free. For more of her articles visit www.nikkipilkington.com and sign up to the newsletter.
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