Reputation on the Internet has become a fairly new concept for our country, as well as the fact that even purposeful management of it is applied. This side of the activity is still so unfamiliar to people managing service companies and online stores that until their site suddenly starts to lose positions, the number of customers does not noticeably drop, and with it the profit, they don’t even think about online reputation.
The Importance of Online Reputation Management
To avoid such troubles, the virtual reputation of the company must be constantly managed and carefully planned, and from the very beginning of the operation of the business. Only in this way, without additional measures, it is possible to maintain the position of the company in the top positions. For this work, it is advisable to involve serious professionals who know which technique will work best in a particular case. They will be able to maintain a positive background for the company online.
Reputation check
Information on the Internet about any company can be neutral, positive, negative and mixed. This information can be presented in different forms:
- articles;
- reviews;
- posts;
- discussions;
- comments;
- audio reviews;
- video reports.
It’s quite easy to check a business reputation on the network – for this you just need to type different options for specific queries in search engines or spend some time on social networks or blogs, collect information and carefully evaluate and analyze it.
Ways to manage a company’s reputation online
There are several options for managing the reputation of a company on the Internet. The first one, which is very time-consuming and not always feasible, consists in direct work with information:
But this will be effective only in the case of hosting services operating on the territory of these states. In reality, most of the forums are located on foreign resources, where the policy of non-intervention is in effect.
For this reason, a SERM reputation control method was created that allows you to work both with the resource itself and with its content.
The most important nuances of reputation control
- It is impossible to defeat negative assessments by silence, they must be counteracted.
- You should not mask mistakes and lie, it is better to admit and eliminate the error, and inform clients about it.
- It is necessary to maintain an attractive image of the company.
- Since people tend to look for negative reviews, they are the most sought after in queries.
Entrepreneurs who are carried away by brand promotion, sales and other important matters, without knowing special methods, it becomes difficult to track and improve the level of their company’s reputation. Therefore, in order to continue successful work, it is better to order SERM – a set of procedures, the purpose and guaranteed result of which is to exclude negative reviews about the company and its products from the top results of search engines.
Ways to improve the company’s online reputation
To create a stable positive reputation for a company in the network, a whole range of measures is needed:
- creation of websites reflecting the positive aspects of the company’s activities;
- removing negative responses to selected queries from the TOPs of search results;
- posting positive reviews about the company;
- crowding out negative ones from the top of the search results with positive reviews;
- creation of positive information noise about the company on the Internet;
- opening positive discussions of the company on promoted sites specializing in reviews in order to reach the audience as much as possible.
Information noise
Interviews, analytical articles and other genres of journalism designed to protect the reputation of a company or brand on the network can be woven into it. Creating noise on the Internet is a necessary and quite effective tool for maintaining a positive reputation of the company.
An advertising article placed in a periodical or mass media has the main purpose of advertising a company, its products or services. To write it, you should find an interesting topic, supported by real facts, and insert key words and phrases into the text. A well-written advertising article should be read by the user, and not skipped like a banal annoying advertisement. Only a professional can handle this. At the same time, it is very important to place advertising articles on reputable sites, send them to aggregators and news agencies.
Positive Discussions
A user scrupulously looking for information about the company will definitely go to forums, social networks, read blog posts, discussions on sites for reviews. Therefore, you also need to work with such sites in order to manage your reputation on the network.
A comment thread, called a discussion thread, is more than just a feedback thread. These are messages from different users, interconnected, they can appear on social networks, on forums, on sites specializing in reviews. The product or company may become the subject of their discussion.
If a company maintains a positive tone in discussions, answering all questions whenever possible, this encourages users to conclude that this company operates in good faith and provides high quality services. Such discussions are read as interesting as positive reviews, they can attract the attention of visitors looking for information about a particular product or company. You can initiate any discussion and then control this thread, but you can also join an existing one, where you present the company in a favorable light. But only professionals can make it different from primitive advertising, or, by connecting to an existing thread with a negative tone, redirect it in a positive direction.