What is Reputation Management? Introduction, Definition & How it works.

The internet is both a boon and a bane for the business owners. On the one hand, you can make use of the internet to reach out to millions of targeted customers. On the other hand, the internet can be instrumental in tarnishing your brand image and hence ruin your business. With the internet, it is far too easy to publish negative reviews and damaging feedback about a brand. As a business owner, you need to keep a close tab on your online brand reputation. It will take several years to build positive reputation in your niche but all that you have built over the years can be ruined overnight. No exaggeration! Many brands have suffered such reputation attacks; as they did not have in place adequate defensive measures against reputation attacks they succumbed to the pressure of negative reputation. It is therefore important to have powerful defense against online reputation attacks. It is not enough to get top ten ranking in Google and the other top search engines, it is also equally important to take regular efforts to build positive brand image online.

Reputation management is part of the online marketing strategy, which focuses on ensuring 360-degree positive brand image. Reputation management involves two major aspects namely, building positive brand image that influences customers' buying decisions and secondly stripping the web of any negative messages, reviews and feedbacks that can undermine the brand image. The worldwide web is constantly monitored or screened to understand customers' feelings regarding the brand under question and the brand related statements that are made online by the customers. The ultimate aim of reputation management is to ensure a generally positive or at least neutral image about a brand so as to make the target audience take favorable buying decisions.

Every business owner that likes to build a successful brand should invest time and money on online brand reputation management. In other words, reputation management is not optional, whether you like it or not, you will need to work on building your online reputation. To understand what exactly is reputation management and what it entails let us take a closer look at the consumer dynamics online.

The internet is not just a communication tool but it has become an integral part of commerce and trade today. Consumers today make use of the internet in the following ways:

1. Research Phase - To source information about a product or service that they need, to learn about the various options that are available to them.

2. Decision Making - To compare the features, specialties and the cost of the brands that they shortlist during the research phase.

3. Purchases - To actually buy the products that they need or to hire the service that requires.

4. Feedback

    a. Negative Reviews - To vent out their frustrations / complain about a product or service that they have purchased or used recently.

    b. Positive Feedback - To share with others their positive experience in using a brand, product or service.

As you can see the above four phases creates a complete cycle. At one level, there are customers looking for information about the products and services that they need. Consumers are not satisfied just with the self-made claims from the brands but they want to go beyond such self-made claims and find the actual truth by trying to gain access to actual user experience. At another level, consumers that have used a brand go online to share their views, opinions, reviews and their personal experience with a brand. The percentage of positive feedbacks and reviews are far lesser when compared to the negative reviews. The consumer expectation is that the brand that they are using is meant to be good and if it is good, there is nothing much to talk about. If the brand does not meet the consumers' expectations then dissatisfied consumers do not keep quite any longer. There are various platforms that allow the customers to post their ranting and ravings. These reviews feed the consumers that are in the first phase of the buying cycle. This cycle continues further down the line and this is meant to be a very healthy process because this acts as a control mechanism and ensures that brands take their customers seriously and not take them for granted. Consumers too have today become adept in screening their service providers and products online.

However, getting into the shoes of the business owners, it is not practical to satisfy every customer. Hundred percent customer satisfaction is just an utopian dream and an ideal world scenario. No brand can possibly achieve 100% customer satisfaction though they can claim to have achieved or to hold such a status. Even a small percentage of dissatisfied customers that air their views online can prove to be detrimental for the success of a brand. Even a single negative comment or feedback can deter hundreds of prospective customers. This places a hard stone to digest on the plate of the business owner.

All the top brands constantly screen the web and set up alert mechanisms to spot mentions of their brand name online so that they can take immediate efforts to remove the negative comments or reviews online.

Any sensible reputation management efforts should be two tiered. What do we mean here? The aim of reputation management is to ensure 360-degree positive reputation online. This involves two major steps:

Building positive brand image - Various search engine marketing strategies are used to spread the positive image about a brand. Building a positive brand image will help you withstand negative reputation attacks.

Fighting Negative Reputation - Removing undesirable reviews and negative feedbacks from the search results - Negative feedbacks if not attended to quickly can stop the traffic flow completely and result in poor business conversions.

Dealing With Emergency Reputation Crisis - It can happen that when you are approaching peak sales season negative feedbacks from a dissatisfied customer can ruin your sales. For example, your holiday sales can be affected by negative reviews posted by a customer or even by your competitor. Such situations are to be considered emergencies and you need to act immediately without losing time or else you will miss your peak sales season.

