No matter what type of business you are in, there is a good chance you focus on your reputation every single day. Reputation means everything when you are trying to sell a product and turn a profit. Your potential customers don’t know anything about you other than what your reputation portrays.
For this reason and more, internet reputation repair is more crucial than ever. There are a few ways to become more invested in reputation repair, but here are the main steps involved to get you started.
Schedule consultations with online reputation management (ORM) firms
It is a much better idea to hire someone from an online reputation management firm than to do it yourself. First of all, this process is a full time job in itself. Unless you’re completely willing to give up your other responsibilities, you’ll need to outsource or establish a team within the company. If your company is on a tight budget, just remember that the change of a high ROI is likely.
When hiring a firm to help, don’t just settle for the first one you find. Schedule a few consultations either over the phone or in person to determine the best fit. The agency you choose should have several years of experience and positive reviews from past clients. Your personalities should also mesh well because you’ll be working with these pros for a few months at least.
Start monitoring your online presence
If you don’t already monitor your online activity, now is the time to start. The firm will recommend that you do a full audit, which means every aspect of your online presence is analyzed. This will help determine what customers are saying about you, how your brand name is perceived, and how people are finding you on search engines.
Establish your goals and develop a strategy
Once you’ve done the full audit, you’ll have a much better idea of what is working and what is not. This allows you to develop a game plan to start building or repairing your rep. If your reputation is already pretty good, a strategy can still be developed for maintenance purposes.
Implement and monitor progress along the way
Maybe your strategic game plan involves posting more on social media or perhaps you need to be more responsive to customer reviews and feedbacks. Whatever the case may be, the next step is to take action. Hire an social media marketer to improve your business accounts.
Or allow your ORM representative to set alerts for every time your company is mentioned on the web. This will allow him or her to respond quickly to every review, comment, or share that relates to your brand. This will help to establish trust from your potential customers, which is the first step in making them actual customers.
Be patient
Try not to be looking for instant gratification from your ORM efforts. The results will come, but it could take a few months to see positive change. Breaking down a reputation is easy, but building it back up is harder than you could ever imagine.
