How To Protect Your Brand Online: Online Brand Rputation Guide 2022

There is no denying that reputation is essential to any brand. For a customer to believe in your product and buy it, he needs to first perceive you as a reputed brand that cares for the needs and opinions of its customers .

Past decade was revolutionary in terms of technology and we witnessed great advancements in the way businesses were operated. This tech driven business environment was further enhanced by the onset of Covid-19 which concentrated the entire existence into the virtual space .

Naturally, even online brand reputation management gathered a huge significance. Today a large share of online brand reputation management happens at social media platforms and with review sites .

It is estimated that a customer need to read an average of 10 online reviews to be able to trust a brand and initiate a purchase .

Clearly, a brand cannot afford to loosen its grip on the online reputation management of the brand because not only ORM drives sales but garners customer loyalty that helps in retention of existing customers .

Generally, the reputation of the brand is only linked to the customers and their faith in the brand while making a purchase. But the reputation of the brand has a high influence on the employees of the organisation. A trusted company is always preferred over a regular company due to its reputation .

So, it won’t be wrong to say that reputed brands manage to hire better skilled employees making their operations more efficient. Hence, further promoting the brand’s reputation .

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR BRAND’S REPUTATION

Managing a brand’s reputation online may seem like a daunting task. Naturally brand reputation management is a hard nut to crack due to its continuous nature and huge social media engagement. Plus with scale of operations, managing brand reputation online simultaneously can get messy .

But to your relief we have chalked down the guidelines for brand reputation management online. That will help you to smoothly master the online reputation domain and take your brand to the next level .

  1. MONITORING CURRENT BRAND POSITION ONLINE
    Obviously before diving into any reputation management strategies. Your first focus should be brand monitoring. Get into the habit of reading everything that is being said about your brand online. Obviously checking every comment every minute is tiresome hence go for Google analytics . All you have to do is set up your account with your brand name to get notified every time your brand is mentioned on the internet .

    You can also try and search for your brand name/ relevant brand words in Google search engine to see what kind of information is ranking on search engine results page about your brand. We suggest you to do this in Incognito mode, which is private search area and would not affect the search results of your brand .
    Other than this there are a variety of SEO tools available online that not only helps you with analytics but also with various different types of metrics .
  2. COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
    Social media is the most crucial channel for engaging with the audiences. Hence it becomes of utmost importance to know how to improve social media engagement . Social media platforms like Facebook. Twitter and Instagram have a solid userbase and are among the most browsed places for product queries, reviews and customer support .
    According to a research conducted, it is noticed that 30% customers shift to another brand when their social media query/ comment remain unattended .
  3. SEO AND CONTENT MARKETING
    Content marketing and search engine optimization go hand in hand and can support your initiative of online brand reputation management immensely. To become a trusted brand to your consumers, become a brand that adds value to their life. Include educational blogs to your website or include small content section on social media that solves the problem of your brand .
    For example- If you are a cosmetics brand, try including posts and articles about how to use the product correctly. Doing this will automatically generate consumer interest towards your product .
    Well now that you have put everything together you need your products and content to reach the audiences. This is where SEO kicks in. It helps in driving more organic traffic to your website and will strategically help in ranking your website, positive reviews or any desired content at the top of the Google’s search results page .
    These days SEO is a crucial part of of ORm and hence, there are abundant SEO tools available on the internet to help you with that .
  4. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY OF YOUR ACTIONS
    Taking responsibility mainly includes impeccable review management. A brand cannot please every single customer and can receive negative reviews and comments here and there. As a brand it becomes your responsibility to tend to every review whatsoever .
    Be prompt and be polite while replying even to the negative reviews. By doing this you can translate even that negative comment in your favour. Customers like being heard. So as a reputed brand give them what they want .
    If there ever arises a situation where you are at a fault. Immediately accept, apologise and rectify the situation. Never be rude or ignorant towards your customers. Because one bad experience can lead to your negative word of mouth publicity. Ultimately, breaking your customers .