Corporate online reputation management helps build your business brand in the digital environment.Â
In today’s competitive marketplaces, corporations depend on many assets in order to remain at the forefront of their industries.
Perhaps the most important intangible asset corporations can have is their online reputations. A positive online image is essential for building customer relationships as well as establishing trust between the company and potential customers. NetReputation.com can help
Numerous factors can damage a brand’s online reputation, potentially costing a company the loss of customers and sales. In worst-case scenarios, a company’s online reputation can become so damaged that it requires extensive repair.
How can corporations establish, build, and protect their online reputation? The answer is in corporate online reputation management services.
In this guide, we will explore what an online reputation management company can do to strengthen your entire online presence, allowing you to stand out from your competitors with a strong brand reputation.
Contact NetReputation Today for a Free Consultation on Corporate Online Reputation Management
Why Your Corporate Reputation Matters
How your company is perceived online can have profound effects on your ability to drive revenue and business growth. Your overall online reputation stands as one of the most essential components when it comes to achieving success in the business world.
A positive reputation is a valuable asset, allowing us to explore new opportunities on both personal and professional levels. A brand’s online reputation is one of its most important digital aspects, helping to foster a sense of trust between a company and its customers.
A negative reputation, on the other hand, can stand between you and your goals. If unflattering information or internet reviews appear in search results, people may choose not to do business with you or may pass you over for someone with a better online presence.
Benefits of a Positive Online Reputation
There are several important benefits associated with online reputations that are positive. These include:
- Positive reputations based on favorable reviews or customer feedback can increase revenue by 5-9%
- Positive reviews are a primary deciding factor when considering making a purchase. As many as 68% of all purchases are influenced by digital reviews.
- 90% of all customers read reviews before making purchasing decisions. People are using tools like Google to evaluate you before ever setting foot in your establishment.
Your brand’s reputation serves as the conduit by which your company can improve its bottom line. As a digital marketing tool, building and maintaining a great reputation is incredibly powerful.
Negative Online Reputation: The Risks
Just as a positive reputation can improve your business prospects, a negative reputation based on negative reviews, negative content in search results, and unflattering news articles can erode consumer trust.
Here are some of the primary risks associated with a bad reputation:
- 45% of consumers say that negative information has convinced them not to do business with a particular company.
- A single bad review can result in losses of up to 22% of customers. Three or more unflattering reviews can increase the potential for lost customers to nearly 60%.
- Only 13% of customers would consider doing business with a company having poor ratings on review platforms. Negative reviews have a strong influence on purchasing behaviors.
What is Corporate Reputation Management?
Reputation management for businesses offers powerful solutions for establishing your company’s online reputation. In today’s highly-competitive business environment, consumer perceptions about your business can make or break your operations.
Corporate online reputation management services can include a dizzying array of options, including:
- Branding
- Content removal
- Search engine optimization
- Local SEO services
- Social media management
- Public relations
- Reputation monitoring
- Business listings in Google My Business and industry directories
- Review management
Every reputation management campaign is different, and not every company will need the same services to achieve their goals. A talented online reputation management company will tailor its services to the unique needs and goals of each client, helping to deliver superior results.
With all of the potential online reputation management services in mind, a few stand out for their importance. These serve as the foundation of an online reputation management strategy:
Corporate Branding
Brands are developed to help identify you or your company and work to shape people’s perceptions. Quality positioning is key in launching, building, or defending your brand. Your company deals with numerous reputational and operational threats.
Whether you are beefing up your social media presence, sharing industry-specific expertise with your customer base, or improving market value, brand management is an essential tool.
Building your brand online can include:
- Identifying target audiences and markets
- Brand positioning strategies
- Social media management
- Development of a corporate identity
- Consumer brand interaction initiatives
As a component of reputation management, branding expands your reach and online visibility while improving ratings and reviews on consumer review sites like Google, and TrustPilot.
Reputation Monitoring
Online reputation management is a continuous process. Threats can emerge at any time; these threats — negative content, poor reviews, or negative Google search results — can damage even the most well established reputation. Small businesses are at the highest risk of damage from reputational threats.
When monitoring your reputation, reputation management companies use automated tools to scour the web. Mentions of your company or brand on review sites, search engine results, and news outlets are analyzed. Social media monitoring is typically part of the monitoring process. Then, a reputation repair strategy is developed to eliminate potential threats.
Online Reputation Repair for Corporations
It is almost inevitable that a business’s online reputation will become damaged at some point. Even something as simple as a single negative review or conversations about poor customer service on social media can erode what you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
Small businesses and large corporations alike rely on reputation repair as an essential online reputation management service. Repairing your reputation includes:
- Identifying the negative search results that are harming your brand.
- Issuing takedown notices and other legal strategies to remove negative content.
- Promoting positive content using public relations and other digital marketing practices.
The best online reputation management providers know that a company’s reputation is always at risk of damage. With proven strategies, careful monitoring, and repair services, these firms work hard to protect your image in the digital environment.
5 Essential Online Reputation Management Services for Corporations
With so many reputation services to choose from, which services are right for your business?
