What is brand reputation?

Your brand’s reputation is how others feel about your brand—and those others can be anyone from potential or existing customers, partners, vendors, the media, stakeholders, shareholders, and the public at large. Every aspect of your business can have an impact on your brand reputation, including: Your customer service, from your in-store experience to your call center and how easy it is for customers to return products or share feedback on a service. The quality of your goods or services. The professional (and personal) life of any member of your team, especially your CEO, and other key leaders. The causes and nonprofit organizations you support. What your business publishes on social media and web. Content shared publicly about or referencing your company, including unfavorable press and client reviews that may or may not be true. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, your brand reputation is more vulnerable than ever. In our increasingly interconnected global society—where a single tweet or social media post can be amplified through a viral hashtag and become front-page news in a matter of hours—companies must understand the importance of maintaining a positive brand reputation. It can take years to grow a solid customer base and a trustworthy business reputation—but only moments to watch that reputation crumble. And rebuilding a brand reputation is even more difficult than building it from scratch because you’re trying to dig out from a negative position rather than starting the process from zero.

What do reputation management companies do?

Stated simply, professional reputation management companies focus on creating a favorable online presence that best represents the good will, trust and relationship capital you have offline accurately on the internet. This likely includes publishing and ranking positive news and existing digital assets, while also downplaying the negative search results where required. This is accomplished by applying a keen understanding of the factors that search engines—specifically Google—use to rank the most relevant and high-quality information. Achieving results requires a flexible process for continuous optimization of your brand’s content on search engine results pages (SERPs). Reputation management companies use many strategies, including: Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The ongoing process for raking content on specific keywords that define your business, including your name and goods or services you provide. Content development: Content is still king, and it’s essential that you regularly feature quality, relevant content on both websites that you own and in earned media. Social media management/monitoring: Even if you aren’t active on every social media channel, it’s crucial that you own your social media profiles to avoid confusion and monitor what others are saying about your business on these platforms. Negative results: If there are negative search results about your business, a reputation management firm can help develop strategies that promote positive content for counteracting what is harmful or defamatory

How do you protect your brand reputation?

Your brand reputation is one of the most valuable—if not the most valuable—elements of your business—which is why it’s surprising that so many companies decide to risk their brand reputation, leaving themselves completely vulnerable to crisis. The first step to protecting your brand reputation is monitoring what is being said about your company online. The name of the game here is breadth, so we recommend that you monitor at least the following for your company, key employees and primary competitors: Google search results Google news results Google image results Social media results (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc.) Review sites (Google, industry-specific review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, G2Crowd, Avvo etc.) There are several viable free and paid tools to help automate some or all of the monitoring process. Even then, the reporting received requires human interaction for understanding the initial input, interpreting results and determining the most appropriate course of action. And how often should you review monitoring results? Crisis communications case studies would suggest daily—to be able to see potential issues brewing before they turned into large problems or heated conversations—but this may not be practical for most busy companies, with research showing that many review quarterly at most. Instead, savvy businesses prefer to entrust their most valuable business asset to a professional reputation management firm. A reputation management firm keeps intelligent eyes on the pulse of your online reputation with diligent monitoring, communication and optimization.

Can reputation be managed?

Team members at your company cannot always successfully manage or control what others say about your business—so if there is a negative review, an erroneous Facebook post, or an unflattering blog, you may want to consider a reputation management company with experience in a wide range of situations, including how to effectively contact the author or publishing website to request the removal and deindexing of a particular link. Naturally, there are many considerations that dictate which solutions may be the right fit. In some situations, the best way to deal with negative search results is to promote positive results about your business—things like case study blog posts, numerous positive reviews, testimonial-driven social media posts, and other types of media to highlight your success or expertise. Your reputation management firm will work with you to develop a strategy and supporting content to counter the negative and defamatory results. Ensure that the team you engage continuously optimizes the positive content and tweaks the initial plan when results materialize.

How do you fix a bad business reputation?

