Any publicity is good publicity — while that thought may seem empowering, taking it quite literally might not always be in the best interest of your business.
With online review directories, business listings and social media channels, people have so many platforms where they can express their experience and views about a business they interacted with. Be it Apple, Samsung, Wendy’s or just a small unknown brand — businesses, big and small, receive positive and negative reviews.
But do you have to know everything people are saying about you?
When your business’s name is involved in the online chatter, it definitely helps to be aware and cautious about what’s going on. While it may seem fair that not all people will be pleased with your services, negative reviews are often the result of misunderstandings, miscommunication or one-off experiences.
In such cases, a good review response can greatly help repair online reputation damage and highlight your business’s positive outlook, turning that negative comment in your favor.
In this article, you’ll learn more about online reputation management (ORM) and how you can use it to revamp your image online.
Contents:
• What Is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?
• Why Every Business Needs an ORM Plan
• 7 Steps to Establishing an Effective ORM Plan
• Best Practices for Ongoing Reputation Management
But before we delve into the “how” part of it, let’s take a look at what an ORM plan actually is and why your business needs one.
What Is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?
ORM involves brand reputation monitoring that covers everything from customer reviews to social media reputation management. It focuses on both proactive and reactive measures to address feedback and mitigate the impact of negative content.
It can be difficult for companies to track their online image by themselves, not to mention respond to every comment. But, by leveraging a dedicated social media reputation management services provider that uses reputation management tools, the management process becomes a whole lot easier and more effective.
Why Every Business Needs an ORM Plan
All successful businesses started with a solid plan, providing clear direction and set goals, as well as outlining the steps needed to attain that success. The same goes for your online reputation.
A good ORM plan allows you to focus on getting great reviews, sending personalized review responses and resolving any negative customer service experiences before they become bigger problems.
Online reputations are delicate. One poorly phrased response to negative feedback can snowball into lasting damage. The effect of one bad review often hits harder for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and start-ups that are just beginning to build their name. In anticipation of such situations, having an ORM plan in place will stand you in good stead.
An ORM plan is a structured approach to responding to customer feedback, managing reviews, addressing negative content, and proactively building a positive brand image, often with the help of an automated tool.
“There must be an organized plan and a software tool with automation to save time and effort on the overall execution,” said Tim Clark, Thrive Local’s Senior Reputation Manager.
With an ORM plan you can ward off potential damage to your online reputation, stay prepared in case of crises and even significantly improve how your target audiences perceive your business.
There are multiple reasons why managing brand reputation can be important for a business. Let’s explore each of these in some detail.
1. Building and Maintaining Customer Trust: Customers often rely on online reviews to make purchasing decisions. A good share of these reviews come from social media. A well-managed social media reputation management company would respond to these comments so that potential clients see your brand as trustworthy.
2. Gaining Control Over Brand Perception: ORM allows businesses to take control of their narrative. Rather than letting reviews or third-party opinions define your brand, ORM gives you a platform to share your story and demonstrate what makes your business unique.
3. Responding Effectively to Feedback: Responding promptly and professionally to both positive and negative feedback shows customers that you value their input. A well-thought-out ORM plan includes response strategies to handle feedback in a way that reinforces your brand values.
4. Minimizing the Impact of Negative Reviews: Negative reviews happen, but with ORM, you can handle them strategically to mitigate any damage. By addressing complaints constructively and publicly, you can often turn dissatisfied customers into advocates and build a stronger brand image in the process.
5. Enhancing Brand Credibility and Customer Experience: A proactive ORM plan positions your brand as credible and responsive. Through consistent engagement and improvement, ORM can elevate the overall customer experience, increasing satisfaction and encouraging repeat business.
7 Steps to Establishing an Effective ORM Plan
Each business is unique, requiring a different ORM plan to manage its reputation. For example, small businesses may be more focused on creating an image first, while larger enterprises may need to focus on platforms to track and measure the public perception of their brand. To launch an ORM plan that works for your company, follow these key steps:
Step 1: Audit Your Current Online Presence
If you have a Google Business Profile (GBP), looking at your reviews and ratings could be a good starting point for your brand reputation analysis and can be done by yourself. For a more comprehensive online reputation audit, you’ll need to see what’s being said about your brand on review sites, social media and other platforms.
This can be done with the help of online reputation audit companies. They have the tools that look for positive and negative patterns and guide your ORM strategy. This initial audit will serve as a benchmark to measure progress over time.
Step 2: Set Clear Goals
No matter how good you know you are, people tend to trust what others have to say about your products and services. This is why it’s essential to ensure your brand is not represented in a bad light.
With that in mind, determine what you want to achieve with your ORM efforts. Some common objectives include:
• Increasing positive online reviews
• Reducing negative content visibility
• Improving customer engagement
• Building thought leadership
As a proactive step, companies should contact all satisfied clients and encourage them to talk positively about their experience with the business.
