Social media marketers focus more on online reputation management or ORM because it impacts any business significantly, irrespective of its type and nature. The online reputation will determine precisely how other people see your business when they search for you online. Subsequently, online reputation management also influences the kind of info people will find proactively.
There are different techniques and strategies that you can follow to push down any harmful or damaging content further Google search engine results pages or SERPs. This you can do by ranking your content by providing more desirable materials.
You need for all these is that it is the top five ranking sites in the listings in the search results of Google that receives more than two-thirds of all clicks. ORM, therefore, is not only about managing your content in the search engines but also involves:
- Managing the negative review of your business
- Encouraging happy clients and
- Contributing to gaining more positive feedback.
In order to gain all these, you will need to make the best of the different available digital marketing channels that are involved in personal and professional online reputation. These channels include:
- Paid media such as PPC advertising with Google AdWords, sponsored posts on blogs, display ads on Facebook, and more.
- Earned media is that which describes the coverage of your business.
- Social media to create an extension of your brand to provide more avenues for people to interact.
It also includes owned properties such as your business websites and blogs on which you have total control
Social media and ORM plan
You will need to follow a specific plan for social media and your online reputation management. Your plan should include one of the most crucial aspects, which is you must first know what exactly you want to monitor to improve your online reputation. It should ideally be more than managing the messages coming directly to you.
The different things that you should monitor include:
- The company name: This is what will define your company, and therefore there should be no misspellings or errors.
- The products or services: This is an essential aspect because there may be several people who will mention your product or service but may not know or mention your brand name.
- The high-profile employees: You will also create a better impact on there is an employee who stands out.
- The popular industry keywords: This will help you to know what and how people are saying about your company in your industry.
Most importantly, you should know about your biggest competitors. Such competitive analysis will enable you to gather different data and useful metrics that will help you to perform better than them.
The online reputation management commandments
To protect you and your brand from criticism online, you will need to follow the most important commandments. These are:
- Since trust is hard to gain and a highly perishable asset, you must make people respect you.
- You must also be radically transparent in your approach.
- It is required to monitor what people are saying about you and your brand.
- You will be better off if you react quickly and politely in case there is a customer complaint.
- You must also address criticism in a positive manner.
- You must treat Google page 1 as your business card.
- It is also required to understand your detractors.
- Also, make sure that you learn from your mistakes.
- Attack the illegitimate attackers or any illegal behavior promptly.
Lastly and most importantly, do not shy away from asking for help from an expert ORM Company South Florida as and when required.
Play out of the ring
You should focus outside social networks only because social media can influence your online reputation, especially in the search engines. For this, you will need to follow a prevention strategy that will help you to:
- Get into other authoritative social networks
- Establish and optimize the social network accounts
- Lay a solid foundation for your online reputation.
Ideally, search engines love good and more reliable social network accounts. Therefore, make sure that you increase the trust and authority and trust of your social network accounts by:
- Linking to them
- Optimizing them and
- Updating them regularly by frequently posting in them.
Experts say that you must make the best use of the most influential and strategic social network accounts of your brand and optimize them immediately in the best way you can.
Build a social strategy
In order to manage your online reputation in the best possible way, you should create a solid social plan. It all started with creating pages and filling out profiles on different social media platforms such as:
- LinkedIn and more.
Depending on your brand, business type, and industry niche, you may also use other social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest, which are exclusively used for sharing photos and short videos.
Creating the right social strategy is essential because different social platforms have different requirements, approaches, and content. Make sure that you invest a considerable amount of time in it as well as follow a trial and error method to find the right social strategy. Moreover, following a social media content approval process will help you keep track of the type of content you are publishing. After all, your content will represent the quality of your business. You will find several free resources online that will provide you with step-by-step instructions to create the best and most effective social media marketing plan.
A right social strategy will help you to create and maintain a better and more active online presence by managing your accounts correctly. This will not only help you to be consistent but also monitor the conversation.
Focus on social responsibility
In this age of social media, you will find it much easier to manage your online reputation if you focus on your social responsibility. Working for a social cause will enhance your reputation a great deal. This will fetch your rich dividends as a byproduct.
Focus on causes that are:
- Comparatively safe
- Viewed as good deeds by the majority of the people and
- Related to the environment.
More and more brands engage them with such social causes not only to improve their reputation but also to increase their sales volumes apart from gaining new loyal customers.
