Reputation management

Search engine reputation management

What is reputation management on the Internet and who needs this service?

The purpose of search engine reputation management is to eliminate the maximum of SERPs negative references by inquiries related to the brand name.

Reputation management is a planned impact on factors that affect the reputation of business structures or individuals. With the development of social networks, this service has become popular on the Internet and extends to the reputational background of the brand, influencing the results of the search issue.

Entrepreneurs and marketers start thinking about using online reputation management services in two cases:

1. When they find on the web a lot of negative reviews about their company or products. Both the company's employees and customers can report negatives. It happens that the owner of the business himself finds negative comments in the results of the SERP on the "brand + feedback" request.
2. When the company is concerned about increasing the level of customer service and perceives recall sites as an additional channel of communication with consumers.

However, ideally, it is necessary to deal with online reputation management before the company enters the market. Regardless of the direction of the business, using services of reputation management companies at the start will create a positive image of the brand and a managed information field. As a result, company will be able to attract loyal consumers, quickly identify and solve their problems and achieve the main goal - it will become profitable.

What internet reputation management techniques to choose? Many market players and customers do not know the basic terminology and do not understand the difference between Hidden Marketing and ORM. As a result, the market does not develop, agencies offer customers the services that they don’t need. Let’s consider in details what these abbreviations mean and what tasks each tool should solve.

Online reputation management

Hidden Marketing. Unlike classical advertising in social networks or on forums, when agents of influence or opinion leaders directly promote the product and give links to the company's website, hidden marketing is not so obvious. The user compares a product or service with analogues, tells about personal experience of its use or gives unobtrusive advice. In hidden marketing, the sites where the brand is mentioned are important, not their number. Therefore, competent reputation management agencies approach the promotion of the brand strategically, for example, use search engine optimization tools.

Advantages:

• Increase the brand awareness.
• Increase the interest of the target audience in goods or services, as they are recommended by ordinary people (agents of influence), whose opinion is trusted by the audience.
• Low cost of promotion through agents of influence in comparison with classical advertising.

Disadvantages:

• The difficulty of assessing effectiveness. For example, the effectiveness of direct advertising can be analyzed by the number of visits to the site or by the number of activated promotional codes that the blogger offered to subscribers. Hidden marketing does not provide links or indicators on which it is possible to track its effectiveness.
• Work exclusively with positive feedback. Using only hidden marketing, the company does not learn about negative publications that can scare off potential buyers.

Online Reputation Management. With the help of semantic search services, for example YouScan, IQBuzz or Brand Analytics, the agency which provides reputation management services monitors the brand references. Every 10-20 minutes, the services scan their own database of sites and report the appearance of new reviews.

The next stage is their analysis and processing: solving the problems of customers, answering questions about goods or services, and gratitude for the positive feedback. To a greater extent, online reputation management is an additional channel of communication with current customers at convenient sites for them, and less - an instrument for attracting a new audience.

Advantages:

• Additional channel of customer service and communication with the target audience.
• Search and elimination of the negative reviews.
• Increase the number of positive publications.
• Identification of problems in the quality of goods, services or services in the systemic use of the tool.

Disadvantages:

• A limited number of sites that are scanned by automatic services. Some online reputation management companies that offer ORM services say they analyze the entire Internet. In fact, automatic services index only popular social networks and forums.
• Unilateral evaluation of effectiveness. On the one hand, most reputation management consultants in agencies report to the customer on the number of positive reviews published. On the other hand, few people think about how these publications influence the decision to buy or order services. The usual story is when the agency posts reviews on one sites, while the most potential customers read absolutely another resources.

A good reputation on the Internet is one of the most powerful ways to increase sales. Therefore, you need to permanently monitor what users say about you to place your brand on the desired high level.