What is brand reputation management in 2025? Our team answers your biggest questions about building a profitable business presence online. Your brand’s online reputation is more important than ever before.
Many might wonder what brand reputation management is. Others may wonder why it’s so important.
Well, it is quite simple. In today’s tech-driven society, consumers turn to the internet for answers more than ever before. And for your brand, this could spell disaster, particularly when negative feedback on Tripadvisor, Groupon and other sites for online reviews pop up during searches of your name.
That’s why managing a positive brand image online is crucial. With a strong brand reputation strategy, you can take the reins and build the positive first impressions you need to thrive online.
Brand sentiment is being built all over the internet.
Have you ever scrolled through Facebook or Instagram and found a great, branded piece of shareable content?
As e-commerce sites continue to grow, we see more niche markets everywhere. Positioning is about where and how you interact with your audience, and it makes all the difference.
Now, let’s dive into how you can maintain your brand image online through reputation management. This can be done through a combination of public relations, customer review management, and even word-of-mouth marketing.
NetReputation leverages its decades of experience in brand reputation management and marketing strategies to build and maintain a positive reputation online. As one of the top reputation management agencies, we know that your online reputation is the ticket to continued success, helping you to stand out from your competitors.
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How To Create a Positive Online Reputation Management Campaign
Most people compare products and brands when going through the buying process. Potential customers turn to the internet to learn more about businesses, products, and brands before making purchasing decisions.
Consider these stats:
- More than 93% of online shoppers read reviews before making an online purchase.
- 36% of consumers use two review sites when researching local businesses, and 41% use at least three sites.
- More than 76% of internet users go on social media to learn about brands and products.
Unfortunately, negative reviews, unfavorable articles in traditional media outlets, and negative search results are the quickest ways to scare those buyers away from your business.
So, when creating a brand reputation strategy, there are many things you should ask, including:
- Who is my ideal customer?
- Where are they located?
- What exactly are they looking for?
- How much can they afford to pay?
At NetReputation, we work with individuals and businesses to help them build and take control of their online reputation. Give us a call at 844-461-3632 to learn more.
Use Those Answers to Determine Your Target Audience
Start by creating your ideal customer persona. Grab a notebook or whiteboard and jot down your best answers to the questions above. Give this persona a name to make it more realistic.
For example, if you run a gourmet coffee shop, your ideal persona may meet the following criteria:
- Age range is 20s to mid-40s
- Steady income
- Generally in a hurry in the morning
- Budgets for $5 per coffee per day
The goal of this exercise is to create a deeper emotional connection between your business and potential customers. When a consumer can relate to you and your brand, this increases customer confidence. Throughout your brand reputation management efforts, you’re influencing your brand’s public perception, which in turn fuels business growth.
The right brand reputation management approach helps put your brand in a better position. Using what you know, you can spend more time on building the right impression and ensuring your customer service is up to snuff. After all, satisfied customers are far more likely to share their experiences with positive brand mentions in online conversations and on social media pages they frequent.
In essence, these customers become brand advocates, which is as effective as any marketing campaign using traditional advertising.
To continue with the coffee shop example, your main goal should be to attract other people to the cup in your customers’ hands, making them wonder, “Where did they get that coffee?!” This is your brand identity at work, helping drive consumer perceptions.
But apart from what you can control in-house, you must also consider the variables outside your control – and how you can minimize potential brand damage when crises emerge.
Next, let’s look at what you can do online and offline to improve your overall brand reputation strategy.
Brand Reputation Management Efforts That Produce Results
Having a strong brand reputation is about a lot more than maintaining a positive brand image online. It’s about actively and continually shaping the public’s perception of your business while instilling trust in your audience and increasing customer loyalty.
Today, customer feedback and online reviews can truly make or break your business. Business reputation management is key for your brand’s long-term success.
Proactive strategies will improve your credibility and get on top of risks before they escalate. Let’s go over some of the reputation management services and efforts that deliver results.
NetReputation provides information and services to help you protect your digital presence. Call us at 844-461-3632 to learn more, or fill out the contact form below for a free consultation.
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Improving Search Results
When it comes to managing your reputation online, owning Google’s first page should be your first priority. Regardless of what you sell, your brand should be among the top 10 results on local search pages.
