What is online reputation management?

Reputation management describes the effort to influence and take control of a company's or individual's reputation. The concept stems from public relations, but along with the growth of social media and the internet the term had to be developed to adequately cover the new phenomena. Nowadays, it can be divided into two areas – offline and online reputation management, the latter focusing mainly on search engine results.

Online reputation management – definition

First, we should start with a reputation, which is an image of a person, product, brand, or company based on widespread opinion. Before the internet era, consumers learned about it from the word-of-mouth mainly. It was difficult to manage because the overall image deepened on individual experience. Companies tried to influence their perception throughout advertising campaigns in TV and press, or offline events.

Nowadays, when we speak about reputation management we usually think of an online reputation, such as positive and negative reviews found on various review sites. What doesn't change is its core meaning – the effort to influence what public opinion thinks of us.

How to manage an online reputation?

Once we've discussed what online reputation is, we can move forward to the next topic – if it can be managed and how. It's worth focusing on different aspects of reputation management. It can be done either manually or with the help of systems and applications that automate the tasks.

Online reputation management (ORM)

The truth is, brand reputation often is out of our control. There is no way, so far, to affect what people think. But there are some techniques to affect what they read and hear about the brand, which might indirectly affect the way they finally think. All that we undertake to improve the final opinion of the brand is called ORM.

SEO

One way to affect what people think is to take care of your SEO and search results. Why is it important? If you manage to get to the top of Google search results the bigger the chances the audience will get to know about your brand from your owned media. Then, you have the chance to convince them and tell them the story of your company and products with your own words. To do that properly, try to focus on most valuable keywords and measure the results regularly (in a private browsing mode).

Reputation management software

What will help you a lot while looking for online reviews is special reputation management software, that automates the whole process. What is crucial here is an immediate reaction to negative reviews, because they spread quickly. On the other hand, since customers are generally more willing to give negative feedback, it is important to encourage satisfied clients to share positive reviews as well.

The best online reputation management services

The best applications make use of machine learning algorithms that – most importantly – can predict actions of your customers with high probability. They allow you to monitor situation in real-time, gathering the data from review sites such as Facebook, Google, TrustedShops, and TripAdvisor.