There are no magic wands that can fix reputation crises with a snap of a finger. Reputation management is rather an elaborate process and industry experience is of paramount importance to effectively outsmart the crises and to achieve the desired reputation goals. Use of wrong strategies can aggravate the situation or make things worse for you. Therefore, it is important that you know what you are doing when it comes to reputation management. The approach to reputation management will vary depending on the goal at hand. If you want to build positive reputation, you will have to follow through a series of steps and if you want to get rid of negative feedbacks and reviews you will need to make use of different set of strategies. Here are some of the important phases of online reputation management.

a) Screening of current reputation status - Before you start working on your brand's reputation, you should know where you stand. You should know what people are saying about your brand. You will need to make an in-depth report on your brand reputation by screening the social media sites, press releases, online forums, blogs, blog discussions and other high traffic networks. Your initial report should be used to guide you through the entire reputation management process.

b) Identifying the right channels to promote the brand online. The second step is to find high traffic networks that will help you build positive brand image. You cannot build your reputation in vacuum. You need to make use of various Web 2.0 properties. You should make it a point to include trendy platforms because that is where you will find the most people hanging out. For each niche, there will be certain preferred networks where the target audience of the respective niche frequents, you will have to make sure to include such platforms too in your branding measures. Some of the platforms /networks that are commonly used include:

i. Blogs

ii. Online forums

iii. Press releases

iv. Article directories

v. Video sharing sites

vi. Social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and so on.

c) Creating positive content - You will have to create loads of positive content around your brand. You will need to make use of writers with SEO background to build your content. This is a challenging phase because the content has to be appealing to the human readers and at the same time, it has to be search engine friendly too.

d) Sharing of the positive content in the right channels - Once you are ready with the positive content, you will need to share them in the right platforms and do it very professionally using approved methods. Auto submissions should be totally avoided and the entire process should be handled manually.

e) Assessing the effectiveness of the strategies used - You will need to assess the effectiveness of the strategies that you have implemented so that you know whether you have achieved your reputation management goals.

f) Setting up a system to alert you whenever your brand name is mentioned online in both positive as well as negative contexts. You will need to prepare your website for future reputation crisis. It is important that you act swiftly whenever there is a crisis and for that you should constantly be screening the web for 'brand name mentions'.

a) List the instances where negative reviews are featured - First you need to know all the instances where negative reviews are featured so that you can take appropriate efforts to neutralize them.

b) Identify the keywords that bring about the negative reviews and feedbacks - You will also need to create an elaborate report on the list of keywords that triggers the negative listings in the search results. Without this report, you cannot possibly be taking any effective steps to fight the negative reputation.

c) Create content that target the keywords identified above - Once you have the complete list of keywords that pull out the damaging reviews, you will need to create positive content around your brand targeting the same keywords. You will need to make sure not to go overboard with keyword density.

d) Identify the right channels that can be effectively used to replace the negative search results - You will need to identify channels that will get indexed fast for example news releases and blog posts are very effective. Similarly authoritative sites like Squidoo and HubPages are also very useful here.

e) Try to get in touch with the sources to have the negative reviews removed or ask for explanation. You should keep this as the last step. Many people make the mistake of jumping straight on to fighting with the sources that put up negative reviews. If you do this you will delay the most important step of getting rid of the negative reviews from the search results. The longer the negative reviews get featured on top of the search results, the greater the damage it causes for your brand. Once you have managed to push down the negative feedbacks from the first page of the search results, you can move on to identifying the sources and find the reasons for the negative feedback. You will have to make sure to explain your side of the story wherever negative feedbacks are featured so that those who get to read the negative reviews know that you are serious about customer satisfaction. Leaving the negative reviews unattended without sharing your side of the story, can make them a perennial problem that continues to affect your business.

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• Builds positive brand image
• Ensures that your business enjoys positive image online.
• Prevents loss of customers to your competitors due to poor brand image.
• Reinforces your brand presence in a positive way.
• Helps you deal with reputation attacks in a focused and systematic way.
• Improves conversion rates.
• Increases the number of channels through which your customers can enter your website.

• Every brand, regardless of whether it runs online operations or offline operations should have effective reputation management plans in place.
• Reputation management should be an ongoing marketing agenda. Reacting or responding only at the time of reputation crisis is not a good approach to reputation management. You will need to keep your brand guarded with positive brand image and regular reputation management efforts.
• When you are trying to get rid of negative reviews, you should use only Google friendly and safe strategies. Never subscribe to any shortcuts or unwarranted strategies that can put your brand to greater risks than what you have at hand.
• Work with a professional reputation management company because this is not an area that you can handle on your own unless you have the required skills, methodologies and the time.
• Set aside a decent budget for regular reputation management efforts because if you do not have defensive reputation management plans in place, you are likely to suffer greater losses in the form of losing new leads and also the existing customers.
• Create a shield around your brand by building general positive image, which will increase the resilience of your brand against reputation attacks giving you more time to respond before it succumbs to the pressure of the attack.
• Do not waste time to respond when you see signs of negative reputation. If you act quickly, you can avert most of the damages to your brand.
• Have a reliable system in place to constantly screen the web for mentions of your brand name.
• Regularly assess your brand's reputation and the traffic analytics so that you can help save your website at the right time.
• Reputation attacks can even emerge from your competitors and be prepared to face such attacks.

Reputation Management is important for your brand. You cannot even dream of online success without good online reputation. Take a preventive approach to reputation management. You can never totally run away or avoid reputation crises. Every brand regardless of their size and the nature of operations has to face reputation crises. You should therefore not lose heart or act impulsively when you are faced with such situations. You will need to make well-planned efforts that always fall in line with Google's latest ranking algorithm.