Working With Reputation Online: Practical Tips

The brand value is a crucial part of the value of the entire company. In turn, the value of a brand largely depends on how loyal consumers are to it. That is, the success of a business is strongly affected by its reputation.

No matter how useful your product or service is, improperly positioning it can limit your success. There are practically no monopolized segments left in today's market. If a client does not like your public image, they will most likely go to a competitor. 

Properly organized reputation management allows you to assess client loyalty and establish a strategy for interacting with it. This is a large-scale, complex, and continuous work. Let’s figure out how to do it.

A good reputation is more valuable than money.

Publilius Syrus, Latin writer

Why Online Reputation?

The Internet today affects the image of the company more than many other channels. Online, the opinion of the public is more important than even paid advertising. A negative review, especially if multiplied by social networks, can cancel out the promotional effect of a powerful and costly advertising campaign. It is critical indeed to create a positive online image.

Preparatory Stage

Before starting your campaign, you need to assess the current situation and address the issues. This is a crucial stage because all further work will depend on it.

Here is an approximate work plan for the preparatory stage.

• Clearly formulate the reasons for and objectives of your reputation management. You need to determine the range of measures that can be used and the ones you will definitely not use.
• Build a reputational semantic core. You need medium- and high-frequency keywords that people use to search specifically for your company and its products.
• Make a map of the presence of your businesses on the Internet. Find all of the websites where your company is represented and where there are many reviews about your business. Pay attention to the balance of positive and negative reactions, any causes for negativity that you can identify, and the platforms with the largest number of negative reviews.
• Analyze the brand's position. You need to know its unique features, strengths and weaknesses, as well as the ways it interacts with users.

Form a pool of tasks based on the results and evaluate the amount of work to be done. 

Analytics by Mentions

To effectively work with your online reputation, the first step is to learn what, if anything, people “say” about your company on the Internet.

The easiest way to assess mentions is to collect them manually. Take queries from the collected semantic core and search for fresh relevant records on them. You can also regularly check the websites where your brand is represented  for new entries.

If there is not enough time for such work, you can use specialized services. This approach offers, first of all, the ability to automate the process. You can configure the service to get a selection of mentions. You can collect a report for a specific period, for a given tone of reviews, and so on. 

Important: The geography of monitoring and functionality of each service are different. So for a complete picture, you may need to connect several tools at once.

Analyzing the Current Reputation

Based on the collected feedback, you will be able to understand the general attitude toward your company. Keep in mind that perspectives are changeable, so you need to monitor reviews constantly. This way, you will be able to adjust your reputation strategy in a timely manner. Constant monitoring will also help you decide which techniques work and which ones simply waste your resources.

When analyzing the current situation, consider the following recommendations:

• Assess your company's user image at least once a month. It will help you stay on top of changing consumer sentiment and test various techniques for working with reputation.
• Determine the causes of negativity by investigating negative reviews. That will help identify and eliminate many problems in interactions with the consumer.
• Note how your competitors are represented on the web. What are their strengths and weaknesses as described by users? In what ways are you similar, and in what ways are you different? Ideally, this can help to prevent the mistakes that your competitors have made.
• Identify your most active audience based on the tone of reviews. For successful promotion, you need to know who praises you most often and who is most dissatisfied with your competitors. That will be the start of gaining loyal fans for your brand.

Important: try to collect statistics on your promotional activities as well. You can check if they appear to have an impact on user perceptions. That will help you optimize the content policy and refine the overall promotion strategy.

All you have in business is your reputation — so it's very important that you keep your word.

Richard Branson, Virgin Group co-founder

Creating a Reputation Strategy

Having a strategy is necessary for consistent and logical steps. A strategy uses the results of the research from previous sections. 

