Roadmap to Choosing the Right Online Reputation Management Services

The internet is a dynamic, rapidly changing place where new information is churned out at every second in a day. What was a stellar online reputation can flip in an instant into an undesirable picture with a single negative review, comment, or rating. What is more, lacking a digital footprint is just as detrimental to your business as having a bad online reputation. This is why it’s important to proactively take charge of how you are perceived online on a continuous basis. Several agencies exist offering online reputation management services in the USA. It’s important to carry out due diligence before choosing which of the companies out there is best suited to offer the best reputation management services for your business.

What Are Online Reputation Management Services?

Online reputation management services are techniques used by marketers that incorporate public relation strategies of content management and social media profile management. Basically, they help you stay ahead of negative content  about your business by creating and optimizing existing positive content about your brand. They work either by suppressing bad reviews or totally removing negative content online. When the best parts of your brand are amplified, public perception is influenced, making you endearing to consumers and prospective buyers. What’s more, potential employees and brand advocates who are inspired by your vision will be attracted to your business as your brand visibility is improved. This combination of positive outcomes from professional online reputation management services has the overall effect of increasing your revenues.

According to a consumer survey by Bright Local, 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family. This means that consumers pay more attention to what their peers are saying than to what a company says, and this is what makes reviews and testimonials so powerful. Positive reviews build trust, which generates profit. Negative or fake reviews, however, threaten your company’s reputation.

Why Should I Adopt Online Reputation Management Services?

Consumers place a high regard on online referrals. So much so that 90% of consumers receive brand recommendations from friends. 61% of these consumers in the USA read about products on search engines before they purchase them, and 70% of these consumers will believe the opinion of other buyers. Compared to regular advertising in which only 8% of the target audience will believe an internet advertisement as truth, and 75% of watchers will skip an advertisement, online reviews act as the internet’s word of mouth, and can make or break a product or service. Moreover, businesses that have over 50 reviews receive a 65% higher return on their products compared to businesses where there are less than five reviews, according to a survey. There is a direct correlation between positive reviews and profits.

How Do I Choose an Online Reputation Management Service?

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1. Outline Your Goals.

Think about your end result and the timeline that you wish to see a particular outcome fulfilled. Are you considering a long term engagement or a one-off project? There are a myriad of reasons why a brand could be seeking online reputation management services. These include removal of a negative review or comment, seeking an expert witness in the event of a malicious defamation, or to increase their visibility online. Perhaps a business wants to rebrand itself digitally and appeal to technologically savvy audiences as the world moves more and more online. If you are a company that specializes in working with high-net-worth individuals, it could be that you wish to attract the right type of clientele. For example, reputation management for lawyers on high-profile cases might need affective (ORM) strategies to promote their services to the right clientele. 

On the flip side, you might want to showcase your incredible skill set so as to find the employer of your dreams. 

What are the unclaimed digital assets that you want to acquire? What is the positive content that you want highlighted on search engine result pages? What is the current state of your online reputation? All these are pertinent questions that need to be raised at the beginning of your consultation journey.

2. Do Your Research.

Now that you have outlined your objectives, you can begin to shortlist the best candidates for the job. At this stage, enquire by researching the reputation of online reputation management services that you are interested in. Does the company have a proven track record of on time delivery or do they fall short of clients’ expectations? What are your first impressions of the company’s website and social media profiles? What are others saying about it in the comment sections and on review sites? Find out about their top leadership and these individuals’ subsequent digital profiles. This helps you to determine the value systems of the organization as well as the personal reputation of these individuals and whether they align with yours. 

A relationship with an online reputation management service is a crucial one, so it’s best to go with a service provider that will truly get your needs, and who doesn’t promise the impossible. A wrong relationship has the potential to cost you irreparable damage. Look out for ‘black hat practices’ used by unscrupulous service providers, such as spamming a post with keywords without regard for coherence, click-bait articles, videos and posts, creating fake websites and accounts, intimidating competitors and sabotaging their websites, generating artificial back-links, and plagiarizing content from other websites. These are tactics that will be easily flagged by Google and penalized. 

Be wary of 100% guarantees. The digital ecosystem has many variable so it’s not wise that an online reputation management service can promise you total removal of negative content, for example. Online campaigns are also time intensive where results are produced gradually. There are no quick fix solutions.

3. Check Out Their Strategy–What Are You Willing to Invest In?

There are several aspects that go into online reputation management, and each service provider has their own strategy. Your goals will help you determine what level of building brand, protecting, or repairing digital reputation you are willing to engage in. If you are having a customer service issue, a high quality agency might offer to train your staff on the best way to deal with clients while working on external brand optics – in this way offering a long lasting solution. During your initial meetings with a potential online reputation management service, ask as extensively as possible on how they intend to help you out. A brand agency’s company culture will give you clues on what to expect in their strategy.

4. Consider Your Budget.

Depending on the reason to choose online reputation management services for your business, whether it is content removal, brand management, or monitoring an online presence, the cost of a package will vary greatly. Some of the factors that can influence the charge sheet for an online reputation management service include the list of services in a particular package, the extent of the campaign and time period for which it will run, the size of the business and the industry in which it operates, the type of reputation crisis, the reputation of the online reputation management firm, and the quality of its results. More often than not, cheap is expensive, as less reputable firms offer temporary solutions or worsen the situation over time.

A reliable agency will outline the following in its proposal:

• Online reviews management
• Reputation risk strategies for your brand.
• Social engagement
• Content creation and promotion
• Keyword research
• Google My Business listing
• Enhancement of digital real estate
• Search engine results pages
• Paid and organic media
• Brand awareness and analytics

Outsourcing reputation management services has the overall effect of boosting productivity in your business and increasing opportunities for executives, as we allocate vital internal resources to other aspects of growing your brand.