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Online Reputation Management

Over the years, different people have come up with different meanings to Online Reputation Management. With these different meanings, different misconceptions have popped up. Some feel it’s just social media monitoring while others are under the assumption that it has something to do with public relations.

In this article, I’m going to talk about Online Reputation Management and the steps to take to manage your brand name in today’s business and media landscape.

What is Online Reputation Management?

Online Reputation Management(ORM) deals with the monitoring of the reputation of a brand or an individual on the internet.

You would be involved in maintaining your company’s brand in the online community like the search engines, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs, forums and more. [Tweet “Most of Reputation Management is focused on pushing down negative search results.”]

online reputation management

Your Online Reputation Management can be done in three main steps.

  1. Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation (Brand Management)

As the owner of a brand, you have to know what is happening to your brand. Know the people that are talking about it, know what their opinion is about it and much more.

A lot of brands do not take the time to know whether they are getting negative reviews or positive ones. These influences the behavior of visitors as a person who sees a brand with bad reputation would try to avoid it

Listed below are a couple of tools, that can be used to monitor your brand online.

Google Alerts

This is the go-to guy when it comes to monitoring your brand or your reputation. You can track the mentions of your brands name across search engine web result, news, blogs and so on.

This is by far the most efficient way to track your Brands mentions. After setting up, you can receive notifications via email and set the frequency with which you want to receive the alert. Did I mention that it is Free 😀

google alerts brand management

Twitter Search

Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms and they have a search box with which you can search for mentions of your brand. With Twitter Advanced search, you can streamline the data you want to receive by dates, location, etc.

brand management

Mention

Mentions is one of the favorite tools of Reputation Management Specialists. It provides a way by which you can visualize and monitor your online presence. Mention currently monitors millions of sources and gives you the additional advantage of being able to react and interact. Mention offers a 14-day free trial, and then a variety of plans from which to choose.

brand management

Talkwater

With Talkwalker, you can set up a search query for the keyword or phrase you want to monitor. Streamline the result by result type, language and more. You get reports of your brand mention together with the sources where these mentions occur.

Manage your brands reputation

  1. Protecting your Brand’s Reputation

[Tweet “When factors like your name, your company, your brand, your products and more are connected to brand reputation, it usually leads to a swift decline in trust and your leads and sales would reduce.”]

We are going to be looking at how to protect your brand from bad reputation and the tools that can make it easier

The easiest and fastest way to increase your brand’s visibility and reputation is to build it. Yes, I know that sounds like a corny one-liner, but it is the truth.

[Tweet “Start building your brand by securing your brand’s social media usernames”]. There are tools that can help you track this, but my favorite is Knowem. With Knowem, you would be able to find out which social media sites your brand has not been registered on. Their paid version even adds a lot more options.

Registering on the sites that are shown to you increases the chances of you filling up your brand’s search engine rank position so create and manage public profiles yourself

There are some key Social Media Accounts that you MUST have.

Others are

You can also prevent other sites that have bad reviews about you from showing up in the search engine when your brand is searched for by getting a blog and maintaining it.

With this blog, you are able to talk a lot about yourself and even combat any published bad reputation site. Other advantages to having a blog include the ability to publish articles about the company, provide an avenue for your customers to know you more, promote products and services.

Actively commenting in articles, forums and social media also helps.

  1. Clean Up (Damage Control)

If it so happens that you currently have a very bad reputation online and a search for your brand on the internet brings mostly results that paint you in a bad light, it’s time for damage control. Below are a couple of steps you can take.

  • Get in touch with the owner site on which you have a bad reputation post or article and ask them to take it down (Being nice about it would go a long way).
  • Ask Google to de-index it if you are able to find anything in the page that goes against Google’s guidelines.
  • Hire an ORM consultant

If by any chance, the options above do not work for you, it’s time to open the flood gates.

Remember those social media profiles you got using Knowem? It’s time to put them to use. Start registering on them and establish your presence on each of them.

Start a blog and make sure you link the blog to those social media accounts and your website.

The basics of Online Reputation Management involves social monitoring, online PR, social media content promotion and more, all with the purpose of getting all the possible ‘real estate accounts’ for your brand.

Interestingly, most people think an Online Reputation Management Consultant is only required when their brand has reached the cleaning stage i.e. when the damage has been done. Ideally, it is about establishing your brand’s online foundations and increasing visibility.

Conclusions

If  you have not registered your name in the Social Media sites I mentioned previously, you should do that now.

Get a blog for your brand and link it with your website and your social accounts.

Participate in forums and other communities and monitor mentions of your brand.

If you have other ways by which a company’s individual’s brand name can be monitored, drop a comment 🙂

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  1. Hi, this has always been one of my goals-to keep my “brand” of me on the up and up. In cyberspace, once there is a negative there is always a negative. Show that you are good and caring and customers will see that and definitely patronize you!

  2. Hay thanks for the monitoring tips! I didn’t know that you could monitor your online reputation using Knowem. Just hearing of the tool for the first time actually. Thanks for taking the time to write this article. Will definitely be using some of these tips!

    Regards,
    Jake.

  3. Thanks for the good info on google alerts. I will be setting that up this week, it is a great tool to make sure my effort is paying off! I would be able to track the mentions of any Brand I am working with

  4. ORM or Online Reputation management is the process of controlling what shows up when someone Google your name.

    Planning your ORM with the use of Google Alerts, Tweeter Search, Mention and so to monitoring or checking how many mentions you or brand has will help you distinguish if your ORM efforts are paying you back or not.

    Though Knowem is very foreign to me, since you’ve tried this tool to track which social media sites your brand has not been registered with, I believe it’s effective and useful. Creating social media accounts will no doubt increase your brand reputation, but first consider if it is the right social media platform before registering.

    All in all, this is a very informative article!

    1. Hi Miranda, glad I could be of help. Knowem is very useful as it helps you figure out which social networks you have not registered on so you can take you time and only pick the ones that are relevant to you.

  5. As I come from social media monitoring backgrounds, I believe it’s one of the most important aspects of online reputation management and was really glad to see it mentioned in the first place. I actually think all the three points you mentioned are somehow intersected. Anyway, with ORM can be done a lot more effectively and, most importantly, proactively while the right tools, like the ones you mentioned, are utilized. Another one I’d suggest having a look at is https://brand24.com which I am community manager of. Apart from direct brand mentions, businesses should also monitor keywords related to them and jump into conversations they could potentially engage. People love real interactions from brands and will definitely appreciate the outreach while whether it’s related to a complaint or praise.

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