In the digital age, factors other than customer satisfaction influence a company’s reputation. Your company’s online reputation management may also impact whether or not you attract new clients.

A dissatisfied customer is the most significant mistake for a business. 

Did you know that when researching a company, 65% of customers believe reviews found on online search engines?

In this online era, when word of mouth spreads like wildfire, it takes a little while for a client to use public forums to warn others away from a particular brand.

Today’s businesses understand the importance of having excellent online reputation management and the power that customers may have. Once a brand falls prey to client dissatisfaction, it is challenging to get referrals or, worse yet, get new customers.

The key to reducing the impact of such a bad situation is to have ways to control your online reputation before a potential issue arises. 

Many independent businesses provide online reputation management services to preserve a brand’s credibility and integrity.

What is an online reputation management strategy?

Managing your online reputation is a technique to influence how customers see your business. You can boost customer trust, establish your authority in the field, and even raise revenue with its help.

Brand reputation, offline and online, is crucial to whether it succeeds or fails. Customers are only sometimes pleased with a brand, and it is believed that firms of all sizes and sectors will occasionally encounter dissatisfied clients. 

It is crucial to respond quickly to client complaints and provide solutions that work.

With the internet, the distance between customers and brands has significantly shrunk, allowing word-of-mouth to spread quickly and negatively or favorably affect a brand’s reputation.

When a customer complains about your company online, it can negatively impact your brand’s reputation and sometimes become problematic. This can be done by having a conversation or sending an email to resolve the issue, but this method is only occasionally successful.

An efficient brand communication plan has become essential for firms to preserve their online reputation.

Before it’s too late to make amends, developing an online reputation management strategy is the best method to manage and control the effects of bad reviews.  

Check out the latest customer experience trends in 2023 and improve your brand communication with your customers.

16 top online reputation management strategies

A reputation management strategy is a set of actions intended to track, influence, and enhance how the public perceives a company or brand.

It is a thorough method of managing and enhancing a brand’s reputation to meet business goals.

Online reputation management along with social listening makes a powerful combination that helps you know the exact requirements of your target customers. 

The 16 suggestions listed below can help you improve your online reputation management:

1.  Conduct a brand audit

A brand audit is a crucial first step in your strategy for managing your online reputation. Make a list of everything you have online, including your website, blog, social media accounts, and third-party business profiles, and evaluate it.

Examine the results of your Google search as well. What comes up when people look up your brand name and associated keywords? Are there any undesirable or off-brand outcomes? Are there too many news stories and insufficient assets that a brand can control?

Keep in mind that upbeat stories are fantastic until something negative occurs. These stories will then abruptly change to negative mentions.

Konnect Insights will help you understand your brand’s perception and performance in marketing and customer experience management.

2.  Analyze brand recognition

Actively tracking brand mentions online is a valuable strategy for managing your business’s presence online. This includes any social media mentions of your brand and any comments it may get in blog posts, forums, videos, etc.

Set up notifications for your brand name and associated keywords, and then take prompt action whenever you encounter any favorable or unfavorable mention.

The sooner you locate and address unfavorable remarks, the better. Most people are willing to tolerate genuine mistakes as long as a company sincerely attempts to make things right.

You may better understand how your brand is perceived and how it performs in market research and customer experience management with Konnect Insights.

3.  Reply to negative comments

Negative online reviews could tempt you to ignore them and wait for them to disappear, but that’s a mistake. Negative reviews allow your company to address issues head-on, show that you care about your clients, and establish a more intense bond with them.

Regardless of whether a review is positive or negative, reply to it. Even negative consumer feedback should be acknowledged, and you should always present workable solutions to issues.

Customers would only want a voucher for 20% off their subsequent purchase if they had a positive experience. That strategy prevents the next purchase. Go above and beyond to reassure them that you support your business and will make things right.

Companies can use Konnect Insights to monitor online conversations with their customers, analyze them, examine the data, implement social listening tactics, and take data-driven action to improve customer interactions.

4.  Invest in SEO 

Ideally, your company page should appear on Google’s first page, preferably as the first result, when someone searches for your company name and the most pertinent keyword associated with your brand.

One strategy that will help your brand remain prominent is search engine optimization (SEO). According to Google’s algorithms, businesses with customer reviews outperform those with no customer evaluations.

Additionally, SEO can be a crucial strategy for reducing exposure to negative news and internet information about your company.

