Online reputation management is defined by search engine results, ranking
consumer reviews, social media comments, articles, and press. And, the
Web makes it easy for potential customers to run searches on their own.
Currently, 100 billion searches are conducted monthly on Google alone.
If you Google your company name, what do you see?
Today's companies have to own the conversation when it comes to search.
This means proactive online reputation management strategies must be
employed to keep a company's voice strong among search results and
social media interactions. Online reputation management should never be
used solely to bury bad information about a company on the Web. In fact,
reputation management involves more than brand perception; it is a
practice in brand understanding, which means consistency is key. If a
company's brand is not consistent online, online reputation will suffer.
Ninety-four percent of customers do research online before purchasing a
product or contacting a company about their service offerings. Much of
this research done online by potential customers is performed on the big
search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. First page results on these
keyword-focused search listings are imperative since very few searchers
make it beyond the first page of listings. In fact, the majority of
searchers never make it beyond the top seven listings.
Your Company's Reputation Affects Your Company's Worth
Reputation clearly impacts a company's sales, revenue, and stock prices,
and with the world moving to making the majority of their purchases
online, online reputation management is imperative. A 2013 Harris poll
proves this point, showing clearly that the companies with the highest
reputation are most often the companies with the highest stock prices.
Apple had a dramatic loss in stock pricing last year, and the firm fell
in the reputation polls. Amazon did exactly the opposite within the same
year—coming out head-and-shoulders above the rest in both reputation and
rising stock pricing.
One of the biggest problems with a company's online reputation is that
it often remains forgotten until something bad happens. Reactive online
reputation management is available for situations like this, but it
takes time to employ. It is much more effective to proactively build and
maintain a company's online reputation as opposed to going into recovery
mode when bad press hits the Web.
It is prudent to think through a company's online reputation before
there are any black marks to fight. This means deploying a consistent
stream of content that focuses on the good. Social media can help with
this strategy as well, but each interaction must be well thought out.
Search engine algorithms take social media mentions into account, but
these interactions also build brand and help create an army of
supporters to back the brand and the products or services offered.
Consumers and business prospects are holding conversations with each
other about products and services online, and these conversations are
showing up in search results. We are no longer in an era of pushing
advertising and marketing content out to the world to encourage chosen
brand position. From the brand manager to the CEO, corporate officers
are mitigating risk through proactive reputation management by
positioning the corporate brand in a way that must hold a dialogue with
today's consumer.
Your Employees' Personal Reputations Affect Your Company's Worth
It is easy to correlate a company's online reputation with company
worth, but personal online reputations play a part too. Companies of
today must set up guidelines and parameters to encourage employees to
use social media in a productive way. Some companies have taken a
hard-line approach to employees' social media use and written strict
guidelines for what is acceptable, on both personal social media
interactions and company-driven interactions. While this seems to be a
good approach, many companies have seen it backfire—with firings often
being overturned by court decisions that are furiously trying to keep up
with technology.
Companies that offer a helpful approach to personal online reputation
management often see the best results. This means taking an extra step
and working to train employees to use social media interactions as a
valuable business tool. And, while it is an extra step and added
expense, it is one that can pay off in spades later. These social media
guidelines not only build an employee's personal brand, but they help to
build your corporate brand and image as well and have also been shown to
improve productivity and increase performance.
Social media can be a great tool. It offers collaboration and access to
ideas, especially for larger companies that have employees with a wide
geographic spread. But, as with any tool, social media offers a risk. It
gives the employees of your company a voice and can allow them direct
access to your customer base. If an employee becomes disgruntled, you
quickly have a problem.
Within the Internet marketing world, there are five basic rules to
social media interactions. These guidelines work for companies that are
representing themselves online as well as employees and heads of
corporations who choose to use social media through personal profiles.
Known as the "5 Rs of Social Media," these guidelines include:
Reason
Represent yourself
Responsibility
Respect
Restraint
As a corporate brand ambassador, your employees should be encouraged to
think through the Rs and the impact that their post could have on both
corporate and personal brand. Remember, the best online reputation
management is proactive. Many employees view social media outlets as the
gossip forum for the office, but social media postings spread a lot
faster than mindless gossip at the water cooler. If your employees'
profiles are public, or their posts are shared in any way, the situation
goes from an interoffice matter to a global online reputation management
nightmare.
But, if your employees are properly trained, they will learn the value
that social media can have for them personally. For example, building
yourself up as a knowledgably source of information within your field
can have multiple benefits, both in an employee's current workplace and
beyond. Encouraging your employees to represent themselves online as
they would at a business dinner is a good start. They also need to
understand that their interactions online become permanent record. It is
impossible to delete things from the Web—cached copies are always
available.
Working with an Online Reputation Management Firm
There are many avenues to explore when protecting a company's online
reputation, and there are always new threats. For example, one of the
most recent threats gaining attention is the release of a wide variety
of new Internet domains—generic top-level domains (GTLDs). A GTLD is the
part of the domain name system of the Internet that can be viewed by
regular users as the suffix at the end of the domain name. The most
common, of course, is .com, but there are other options available as
well. Before 1998, there were only eight GTLDs available for use. These
included .net, .com, and .gov, all of which are easily recognizable to
the common Internet user. Seven more GTLDs became available in 2000.
This wave included .biz, .museum, and .info. Still more were added in
2004, but this crop was never widely used, though the GTLD .xxx did draw
a wide net of publicity.
There has now been a release of more than 1,000 new GTLDs. This release
provides an amazing opportunity for companies to brand themselves, but
it also creates a large concern when it comes to online reputation
management. With this many variations out there, how can a company
ensure that its name is protected?
It is currently common practice for companies to purchase their name
under several different GTLDs. Often, large companies also purchase
their name with a variety of negative connotations attached as well.
With the new GTLD options available, your company can now brand itself
in a variety of different ways. For example, location-based GTLDs can
help customers narrow down content, and subsites focused on different
aspects of a business can help to better organize content and serve
customers with exactly what they are seeking.
Conclusion
There is a lot to control now, making it all the more
imperative that companies partner with an Internet marketing company
that understands good proactive online reputation management tactics
that will keep their brand safe. Bottom line, if your company is on the
Web, you need an online reputation management strategy that is proactive
and also focuses on constant and consistent monitoring. This allows
problems to be dealt with expeditiously, so that your business can
maintain a strong, healthy presence with your customers online.