The following stats are important to know in regard to SEO:
- The top organic search result on Google has an average CTR of 27.6%, and it’s 10x more likely to be clicked than the No. 10 result.
- The top 3 Google search results get more than 54% of all clicks.
- Most users don’t go past the first SERP — less than 1% were found to click on a result on the second page.
On average, Google visitors never make it past the first page. So, most brands will benefit from dedicating a part of their reputation management strategy and marketing budget to optimizing their brand’s search presence.
By continuously improving your results, you may also suppress unwanted content from your competitors, including on their own sites. For example, if they wrote an article that compared your product to their product — and, obviously, your product did not come out the winner — suppression tactics can keep that article from rising to the top of search results.
Overall, improving search results through search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the fastest and most effective ways to manage brand reputation, allowing you to build or reinforce brand loyalty. With SEO, you can control the conversation online, suppressing negative content in search results while improving your visibility in local business searches.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Whatever you sell, your approach should include generating word-of-mouth referrals, which are still among the highest-converting free marketing strategies for brands. These referrals can take several forms, including online mentions on social media channels, in-person mentions, and recommendations from user-generated content on the web. Plus, the more people are talking about you online, the higher positive content for your brand name will rank in search results.
Social Media
Effective brand reputation management incorporates numerous individual strategies. One of the most effective tools at your disposal is social media. This can be as easy as creating profiles on social media accounts and updating your feed regularly to showcase your latest products or services.
Social media creates a sense of transparency that can often open your audience’s eyes to who you are. For example, posting a video of your shop or restaurant provides customers with an exact picture of your business atmosphere.
Social media content tends to rank highly in Google Search and on other search engines. The more people speak positively about your brand on social, the better it can be for your online reputation.
Review Management
Having positive reviews on Google’s first page can double your foot traffic. Reviews feature prominently in search results, particularly for local businesses, as review sites tend to receive high volumes of traffic, sending signals to search algorithms.
One of the biggest drivers of new business is having positive online reviews on page one of Google. Consider these numbers:
- 91% of consumers say their overall perception of big brands is impacted by reviews of local branches.
- Google is the most-used website for reviews, followed by Facebook, Yelp and Tripadvisor.
- 36% of consumers use two review sites when researching local businesses, and 41% use at least three sites.
Unfortunately, negative reviews, unflattering customer feedback, and unfavorable online mentions do real damage to your brand reputation. When these reviews directly impact your brand reputation, managing them is one of the most mission-critical business strategies you can undertake.
Review management strategies include:
- Regularly Monitoring Reviews: Reputation management software can be used to monitor brand mentions and reviews on various platforms.
- Responding Quickly and Professionally: All sorts of reviews, positive and negative, should be responded to ASAP. You should never wait more than a few hours or days to reply to a reviewer.
- Analyzing Review Trends: By determining which customer concerns you hear frequently, you can make larger changes to your customer support team, processes, or products or services to prevent the same negative feedback in the future.
Keep this in mind: Almost 62% of online shoppers search for a company online if they’re not familiar with it, and very few of them will make a purchase if negative reviews show up on the search results page.
Limiting Negative Comments to Support a Positive Brand Reputation
If you run a small business, this section is crucial to your brand reputation management strategy.
The presence of negative reviews online is one of the biggest reasons for website bounce rates. It’s also among the leading causes of lost business and why many customers turn to your competitors. A single negative review can cost you quite a bit of new business. More than a few bad Google reviews can drive customers away from your business altogether.
Ensure that customer satisfaction is optimal at all times. A great customer experience can be the difference between your brand dominating your industry or fading into the background. Quality service is the key to ensuring you have satisfied customers, and these customers are far more likely to post great reviews of their experiences.
Review sites such as Tripadvisor and Angi allow consumers to post positive or negative feedback about their experience with your business. Delivering excellent customer service is one of the most effective ways of convincing your customers to leave glowing reviews. Also, you can request reviews at the point of sale or on your social media channels.
But how can these third-party review sites help improve your brand reputation management efforts?
Well, think about it. You are on vacation, and you have no idea where to go for dinner. What do you do? Chances are that you’ll Google “best restaurants near me” or something similar. You’ll likely receive several pages of search results.
