As the competition gets tougher, the companies are becoming proactive to and using search engine reputation management and content online reputation management to proactively shield their brands or reputations from damaging content brought to light through various means. There are some companies that use these tactics reactively, in attempts to minimize damage inflicted by inflammatory websites launched by consumers or competitors. Often disgruntled employees, displeased customers, or competitors post negative blogs or comments that come up on the first page of search engines results. A negative online reputation can cost your company millions of dollars. Bad postings, negative feedback in blogs, negative testimonials in popular forums, unrealistic product reviews from false users can potentially put a company out of business.
Online reputation management or ORM is the process that involves constant research and monitoring of an individuals or company’s reputation, which is represented by user generated content and all kinds of online media. Online reputation management is also referred to as online reputation monitoring.
Online reputation management is a new concept but has gained popularity in the competitive business world. The type of online content to be monitored by ORM not only includes professional content sponsored by big media giants but also includes user generated contents like blogs, reviews, comments, ratings and all types of specialized websites irrespective of the group, company, person, trend, concept, or event. Initially, the need for management of user generated media gave birth to online reputation management.
With the growing popularity of social media and social networking websites, reaching the target audience has become easier. Often the e-commerce websites use the power of user generated media feedback. By using consumer/user generated media feedback rating the sellers and buyers were given reputations which helped the other users in making decisions regarding the purchase and selling of products.
It is the content on the web that can make or break reputation and brand image of a company. So the best solution is to create positive content. Writing effective content is one of the best approaches to exercise wise online reputation management. As a matter of fact, effective content will not only win you a lot of support and patronage, it will also make many sites or blogs 'link back' to you. With the help of valuable back links, you can improve search engine position to such a measure that it can feature in the first two pages of a search engine.
Examples of online media monitored by ORM include Social networks, Review sites, Social Bookmarking websites, Blogs, Discussion forums, Blogging communities, and Micro blogs.
Some of the effects of content online reputation management are as given below:
- Customer satisfaction can be improved by gaining insights from consumers about what is
good and bad about their product or services.
- Increase perceptions of brand by creating opportunities to interact with consumers.
- Help identify gaps for products and services which can be developed for profitable niche markets.
- Gain insights about competitors and their customers’ perceptions about their products and services.
- Better understanding of the relationship between user generated content and traditional forms of online media, such as news, print.
- Gain insight into online networks, and keywords found in user-generated content, which can help to improve natural search results about the person, product, or business.
.Content online reputation management is an effective way of enhancing brand image.