“They (companies) can focus on getting great reviews and private review responses to have positive online content and uncover negative customer service trends before they become big problems and crises,” Clarke said.
Step 3: Identify Key Platforms
People are talking about your brand; you just need to know where. Keeping an eye on the market sentiment about your brand can give your business a direction. For that, you need to identify the platforms where most of your audience is.
Not every online platform may be relevant for your business. These could include social media sites, review sites (Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, etc.) and industry-specific forums. These key platforms will be your primary focus areas for brand reputation monitoring and engagement.
Using an online reputation management tool, which features real-time alerts and AI-based automated review responses, can be handy here.
Step 4: Create Response Strategies
Develop a structured approach for responding to feedback. Outline how your team should respond to positive reviews, negative reviews, and neutral ones as well. Not all comments and reviews are created equal. Some comments may be actual experiences of people, yet a few others may only be designed to troll your brand or destroy your image. It’s important to distinguish between these types of feedback to manage your online reputation effectively.
It helps to have a consistent tone of voice when responding to comments. For instance, if you react defensively to criticism but respond warmly to positive feedback, it can come across as inauthentic and may damage your reputation rather than improve it.
A professional online review response service provider can advise you and ensure prompt, consistent and brand-aligned responses for your reviews. They ensure every customer interaction ends on a positive note. This greatly helps repair online reputation for your business.
Step 5: Set Up Brand Reputation Monitoring Tools
Reputation management tools simplify monitoring by automatically alerting you to brand mentions, reviews and comments. Popular tools include Google Alerts, Brand24 (Mention), Hootsuite, etc.
A local reputation management tool can be more spot-on for a business operating in a defined geography. With that, you can build an impressive collection of positive reviews, drive more leads and secure higher search rankings. An online reputation management tool contains features such as:
• Integrations with top customer relationship management (CRM) systems
• Personalized dashboard
• Real-time review monitoring and review generation
• Customizable review notifications
• Reporting and analytics
Having a tool greatly helps to ease out the tasks.
Step 6: Encourage Positive Reviews
Negative reviews can sometimes leave a bad taste in your mouth, but it’s unwise to ignore them and just move on. It’s best to take them as constructive criticism, reply in a dignified, positive way and work on those areas if they are valid.
On the other hand, positive feedback is highly rewarding. The best reputation management strategy is to encourage more positive reviews by responding equally encouragingly. After all, satisfied customers are often the best advocates for your brand. You can further encourage positive reviews by:
• Requesting feedback after positive customer experiences
• Sharing simple review links to make it easy for customers to leave reviews
• Incentivizing reviews with contests or loyalty rewards (where platform guidelines allow)
Your employees play an important role here in acquiring positive feedback from your customers. “The employees have to help drive the success by asking customers to respond to reviews and surveys and pushing to get more 4-5 star responses,” Clarke said.
An online reviews management service helps foster positive reviews, strengthen your online reputation and provide a buffer against the occasional negative feedback.
Step 7: Develop Content to Improve Reputation
Content can significantly impact how your brand is perceived online. Focus on creating high-quality, reputation-boosting content, such as:
• Customer Success Stories: Showcase satisfied clients to build trust.
• Testimonials: Highlight positive feedback from real customers.
• Thought Leadership: Publish articles or blogs that establish your brand as a leader in your industry.
This type of content not only enhances your brand image but also contributes to better SEO, which can improve the visibility of positive content over negative mentions.
Best Practices for Ongoing Reputation Management
ORM isn’t a one-time effort — it requires consistent attention. Here are some best practices to keep your reputation strong:
• Respond Promptly and Thoughtfully: Aim to respond within 24 hours to show customers their feedback is valued. Even if you’re addressing a negative comment, a prompt response can demonstrate professionalism.
• Conduct Regular Audits: Schedule regular online reputation audits to assess your progress and adjust your strategy as needed.
• Encourage Customers to Share Their Experiences: Don’t shy away from asking satisfied customers to share their feedback online. Positive reviews create a favorable impression for future customers.
• Learn From Feedback: Use constructive criticism as a learning tool to improve your products, services and customer interactions.
• Stay Consistent: Consistent engagement, quality content and regular audits will solidify your reputation over time and help you stay ahead of potential issues.
Thrive Digitally With Proactive and Reactive Reputation Management Strategies
Launching an effective online reputation management plan involves a balance of proactive and reactive strategies, from auditing your current reputation to engaging with customer feedback and encouraging positive reviews.
By setting clear goals, using reputation management tools, hiring a reputation management strategy development company and following best practices, your business can build and maintain a positive online presence.
That is part of what the online reviews management team at Thrive Local does for you, helping you build a positive online presence that matches your vision and goals.
Our reputation management strategy specialists empower businesses with ORM solutions that protect and elevate their brand’s image, ranging from monitoring brand mentions to developing customized response strategies. With a solid ORM approach, you can confidently manage your brand’s online presence and cultivate lasting customer trust.
Start building your reputation management plan and reach out today.
