What is an Online Reputation Manager? You can have your business effectively managed and control how your brand is viewed if you are equipped with information about online reputation management or if you utilize an online reputation manager.
If there is one thing that most businesses have in common; it is seeing to it that all their customers are satisfied. While general satisfaction is quite impossible, it is in your best interest to try. In trying, you make several efforts like producing new and better products, improve product features, and please customers.
These steps, while they are very effective; those can only achieve so much.
What is an Online Reputation Manager?
Once in a while, every business gets to experience a backlash. The backlash might be from a dissatisfied customer or even a jealous competitor. Whichever group it is from, how you handle it says a lot about your brand.
This is where online reputation management and reputation manager comes in.
An online reputation manager is an individual employed to carry out all the duties on online reputation management.
Online reputation management (ORM) is a technique employed by businesses to carefully address all negativities (negative reviews, comments, and media stories) about their brand online.
What Does an Online Reputation Manager Do?
You might be asking, what exactly should I expect from an online reputation manager? Well, do not look too far, as the duties of an online reputation manager have been listed below.
1. Creates a healthy online presence for your brand
A healthy online presence maybe all your business needs to thrive, and an online reputation manager should provide that. Online reputation managers achieve that by engaging the customers online.
They respond to all comments on social media and underneath blog posts in the best ways possible. If the brand manager handles communication so well, your brand becomes relatable. By so doing, a cordial relationship is developed between the brand and its customers. Consequentially, the reputation of your brand is built.
Also, online reputation managers provide a safe space for your target audience. They build that safe space by posting only content that portray the core values of your brand. This way, your target audience can easily locate your brand online and interact.
2. Protects your brand’s reputation
Protecting the reputation of your brand is critical to the success of your business. Sadly, it is not an easy task but online reputation managers are there to save the day.
Online reputation managers use their acquired skill set to handle any negativity thrown at your business. All bad rumors, negative comments, and bad press are handled by the reputation manager. They provide swift responses to negative comments and contain any rumor that is being spread.
In addressing media stories and negative news, brand managers employ caution. They try their best to quench the fire and not add fuel to it. If they handle your media stories wrongly; you might not be able to handle what comes after.
So, make sure to research the managers before hiring them. After hiring explain your business values to them so they know how to handle your online presence.
3. Promotes your brand
Online reputation managers promote your business online. They map out strategies on how to attract your target audience and keep them as customers. By using SEO, unique customer service, and other marketing strategies, they explode your brand image and make it popular.
How to Keep Up Brand Reputation
Reputation constant is the ability of a brand to be consistent with its core values, purpose, and customer service. It does not mean your brand shouldn’t make changes. If your brand must experience change then it must be for good reasons and better results.
Human beings never want to entertain bad change. Don’t wake up in the morning and decide on making changes without considering your customers first. If they do not like the change, then you might run at a loss.
Pricing Changes:
One thing that tends to vary in businesses is the price range. If you are going to increase the price, then you must be willing to provide a better product. Customers frown at the spike in prices a lot especially when they’re already in love with your product and services.
Maintain Expectations:
Also, if your customers have known your brand for delightful customer service, you need to maintain that. Have a forum with your employees where you buttress the importance of good customer relations.
Respect Your Customers:
Tell your employees that every customer is right and must be treated well. By informing them; they would not want to be caught being rude to a customer at any point in time.
Brand Transparency:
A brand that has a reputation constant is transparent. They always include customers in everything they do. Transparent brands makes conscious efforts to inform their customers and the general public of major decisions taken by the business. That way, customers will always be kept in the loop.
Reputation Management of Brand Reviews Video
From the video: We’re gonna talk about reputation management, why you need it, and how it works. So what is reputation management and why do you need it? Well, reputation management is essentially helping you capture more reviews online in a positive way across multiple verified review sites for your particular industry.
By doing this, this is gonna build your reputation online so that when people are researching who to do business with, you stand out, but to best understand it, let’s really break down five reasons why you need it.
Reason number one is studies show that 86% of people that go to your website or see you on social media before they reach out, in other words, call you, or fill out a lead form, or make an online purchase, they’re gonna check your reputation online.
Now, they’re gonna do that by going to Google and searching your brand name and the word reviews. If you don’t have very many reviews, or it’s not on very many review sites, or particularly if you have bad reviews, that’s really gonna hurt you.
They’re not gonna take that final step and reach out, so if you don’t have that, you’re potentially missing out on 86% of the leads that you could be receiving.
And so an online reputation is hugely important cause that’s part of the buying process in the research phase that people are going through, so you’re gonna wanna tackle it.
Second reason why reputation management is important is even if you do have a lot of reviews out there and the reviews are pretty good and you have reviews on multiple review sites, if those reviews aren’t fresh, people lose trust.
So, in other words, if they see the date on those and they’re months old, they’re gonna kinda start to lose trust, so it’s important to always have a steady influx and flow of fresh review content to help build that credibility you need to get the sale and win the business.
Reason number three why you need reputation management is it’s gonna differentiate you with your competitors. You really wanna have the best reputation online when somebody’s comparing you with all the other competitors that you might be up against. That’s gonna be key, so you have to invest in it. But here’s the key, it takes time.
Because of that, a lot of people skip out on it, but reputation management is not something that can be skipped. It has to be something that you focus on today, and that’s why you need it.
Reason number four is the more reviews you have out there, they’re almost like miniature sales people working for ya. Every review you get posted online is like a mini sales person referring you business in the future. It’s their testimonial to how they experience your business that’s gonna help influence somebody else to do business with you as well.
So do you want two sales people out there working for you or 200? Of course you want 200. That’s gonna come in the way of more and more reviews. The more reviews you get, the more referrals and sales you’re gonna get on the back-end.
The fifth reason reputation management is important is it shows that you’re experienced. If you don’t have a lot of reviews, it almost seems like you’re not very experienced.
But how many projects have you done, how many people have you worked with, it’s probably substantially more than the number of reviews that you have online. What you want is to represent the amount of experience that you have and that comes in the way of reviews.
The more reviews you can get when people are looking from a third party perspective, it’s gonna appear as if you have the most experience as well, and when they’re looking at you compared to other competitors, if you appear to have the most experience, people are gonna have the most confidence to choose you and not your competitor.