Fixing a business’ reputation is a multi-step process that you must be willing to tackle with humility and determination. The first step is figuring out what went wrong—what was the specific source of the issue? Was this a long-term issue with the slipping quality of your products or an acute problem with an inappropriate or controversial comment by your CEO? Next, publicly acknowledge what happened and what you are doing to fix it. Apologize openly on social media. Use all of the channels available to you—your website, social media, press releases and advertising to amplify the message that you’re making this change. Ensure that, in your statements, you’re putting your customer and their needs first. People’s natural inclination is to wonder, “What’s in it for me” and they will be even more suspicious if you’ve recently stumbled. Ensure that communication is genuine and your focus is in the right place. Follow through on your commitment. Prove to your customers that you’ve fixed the problem and you’re serious about resolving it. For example, if the problem was product quality, reach out with post-purchase quality surveys to document your progress; if the problem was an insensitive public remark by your CEO, highlight positive press and build an educational campaign around a new initiative or social impact. Get in front of the next issue. Open up communication lines with your customers and your employees to identify potential problems before they cascade into crises. Fixing a bad business reputation can feel overwhelming. Your dedicated reputation management firm will help guide you through the process of rehabilitating your business reputation.

Are Reputation Management Services only Permissible to Brands?

No, Reputation Management services are not only permissible to brands but also extend to personal reputation. Personal reputation becomes extremely important if one works at high profile field like lawyers. In such cases, Reputation management companies provide services which include brand reputation management as well as personal reputation for lawyers or related fields.

Elevate Reputation Management For Your Brand

Brand reputation management is one of the most important and foundational aspects of your business strategy. Chances are, your business is either neglecting it or doing it wrong. If so, it does so at its peril, in terms of both profits and its future.

You have to make a decision: Are you going to just cross your fingers and hope things work out, or will you choose to actively manage and protect your brand’s reputation?

The public perception of your brand can have multiple impacts on your bottom line. It can motivate a customer or client to recommend you to a friend or colleague. Word-of-mouth or a positive online presence can help in acquiring new customers. It can also protect you from negative press and rumors. In an age when people regularly Google unfamiliar businesses, from local restaurants to international conglomerates, first impressions are of utmost importance. If you aren’t actively trying to improve and protect that initial impression, you are likely losing money.

Having a well-designed brand reputation plan in place can be the difference between your company weathering a storm or going down in flames. The nature of the internet is volatile, meaning any business, irrespective of size, can face scandal or accusation and see its reputation tarnished or destroyed overnight. Bad news spreads faster than ever before, and its validity is becoming increasingly unimportant. Brand reputation management can act as an at-the-ready shield protecting your company from scurrilous rumors as well as intentional efforts to harm your public image. Brands that don’t anticipate a hit to their reputation are typically the most damaged by one.

Online Brand Reputation Management Services
Defined

When defining what brand reputation management is, first stating what it is not can be useful. First, it is not just public relations, though public relations is indeed part of the overall strategy. It is also more than simple buzzwords, such as “brand awareness” and “engagement.” It is not just a few tips and tricks that are useful in upping word-of-mouth about your company. Instead, it is an overall business strategy that can positively affect every aspect of your brand.

Brand reputation management starts with making an honest assessment of your brand’s current reputation, if it even has one. Simply put, you need to know what others think and say about your brand. This includes your current and potential customers, other professionals in your industry, the general public, and even your employees.(Understanding how your employees view your brand can help you figure out exactly what your brand image should be.)

Then, whether your reputation is excellent or abysmal, you must have a plan in place to not only make it better but also keep it that way. Online brand management is an excellent measure of the trust of the public, along with the customer base one has for your company. Blue Ocean Global Technology has the experience, and resources, and will ensure that your brand will be thoughtfully represented with the best reputation management services one can find.

Why Your Company’s Online Reputation Matters.

Read Full Article

Managing Your Brand’s Reputation

In some cases, managing your brand’s reputation begins with creating one. As we’ve noted, your employees’ assessment of your company can be incredibly helpful in this regard. Their views can lead your decision making about what your brand’s values and viewpoints should be. Although this step might not initially seem necessary, having a clear definition of those values can help guide you in a crisis.

If your brand stands for nothing but selling a product or service, critics will be more than ready to fill in the gaps in your reputation with their own, often negative assessments. But a well-managed reputation can protect your firm from rumor and shallow criticisms. But how?