Despite the tools, boosting our search engine results is impossible without a skilled SEO professional with an analytical mind and attention to detail.

Online reputation management requires SEO, but the approach is slightly different.

Most frequently, SEO ranks numerous pages on a single website for various search queries. However, with ORM, we employ SEO to place numerous websites for a small number of brand-focused inquiries.

As a result, you’ll be able to replace damaging search results with favorable information you manage.

• Create insightful content for your website’s leadership pages and review sections.
• Gain favorable brand mentions through influencer marketing, events, sponsorships, and digital PR.
• Participate in meaningful social media channels.
• Create backlinks to the essential pages you want to rank on page one of Google.
• Claim and optimize relevant third-party accounts on sites and business profiles where you have content control.

Keep in mind that Google usually gives authoritative, reliable sources the highest priority regarding SEO for reputation management. In light of this, concentrate on boosting your website’s reputation and credibility and optimizing its visibility on reliable third-party websites.

You can take benefits from the social listening strategy which also helps improve your SEO and content marketing strategies.

Konnect Insights is the best company for SEO and reputation management.

5.  Boost public relations

By producing favorable news for your brand, effective public relations can help you boost your online reputation.

Various kinds of the press include:

• Guest posts to reputable websites
• Interviews with business leaders
• Charitable activities
• Branded events
• Live chats where you respond to every query
• Co-marketing with reputable individuals or businesses in your industry
• Addressing any severe errors committed by your company in public

Your public relations campaigns should emphasize your core beliefs and build credibility to manage your online reputation.

With the help of Konnect Insights, businesses can effortlessly listen to, assess, and enhance their client experiences.

6.  Collect reviews from your previous clients

The most straightforward strategy for managing your online reputation is this one. If your company has thousands of clients but needs more reviews to show web visitors what excellent services you offer, you are losing a lot of conversions.

You can always send them an email blast or a feedback form if you have not heard from any of your previous clients.

Additionally, it is acceptable to have a mix of reviews for your services; it is not critical that all of them have 5 or 4-star ratings. Also, if you receive a majority of favorable evaluations, they will outweigh any negative ones and maintain the credibility of your business in terms of customer happiness and service.

Don’t let the negative reviews demoralize you because no brand is flawless. Negative reviews are constructive criticism, even though they might discourage a company’s services.

Konnect Insights provides seamless interfaces with over 3000 software programs, making it simple to use and manage consumer data.

7.  Encourage positive content

Promote content that highlights your brand favorably, like:

• Proactively showcasing endorsements and ratings on your website
• Displaying significant testimonials of your brand made by third parties
• Appreciating the reviewer regularly and leaving encouraging comments on social media
• Promoting any collaborations with individuals or companies
• Working together with influencers to promote the content you have generated
• Distributing articles in which you receive positive mention
• Spend less time publishing and more time finishing your tasks with Konnect Insights.

8.  Request picture uploads from clients

According to 77% of clients, customer images significantly influence their purchasing decisions. Customers who just purchased a product from a website can be asked to review it and upload a photo by brand.

Many consumers base their purchasing selections on photographs that customers have reviewed since they are considered authentic. Such reviews help build a better online reputation and motivate additional consumers to interact with your business.

Organizations may use Konnect Insights to listen to what their consumers say online, assess the conversations, analyze the data, and take data-driven action to strengthen customer interactions.

9.  Post user-created content on social media

Only some customers who review a product will upload a picture of it. The other customers see it as social proof, which increases their trust in your brand. You can distribute user-generated content on your social media sites in this situation.  

With the help of Konnect Insights’ social listening strategies, you can quickly and easily publish or schedule posts on social media across many channels and accounts at once, preview them on various devices, and evaluate them on a content calendar to get a complete 360-degree perspective of all your posts.

10. Collaboration with Industry Influencers

Influencer marketing is a fantastic tool for brand promotion, relationship building, and customer engagement. It significantly impacts customer behavior and thinking and has been present in the digital market for a while.

A survey found that 90% of customers believe influencer recommendations and are more likely to think about a brand they have heard about. Influencers can improve your online reputation by broadening the appeal of your brand and elevating its stature.

Influencer-posted content drives a significant amount of views, shares, and engagement for your brand on social media.

