The Importance of Online Reputation Management

PR has been traditionally responsible for maintaining the reputation of a business.  Companies of all sizes spend good money trying to avoid the dreaded negative press and in dealing with any such press as best as possible. But what about online reputation management? As the Internet has grown, business has changed. An estimated 80% of consumers research their potential purchases online before deciding whether to buy and then where to buy from. Some of these consumers will then follow this up with a purchase offline – but the research starts on the Internet.

While there’s no argument that the wealth of information available on the Internet is hugely valuable to both businesses and consumers alike, it does mean that businesses have to be completely aware of their online reputations. If a consumer is considering making a purchase or taking a service from your company, there’s a good chance they will research you first, particularly if they have previously never heard of you.

This research is likely to start at Google or another search engine. While the first result for a search under your company name is likely to be your own website, there are by default ten results per page. What are the other 9? They could be newspaper snippets about your company, directory details etc. Or they could be forums or blog posts in which a discussion about your company has taken place.

Forums and blogs are an entirely open platform on which anyone, whether a stranger, disgruntled consumer or even ex-employee, can have their say about anything. Their opinion is then available online for potentially millions of people to see. This means that a search for your company name could be bringing up literally anything that people have said about you.

A negative result could affect a potential customer’s buying decision. As such, it is now essential to be aware of online reputation management and to be actively maintaining a positive profile for your company online.

Online reputation management essentially involves:-

• Being aware of what people are saying about you online. You should know exactly what potential customers are seeing when they run a search on your company and this is something you should be constantly up to date with, given the frequency at which the results of search engine searches change.

• Creating a positive, honest presence for your company online through online marketing, social media and online PR.

• Acknowledging and dealing with any negativity in the appropriate way. There are very few companies who will find that absolutely everything said about them online is positive. The relative anonymity of the web means that people can say pretty much anything and negative press can creep up, even if it’s not genuine!  Part of online reputation management is always going to be in dealing with such instances.

So whether it is something you decide to take on yourself or whether you contract professionals to carry it out for you, the significance of such cannot be underestimated. There’s an incredibly high value attached to a positive digital reputation for your brand and this particular area of online marketing is worth investment.

This is a guest post by Stacey Cavanagh of Tecmark Systems Ltd, an online marketing agency specialising in SEO and Online Reputation Management .

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