How Online Reputation Management Can Positively Promote Your Brand

As the web continues to expand, we see a constant influx of user-generated content (UGC) emerging everywhere. Even the most comprehensive of marketing teams are unable to create enough content to promote maximum visibility across all the platforms the vast World Wide Web has to offer.

Giving incentives to consumers may lead to them acting as your very own inadvertent marketers. If they like your product or service, they might recommend it online, on Facebook, Twitter, their blog or elsewhere. This will also result in better publicity for your site, or your product or service. Having brand advocates to spread the good word about your brand without any pushing is really achievable thanks to the ubiquity of social media, where connection to hundreds and thousands of potential customers is a status-update, a tweet, or a Like away.

But user-generated content is not always positive. Displeased customers are all too happy to share their unpleasant experiences with the world. Any publicity is good publicity? Definitely not – bad press can harm your brand’s reputation and, as a result, negatively affect ROI. According to the Journal of Retailing and Customer Services, a happy customer tells three friends, but an unhappy customer tells 3,000. The truth of the matter is that we all love a good moan. Think about it – are you more likely to rave about good customer service, or rant about a particularly bad experience you’ve had? The latter, of course, is just human nature.

 

But as long as this negativity remains visible on the internet, it poses a problem. How can you shift the focus from the negative to the positive?

The solution is Online Reputation Management. ORM integrates with existing online marketing strategies to promote positive content, and discourage the negative. Usually coinciding with an SEO campaign, an effective ORM initiative targets lucrative keywords to ensure positive content trumps negative content on searches.

ORM is commonly used in a reactionary capacity to combat negative press. Effective ORM campaigns have saved businesses from losing money following company blunders or a bout of poor reviews, promoting the efforts undertaken to turn around negativity and improve on the aspect of their service that had been previously lacking.

ORM shouldn’t just be confined to damage control scenarios. Its continued use and implementation in a larger online strategy can strengthen the promotion of an overwhelmingly positive online brand identity.