11. Invest in tools for managing your online reputation

Several social media listening and monitoring tools on the market may help you review and analyze your company’s online reputation. These tools alert you whenever someone mentions your company, tags its pages or uses its name in their narrative. These tools enable you to move closer to managing your brand’s online reputation successfully.

12. Use social media to promote your brand

Indeed, you don’t have as strong a social media presence as your competitors. However, it only follows that you can improve. Your brand will become more valuable the more you market it.

Sign up for social media sites. Companies that use social media for business experience six times as much growth as those that don’t. According to the report, adopting a company’s social media can boost sales. 

13. Maintain your essential employees

Potential customers may look for your services at medical centers, law offices, and hair salons after asking friends or coworkers, “Who do you go to?” rather than “Which business do you go to?” Creating a solid social media presence for your key staff is a terrific way to actively manage your company’s online reputation.

A sound online reputation management approach is crucial for continuous success in any corporation where the firm’s brand is directly or indirectly associated with its executives.

As previously stated, attempting to maintain a low profile by avoiding social networking sites makes it simpler for someone to damage your reputation with as little as one unfavorable post written about you. This can damage your company’s reputation in turn.

14. Frequently update your blog

For many reasons, blogging is excellent for managing an online reputation. First and foremost, writing enables you to exhibit knowledge and thought leadership in your industry. By giving your readers many responses to frequently asked questions about your sector, you can use your blog to build a devoted readership.

Blogging has the extra benefit of improving local SEO results and producing content for social media sharing.

With Konnect Insights, spend less time posting and more time completing your tasks.

15. Listen to your clients

It’s crucial to remember that there can be some truth to complaints voiced by customers when responding negatively to them. This is especially true if you frequently hear complaints about a specific issue.

Instead of just brushing off online complaints as the work of a vengeful ex-client, be sure to adequately address all issues and think about how you may use this feedback to advance your company’s operations.

Businesses should always treat consumers with respect and show that they value their input, especially since you never know how many prospective clients may read your responses before deciding whether or not to work with you.

Without realizing it, how you respond to online criticism may send your present and future clients to your competitors. Whether you agree with the customer’s complaint or not, make it a point to listen to it and answer respectfully rather than angrily.

The basis of Konnect Insights is horizontally scaled big data technology, which trawls billions of web sources to ensure that you never miss a web conversation.

16. Avoid online arguments

No matter who is correct or who began the argument, using abusive language online will almost always come across as unprofessional. Allowing oneself to react emotionally to criticism puts you at risk of saying or doing anything that damages your reputation.

Try to make the conversation offline to resolve the issue and avoid engaging in a public online dispute. Being “correct” in an online debate will probably not get you more business than remaining professional.

Take the time to step away from the internet until you have a solid plan to resolve the issue if you discover that you or your company is involved in a digital dispute.

How can Konnect Insights help? 

Konnect Insights provides a wide range of features and capabilities, such as social listening, social publishing, social analytics, social CRM, surveys and feedback, BI tools and dashboards, and crisis management, to help organizations enhance customer interactions.

The platform’s user-friendly layout makes it simple for organizations of all sizes to use.

Konnect Insights is based on horizontally scaled big-data technologies that crawl billions of web sources to ensure you get all online conversations.

Regardless of the numbers or the language, process the data effectively. The first stage is listening, but what you do afterward is more crucial. With the help of Konnect’s business intelligence tools, driven by ML, AI, and NLP, you can comprehend this complex data and gain an insightful understanding.

View all brand-related interactions in the form of support tickets, which provide you with a thorough analysis of the clients and their inquiries in terms of history, analytics, followers, and influence. You can establish priorities for response management based on this.

You can use email escalations to check on responses with outside teams who are not a part of the platform by including the contents of the conversation. Additionally, you can automatically allocate queries to the proper users or groups by the rules you establish, saving time.

Conclusion

Following these 16 strategies may strengthen your company’s position if a customer writes a critical comment or review online. Although proactive reputation management will likely need a one-time investment, it will also likely result in financial savings should the inevitable happen.  

Due to their lack of resources and expertise compared to huge organizations, local firms are significantly more vulnerable to online reputation attacks. The best approach to guarding against damaging remarks and the monetary loss that frequently follows them is to be proactive when managing your internet reputation.

It’s never too early to begin implementing your company’s online reputation management plan. Chat with the Konnect Insights team to find out what your company is already doing right or wrong and where you can gather more evidence to strengthen your online reputation.