BRANDS AND ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
Looking for an online reputation management company in Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane? Negative online publicity will hurt your business faster than it has taken to create a good name.
Online reputation management is not a new area in business. It is enjoying a fairly new light as companies focus on increasing their positive image in cyberspace. It anticipates, analyses, investigates and devises ways to improve the public’s perception and opinion of a person, brand or business. At its core, online reputation management’s strategies aim at:
- Reputation direction
- Improve branding
- review management
A brand is an identified product created under a company with a particular name. It can include the name, symbol, logo, design recognisable from competitors. This image is necessary to be maintained and if possible improved upon. Over time, some brands gain a less than stellar reputation because of bad reviews, organisational mistakes, or bad company policies.
ONLINE REPUTATION
Reputation is what a potential customer or client finds about you when they want to know more about your business. Online reputation is what is available on the internet about your company, product or service. Like any business, being visible and having a great positive online presence is what we hope for. But any business worth their salt prepares for any eventuality that may come.
For any established, long standing firm, one expects it to have had their ups and downs. Some firms have budgets for entire teams to take care of their online business health. For most companies this is critical because once an item is on the internet, it stays there forever.
Your online reputation is the public’s perception of what you are about. It is the instant impression consumers have of your company and your products’ standing against your competitors. There is hardly anyone that has not at least tried to look themselves up on the internet to determine their own online standing. Your online reputation is the sum total of what is out on the internet about you. Businesses, in particular, are directly affected by their online reputation. These can include web portal searches, related keywords, social media, news, and forums.
Your website would naturally have the best presentation of you and your company. These other sites you have no control over. Here is where the negative content about your company can spring from.
ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
A strong positive online reputation is easier than maintaining or rebuilding one. It is critical to sustain a solid online reputation especially these days when people refer to the internet before purchasing a product from any company.
Online reputation management is a specialised program to regain a stellar first impression for your brand. A strong positive digital presence makes for better marketing opportunities, builds public trust, and more desirable growth.
REPUTATION DIRECTION
Online reputation management works on mending the reputation of a person, business or brand. A growing business is not assured of always getting a positive online presence. Left on their own, a business’ reputation may not go anywhere. Or worse, be in the red.
IMPROVE AND STRENGTHEN BRANDING
This brings us to the next goal of online reputation management which is to strengthen and improve branding. For new companies they usually start at zero and gradually improve in time. These times though, actively managing your online reputation gets more traction than just letting it be. Usually customers and clients only bother with feedback and reviews when they experience something negative on a service or a product.
REVIEW MANAGEMENT
Review management is an effective tool to use for feedback received. Evaluating a firm’s online presence through feedback and reviews is wise and pragmatic. This checks the status of your brand and create steps to make it better.
Is your company’s reputation at risk?
Protecting yourself against online attack is more important now than ever before. Negative online publicity can hurt your business faster than it has taken to create an online presence. No matter how ethical your business is it is an unfortunate fact of life that you can’t keep everyone happy all of the time. Just as the Internet is a powerful tool for reaching a wide audience a negative review or malicious attack from a disgruntled employee spread like wildfire.
Customers use the Internet as a research tool and the more expensive the product or service the more thoroughly the search for information on your company. A bad review or negative feedback can be bad for business.
So what can you do when someone posts negative reviews or malicious content that slams your company and urges people to stay away from you?
5 Steps to avoid negative publicity
Alerts:
Atomic Digital Marketing can set up alert services that inform you immediately when your company name has been used online.
Respond to Criticism Promptly:
Sometimes a negative review is justified and you need to acknowledge that you are not always perfect. Other times it is necessary to provide an explanation of why the users expectations were unrealistic but in all circumstances a prompt and polite response will show that you care about providing your customers the best possible service.
Provide Customer Feedback Forums:
Offering customers an opportunity to lodge their complaints with you direct can often avert potential problems. A little bit of love can go a long way and it is often possible to turn a disgruntled customer into one of your biggest fans. It is also easier to moderate forums you control than those you don’t.
Encourage and Incentivise Positive Reviews:
When people are looking to by products and services it is important to have positive reviews posted on multiple sites in order place your product in a favourable light. Providing incentives, such as a coupon codes, special discounts or entry in a prize draw can encourage positive reviews and push the negative review sites down the search rankings out of site.
Optimise Positive Review Search Rankings
Our reputation management service is designed to optimise the positive reviews of your business and help them rank better online. Whilst negative reviews can’t always be hidden from view, their effects can often be greatly reduced when they are pushed further down the search engine results.
WHAT WE OFFER
Forge your online presence the way you want it to. Positively, that is. Social media enables just about anybody to post absolutely anything, both good and bad. At present, your online reputation is everything. The internet can be fickle. It is where a single click can influence your buyers to purchase or click on your competitors.
Public relations, press releases, reviews, and the seemingly innocent well-placed remark becomes part of your online reputation. We assist to correctly communicate your brand. We monitor and evaluate what the internet makes you out to be. We then formulate approaches that would better convey your chosen image.
HARNESS WHAT IS ALREADY THERE
Take stock of what already exists. Your public image contains mostly what is positive about your brand. Making your posts and articles work strategically for you by increasing their importance and visibility can be crucial. Evaluate your current online reputation for strengths and weaknesses. Check sites and social media platforms for an in-depth report.
IMPROVING YOUR STANDING
Reviews, consumer sites, and forums can be your friends or foes. Some reviews can be discarded and favourable ones filtered. Our strategies bring supportive ratings to surface helping to improve your brand.
Articles and blogs are a great way to increase presence on web portals and search engines. It gives a bigger score when essential keywords are used. The well-placed keyword spells the ranking it might have on these search engines. Where the articles and blogs are posted helps immensely.
There is no mistaking that we are in the busy era of social media. Mentions and hashtag use are a must for these platforms. Depending on what and where you are posting, the efficiency of your media spells its result. Twitter for microblogs and successive storytelling thread; Instagram for photos and images; YouTube and Vine for videos and other social media platforms available to introduce and share your brand.
It is difficult to totally erase bad reviews and negative press on the internet. As they say, the internet is forever. But its place is not permanent. This is why proactively boosting your online standing is imperative especially if there are negative critiques on search results.
Protecting and improving your online imprint can only grow your business. Leaving those negative reviews for a long time might cause potential harm on your reputation assessment. It is best to act now than later.
Even small businesses will benefit from online reputation management. Small measures can be taken to create buildup of your business in the digital space.
Simple strategies include:
- Utilise social media platforms. These platforms are the public’s way of reaching out. Quick witted replies and being responsive produces good results even if the review is unfavourable.
- Encourage positive reviews. Some restaurants offer free wi-fi so patrons are able to take photos and geotag for feedback on food, service and ambiance.
- Proactively ask customers for positive reviews. Patrons will rarely leave positive feedback even if their experience was pleasurable and will only really remember when asked or when they have a not so terrific time.
The internet is an almost living entity and is the first stop for everything. For most, it is the primary source of information and data from it is often considered reliable and truthful. Online reputation will always remain relevant. Done properly, it can propel your business into the direction you want it to go.