How do you sort through them?
The “sort by newest” feature on Google reviews is the most useful, according to 47% of consumers. That means that not only do you need more positive reviews than negative reviews, but those positive reviews have to be recent.
And you can’t delete your negative reviews just to skew online reviews in your favor. The top factor that decreases consumer trust is if a business deletes poor comments and reviews from customers.
Promoting a Positive Brand Online
When your brand assets and brand values reflect positivity, this is a powerful message to send to your target audience.
Inspiring customer confidence and building trust in your business can help increase your revenue. And when happy customers invite more customers to give your business a try, they do your marketing for you! In a very real way, satisfied consumers become brand ambassadors, helping to build, improve, or restore your online reputation.
An easy way to beef up your brand reputation management plan is to market your achievements through press releases and social media. There are also paid advertising opportunities on social media platforms and search engines. Ultimately, you have endless ways to promote your brand’s best attributes.
Make sure to monitor your results, too. This allows you to identify your strengths and weaknesses and adjust your strategies in a timely manner.
Experts Tips for On-Brand Social Media Marketing
Start by simply taking real-time photos of your brand. Here are a few ideas:
- Behind-the-scenes photos of your workplace, packaging process, or daily routine.
- Styled product photos or images of how customers use your products.
- Flat lays of different books, work tools and other on-brand items.
- Leisure shots of your employees enjoying taking a break together.
Post your photos to your social media profiles on Facebook and Instagram. This allows you to showcase your brand and encourage social mentions and sharing. You may even reach someone across the country considering a vacation in your town!
Building a positive brand reputation on social media is as easy as posting engaging content on a regular basis.
There are various tools to optimize your social media marketing efforts, too, including Hootsuite and Canva. Hootsuite allows you to schedule social posts several weeks in advance. That way, you don’t have to take time out of each day to curate highly engaging content. Canva is a free and easy way to design all types of brand collateral, like marketing materials, social media posts, videos and more.
Online reputation management tools simplify the management process, freeing you up to concentrate on building your business.
If you have questions about improving your brand reputation management strategy or generating positive reviews, please fill out the form below. One of our knowledgeable online reputation experts will reach out right away.
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Pro Tips for Great Content Marketing
If you want your brand reputation management strategy to be top-notch, content is key. When it comes to reaching new customers online, it all starts with content. Creating content to share online is a fundamental component of online reputation management. Benefits of your branded content include:
- Improving search rankings for your business.
- Suppressing or pushing negative content off the first page of search results.
- Increasing engagement between you and your audience.
- Supporting your efforts on social media.
Focus your content marketing efforts on researching what products or services are the most popular. Then, create high-value content that answers pressing questions for customers, like how to get the most out of something you sell.
What goes into content marketing? Quite a bit! Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Create articles and blog posts for your website and other industry sites. These generate organic traffic and establish your authority in your niche.
- Offering free downloadable resources is an excellent way to get people to sign up for your mailing list. And speaking of…
- Your newsletter is an excellent marketing tool for nurturing leads and encouraging them to take the next step.
- Have you ever wanted to host a podcast? This type of media is one of the best ways to form a genuine connection with your audience. You can also reach out to industry podcasts to see if you can be a guest on one.
- Make sure to repurpose your content to get more traction out of it! Video scripts can be turned into blog posts, live events can provide multiple video snippets for your social accounts, etc.
Content marketing isn’t necessarily about closing a sale. The process takes a bit longer than that. But it can definitely move you forward in terms of connecting with an audience member now who will become a bonafide customer in the near future.
Dive into the world of content marketing more by reading our article about it. Get it here.
Contact NetReputation Today for Expert Brand Reputation Services
As leaders in online reputation management, the team at NetReputation leverages a wide range of tools and strategies to help you improve your digital presence. Managing brand reputation is what we do, creating a landscape where consumers trust in you and your business.
Speak to our team about our online reputation management services, including positive brand perception, social media campaigns, and building an impactful reputation management strategy. Your online reputation is the gateway to your success — get the most out of your online visibility with online reputation management tactics that produce results.
Please fill out the form below or contact our online reputation team today by dialing 844-461-3632.
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by Net Reputation