• Formulate the goals and objectives. This can include strengthening the rating on target sites or increasing the frequency of brand mentions. It can also involve working with negative ratings and other goals. Keep your objectives specific and measurable so that you can track their completion.
• Determine the appropriate style of interacting with the audience. The right brand tone is difficult to find, but its uniqueness can be worth a lot. Sexually charged posts by VIZIT and cozy ones by IKEA are successfully embodied by their Tone of Voice. You should also identify the topics you will not discuss. 
• Think how to motivate customers to create user-generated content (UGC) mentioning your brand. User experience often looks more convincing and inspires more trust than a company's own materials.
• Make a content plan. These publications should be aimed primarily at enhancing reputation.
• Prepare your own content in various formats (text, media) and accumulate a database of user publications about you. You can link to such publications in your own posts.

Important: the developed strategy must be modified as work progresses. Even if your work is successful, the situation can always change. The only way to manage that issue is monitoring. 

Maps to Help You

Various services that offer maps will be a useful tool in forming a reputation management strategy. They visualize the location of your company and also to create a powerful platform for reviews. Such services are suitable for businesses of any scale. It doesn't matter if you are running a small workshop or a federal-level company — you must be on the maps.

There are multiple advantages to using such services.

• Search engines view maps as reliable. In other words, being on the maps is useful to get closer to the top of search results.
• You can usually fill out the organization’s information. Specify the data that is important for your goals, share photos, do what you think makes your business more attractive.
• Convenient communication channel with users. By answering questions and reviews, your company will emphasize that you care about the opinion of the audience. This is another advantage and can assist in constructing the company's reputation.
• The feedback can be sorted by popularity and usefulness. The reviews can become a kind of first impression for the client.

Do Not Be Afraid of Negativity

Not every negative review points objectively to your shortcomings. Reviews can be guided by emotions, and they are usually subjective. In addition, there is a possibility of your competitors buying or personally writing negative reviews. In other words, bad reviews will happen, and you should know how to address such negativity.

First, do not leave negative reviews or other comments with a similar tone without a response. Try to find out the details of the client’s displeasure and offer some form of compensation. It does not have to be something big or even monetary, but at the very least, you need to apologize.

Important: it is better not to let a client know that he is wrong. Even if they really made the mistake himself, it should be pointed out gently.

If you suspect misinformation, try to find out the details, such as the date of purchase or the order number. If it turns out that the review is fake, feel free to write just that in the answer to it.

The main task when dealing with negativity is to replace it with positive reviews. Here are a few tips on how to achieve that.

• Create additional channels that can be used for feedback. It can be a page with reviews on the official website, a new feedback platform profile, third-party posting, etc.
• Increase output at sites where positive reviews prevail. Leave comments under positive reviews and involve users in the discussion. Such activity will be rewarded by search engines.

It is Necessary to Work With Reviews

Working with reviews is a large-scale topic that deserves a separate article. Here, we will only give the key recommendations.

• Make the processing of comments and ratings a full-fledged part of your strategy in constructing your reputation.
• Create a profile on all major review platforms.
• Create a system of reactions and use it to build your official responses to reviews of any kind.
• There is nothing wrong with asking your customers to write a review. Sometimes such a request can include a discount on the next order or some kind of bonus. But be careful with incentives: some review websites prohibit them. And some customers who had a pleasant experience might decide to write a review without a bonus.

Important: whatever the tone of the review, its author should feel that you value their opinion. Always be grateful for feedback, and do not limit yourself to template phrases. Ideally, each answer would be individual and personalized.

Final Recommendations

Reputation management is not a one-time action but a constant, systematic process with a variety of tasks. All of them must correspond to the main tasks, goals, objectives and strategies of the company.

Great importance should be given to tracking the mentions of your business and their mood. Choose the frequency of monitoring, taking into account the scale of your activity.

Try to be present at as many response sites and other review platforms as possible. 

When building a communication strategy, try to create your own unique style of communication. Avoid the same templates and actively answer questions from the audience. Do not ignore any comment, regardless of its tone.

Remember: a user who enjoyed communicating with you is more likely to become an advocate for your brand. That often means free advertising, which should not be underestimated. 

If you need reputational management, you can discuss the different tasks related to it with our Freelancers: they are sure to help!