Reputation management uses a wide range of tools and strategies to build brand awareness, improve visibility in search results, and create a foundation of loyal customers. Despite the huge range of choices, several critical reputation management services stand out:
Online Review Management
It’s no secret that consumers are reading online reviews before making purchasing decisions. In fact, as many as 94% of all consumers read at least one review of a business before deciding whether or not to patronize that company.
Google reviews and popular third-party review sites like TrustPilot, the Better Business Bureau, TripAdvisor, Yellowpages, and ConsumerReports are only a handful of the many online review platforms. Honest feedback on these platforms — the customer experience — is what these platforms were designed to share in the digital environment.
Job seekers also use other review sites to learn about businesses before applying for jobs. Glassdoor and Indeed are two of the most popular platforms. Negative feedback or negative reviews from former employees can keep top talent from applying to your firm, while positive reviews help differentiate your company as one of the leaders in its field.
What reviews are saying about your business can have powerful impacts on your ability to achieve success in your industry. Positive reviews open the door to new opportunities, while negative reviews can directly impact your sales and business growth.
In order to maintain great reviews and to reinforce trust between your company and customers, review management is essential.
Managing online reviews is a complex process that requires experienced professionals to protect your brand’s image. This process typically includes such strategies and services like:
- Identifying digital reviews with automated review management software.
- Gauging consumer sentiments based on customer feedback that reveals actionable insights into purchasing behaviors.
- Developing review response strategies to help resolve customer issues.
- Removing negative reviews as well as those that are false, misleading, or defamatory.
- Review generation and review marketing to create an environment where customers leave more and better reviews.
- Review monitoring to uncover emerging reputational threats before they can cause damage to your business’s reputation.
Online reputation management companies, including the award-winning team at NetReputation, provide exacting review management services, helping you to build and maintain high levels of trust on review platforms.
Crisis Management
An expected event — such as a natural or industrial disaster, an executive scandal, or even a negative news article — can result in a crisis for your business.
With a management strategy for crises, you are able to overcome the negative news and information that can harm your organization’s reputation. In other words, this strategy serves as a reputation protection tool. Benefits of crisis management include:
- The ability to identify current and emerging threats.
- Strategic management of communication channels during and post-crisis.
- Streamlining recovery efforts.
Protecting your brand image and company’s reputation is the ultimate goal of crisis management services. ORM professionals can help you develop a robust management strategy that allows you to fend off any crisis that may occur — and help you prepare in advance if one should strike.
Search Engine Optimization
No matter how much you have built out your corporate website and web properties, they are all but useless unless they can be found in Google or other search engines.
The key to great search visibility is search engine optimization (SEO).
Search engine algorithms are programmed to understand the search intent of a given user, then deliver accurate and relevant results based on search queries. In other words, Google and the other major search engines are attempting to answer user questions. SEO tips the scales in your favor; as part of a broader content marketing initiative, SEO directs more website traffic to your web properties, including the extremely valuable organic traffic that helps position your website as an authoritative information resource.
SEO uses on- and off-page factors to improve your site’s ability to be accurately categorized and indexed. It’s such an essential ORM service for businesses that skipping this critical tool can spell disaster for your digital footprint (and digital reputation).
Public Relations
Long a part of advertising, public relations (PR) is as important in the digital environment as your other marketing practices. In simple terms, good PR can make you look better, while great PR changes buying behavior.
PR helps to create positive relationships between businesses and their customers. It also improves online visibility, particularly in Google results. With a public relations strategy as part of your reputation management online, you can stand out from the pack and drive consumers right to your door.
Social Media Management
In today’s connected digital world, social media profiles have taken center stage as some of the most crucial elements of your digital presence. Creating social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn all help you reach new audiences and connect in innovative ways.
Your presence on these platforms also provides opportunities for social media marketing, directing targeted advertising to your followers. Link sharing on these platforms gives you even more channels with which to share the positive content you developed for your website or blog.
Managing all these social profiles can be challenging, especially if you have accounts on multiple platforms. Social media management services from online reputation management companies are the ideal solution. Your online reputation manager can help you create engaging posts, encourage customers to share your posts, improve impressions, and create a publishing schedule that supercharges your social profiles.
Selecting an Online Reputation Management Company
The best reputation management companies offer an array of customized services to help you establish your online reputation. These same services can also help you grow your digital footprint, repair reputations damaged by negative reviews or negative news, and protect what you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
Leading ORM firms assign a dedicated reputation manager to each client. This can improve the management process, allowing direct communication between clients and the teams responsible for creating and supporting your business reputation. Your online reputation manager is a vital contributor to the outcome of your campaign.
Finally, the leading reputation management service providers offer transparency to their clients. Reputation management may take time to achieve the desired results; by being upfront with clients, this strategy achieves a superior relationship. Steer clear of any reputation management firm that does not share its data, results, or achievements with potential clients.
Contact NetReputation Today
At NetReputation, we live and breathe reputation management. Since 2014, our company has provided cutting-edge reputation management services for local businesses, individuals, and large corporations alike.
As the best online reputation management company, we are ready to help you build and protect a robust digital footprint. Call NetReputation today at 844-461-3632 or complete the online form below for a free consultation.