Social media is a good place to start.

Some brand managers and social media professionals can be hesitant to address problems on social media directly, taking a “let sleeping dogs lie” approach in hopes that the issue will resolve itself. Although this strategy seems reasonable, for every crisis that disappears on its own, there is another that arises with the potential to blow up in a brand’s face. Just one problem that goes viral can cause a great deal of reputational damage. Brands must be both aggressive and expansive in their purview when curating and protecting their good name.

Having a social media strategy for brand management extends beyond standard brand promotion on the usual social sites. It involves more than simply responding to customer complaints and concerns online. An effective social media strategy for brand management is proactive as well as reactive. You must be positioned to quickly respond to potential customers, current clients, and the general public. This can be done via brand alerts with assessment tools that will allow you to actively and aggressively monitor and thereby influence the conversation about you online.

At the same time, you must be diligently and strategically listening to what people have to say about your business, even when they aren’t directly engaging with you. Pay attention to the small social media platforms in addition to large ones. Proactive social media efforts can often curtail bad rumors about your company before they have a chance to spread. They can also help create an image of your brand as one that is active and engaged with its customers. One thing the modern consumer despises in brands is complacence with respect to its customers’ needs.

Calling on the Experts
for Help

Blue Ocean Global Technology has the expertise to recognize what is needed to protect and improve your brand’s image. It can help determine what your next steps should be. For example, an effective brand strategy requires you to take an active role in shaping what the public thinks about your brand, and Blue Ocean knows how to pinpoint the right tools for doing so.

Many social media monitoring tools are available that can be used to protect and influence your brand’s reputation. Google Alerts, data analytics, and monitoring tools such as Trustpilot are helpful in learning what the world thinks of your brand, but that’s just the beginning of the process. These resources are an excellent way to quickly and proactively address negative content directed at your business, before it adversely affecting your bottom line. They can also help you develop an overall strategy because you can watch how effectively your brand management and influence strategies are changing the conversation. As a result, you can see, over the short and long term, which approaches work best to safeguard your brand’s reputation.

Blue Ocean also offers an objective set of eyes with which to parse the massive amounts of data these media monitoring tools can amass from the internet and thereby figure out exactly where you should concentrate your brand management efforts. You have only so many hours in a day, and Blue Ocean’s experts can ensure that you spend them wisely.

Broadening Your Scope

Google Search
Results

Press

News

Social Media
Chatter

An incredibly important thing to understand is that your brand and reputation encompasses much more than just traditional social media. To fully protect your business’s reputation as well as your personal reputation, you will need to dive into the nitty-gritty of online public forums, which can include personal blogs, review sites, and other areas of the internet not usually thought of as “social media.” Basically, you should be aware of any outlet on the internet where a user can vent their opinion in a publicly accessible way. For some brands, this can even extend to podcasts and internet radio.

You need to know who is talking what about your brand, such as Instagram influencers and others with large followings. Sentiment analysis allows you to summarize the feelings and attitudes of large numbers of online commenters and posters. A partner such as Blue Ocean Global Technology can be instrumental in figuring out which media and platforms to focus such techniques on and which to ignore.

Returning to the idea of values and how important they are to a company’s brand, having a solid, positive brand identity can create and improve customer loyalty. In fact, many consumers define themselves in some way by the products they purchase and the businesses they support. For example, green-oriented consumers pride themselves on buying from environmentally conscious companies, and others favor companies with a reputation for treating their customers and employees well. Many customers are willing to pay a premium to support those businesses that reflect their personal values, and Blue Ocean Global Technology can help shape and manage your company’s brand to focus on such customers, earn their trust, and, most importantly, gain their loyalty.

Learning To Influence Google

Dealing with negative press

As complicated as the issue of brand reputation management might seem, almost any potentially damaging issue can be dealt with relatively quickly. Often, mollifying an irate customer is as simple as issuing an apologetic tweet. Negative press can be effectively mitigated and suppressed. Complaints can be addressed, and negative rumors can be quashed with good policy. But negative Google search results can linger for what feels like ages and cause lasting damage to your brand’s reputation and therefore to its bottom line.

