Your organization reputation is essential. It's an asset that you need to keep secure. When your online reputation gets affected, you might lose sales, customers, partners as well as employees. Not all business takes their online reputation management seriously. They don't look to check if they have positive or negative feedback in Google search results. 

How can you secure your brand reputation? The ORM (online reputation management) experts suggest that business owners should optimize their web content proactively. Also, monitor the search results on a regular basis. And when negative news pops up, businesses and organizations should be proactive to mitigate that with correct efforts and actions.

Online reputation is essential for all brands

Today, whenever someone has to search for anything, it has to be the internet. Listed below are few interesting statistics to keep handy:

• Two out of every three persons check the internet as the most authentic information source regarding a business or person
• When searching for a local store, about 97% of people go through online reviews
• About 70% of managers and companies hiring people have canceled on candidates because they found something negative about them online

Hence, it’s evident a negative review or news about your company, will affect your brand in adverse ways. From losing existing customers to acquiring potential business opportunities, your losses can range up to anything.

You have to treat your online reputation in a way, like its forever! Since most people are logged online from their tablet or Smartphone device, any negative review will be on the minds of people for a long time. Therefore, it's important to keep track of your brand and company feedback. And should a negative review make its way online, you should counter-balance it instantly with proactive measures.

ORM and SEO are not the same

Many people think SEO and ORM to be the same. There can be a few similarities, but the two are conceptually different. SEO focuses on promoting your web page or site at the number one search results. And ORM focuses on managing the series of sites that come on your online results. Hence, the procedures and success measures are vastly different.

To know more on this, you can get in touch with a professional service provider. You can opt-in for names like TrafficDom SEO services and others and seek professional guidance.

Smart tactics to manage your online reputation

There are many ways in which you can handle your company's or website's ORM. Some of the useful tactics are as follows:

1. Ensure to diversify your website’s online presence

Most companies want to rule as many slots as they can in Google's best ten search results for their set of keywords. And if this happens for real, it shows the impact of your company’s online presence. Additionally, you will also get the chance to keep away any negative news about your company, brand, products, and services.

Online marketing experts know that a brand won’t be able to rid of that negative news that they can’t monitor. But it is essential, that brands balance that with the increased inflow of positive news. Want to have more slots in Google best ten search results? If yes, then your web presence needs to be diversified. Try and publish new blogs, have social media profiles on LinkedIn, make attractive, user-friendly and informative YouTube videos and also post exciting updates on Twitter and Facebook. Google reads their social media sites as authentic and trustworthy. And it would help to increase your brand's online dominance.

2. Don’t forget to choose LinkedIn as your social media networking site

Social media management is indeed challenging. Some companies don't want to be present in all the social media networking sites. They would instead select one website and focus their social media posts on that site. Do you resonate with that? If yes, then let that one social media site be LinkedIn for you. There are several reasons for that.

One of the most important reasons for that LinkedIn profiles usually tends to rank high that majority of social media website content. It is also essential for the B2B companies. When it comes to brands or professional services, people search for it on LinkedIn more than Google.

3. Manage your search outcome once a month without fail

Go online and Google your brand name and check the results. You need to do this once a month without fail. If your business is expanding, do this frequently. Sometimes, the negative news appears without our notice. Also, create Google Alerts for a few keywords to know when there's any news about you. 

Don’t focus on the first page of Google only. Negative news at times is listed on the second and third page as well. So scan the search results well and make sure you check up to five results pages to be on the safe side. If you find negative news on the later pages, act on it instantly. Else this will affect your organic rankings and consumer goodwill adversely.

Keep a spreadsheet to maintain any negative or questionable news. Make columns and write the date and the remedy that you have undertaken. It will enable you to know how frequently or rarely do negative updates come up about your brand. You will also know which aspect of your brand gets a negative review. Is it your service, product, after sales or customer care? Hence, you can sort this accordingly.

4. Don’t forget your offline reputation as well

Just in case you see that the negative news is becoming a trend, you need to delve deep. Your reputation management tactics need to include the offline activities as well. Are your customers being treated well at the stores? Is the media getting the press releases on time? Are media and customer feedbacks and questions being addressed well by your corporate communication and customer management team? You need to look into these offline channels as well to ensure your online reputation is all good.

Today, with more brands foraying into the market you can’t afford to lose your online reputation in any way. If you take more time in bouncing back, some other brand of a similar niche will occupy your space. Therefore, ORM tactics should get implemented on a regular basis. It will help you to promote a positive brand image, maintain customer delight and goodwill in the long run.