Managing Negative reviews

Performing a simple search of your brand’s name plus the word “review” and finding that the first result is a negative critique, disparaging news article, or other damaging bit of media can be discouraging. What’s worse is when, long after the problem has been resolved, that same unfavorable search result keeps coming up. Part of professional reputation management is knowing how best to handle such things.

Actionable strategies

Blue Ocean has vast experience dealing with the implication of bad Google search results and knows actionable strategies for removing such results from Google’s front page so your brand image is maintained. Options include directly asking the source of the review or news to update it or take it down and publishing positive, brand-focused stories that will displace the negative search results. Blue Ocean can offer still other methods for leading the great ship Google to calmer waters. It’s all in knowing how.

Talk To An Expert Today For Building Your Brand Reputation

Contact Now

The number of tools and options available to those either just starting to build their brand or taking their first steps into the world of brand reputation management is overwhelming. This is what creates the need for outside help. If your company’s reach is large, wouldn’t monitoring what hundreds, if not thousands, of websites are saying about it be useful? Or if your focus is more niche, a much more in-depth focus on specific areas where your company can avoid reputational risks that might be associated with your brand presence online.

Remember, a single negative review that goes viral can be enough to tarnish your reputation

How many mentions do you get on Google? On Facebook?

Do you need to expand or reorganize your public relations efforts online? How advantageous might the traditional press be in connecting your business to a customer base?

Above all, ask yourself whether your current brand reputation management strategy is actually working. Many companies have some tools in use or plans in place for reputation management but have no idea whether their efforts are truly effective. They might be alerted to a few negative reviews or respond in a timely and appropriate manner to tweeted complaints about their company, but such a piecemeal approach cannot deliver the kind of results Blue Ocean Global Technology can provide. Beyond just having a strategy, you need to know how well that strategy is working and how to continue improving it in the future.

In a world where customers often find their interactions with businesses to be cold, impersonal, and bureaucratic, a well-thought-out brand reputation management strategy can help customers perceive your brand instead as responsive, genial, and more personal. And customers who have positive experiences with a company become ones who not only return but also encourage their friends and family to engage with your business as well.

Positive Customer Experience

The internet has supercharged the business world

Everything moves faster than ever before. So the idea that brand reputation management is essentially a “slow” business strategy might seem counterintuitive. But adopting a brand management plan does not mean you should expect results overnight. Although social media allows a business to begin building an online reputation almost instantaneously, the process of developing and refining that reputation takes time and continuous effort. No company is ever “finished” managing its brand reputation. For a business to ensure that its reputation consistently reflects well on its brand, it needs a knowledgeable, experienced partner to support its efforts in the short term and to develop a long-term plan for what’s to come. Blue Ocean Global Technology is just that partner, for today and for the future.

Brand Reputation FAQ

What is brand reputation?
Your brand’s reputation is how others feel about your brand—and those others can be anyone from potential or existing customers, partners, vendors, the media, stakeholders, shareholders, and the public at large. Every aspect of your business can have an impact on your brand reputation, including:
- Your customer service, from your in-store experience to your call center and how easy it is for customers to return products or share feedback on a service.
- The quality of your goods or services.
- The professional (and personal) life of any member of your team, especially your CEO, and other key leaders.
- The causes and nonprofit organizations you support.
- What your business publishes on social media and web.
- Content shared publicly about or referencing your company, including unfavorable press and client reviews that may or may not be true.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, your brand reputation is more vulnerable than ever. In our increasingly interconnected global society—where a single tweet or social media post can be amplified through a viral hashtag and become front-page news in a matter of hours—companies must understand the importance of maintaining a positive brand reputation.

It can take years to grow a solid customer base and a trustworthy business reputation—but only moments to watch that reputation crumble. And rebuilding a brand reputation is even more difficult than building it from scratch because you’re trying to dig out from a negative position rather than starting the process from zero.
What do reputation management companies do?
Stated simply, professional reputation management companies focus on creating a favorable online presence that best represents the good will, trust and relationship capital you have offline accurately on the internet. This likely includes publishing and ranking positive news and existing digital assets, while also downplaying the negative search results where required. This is accomplished by applying a keen understanding of the factors that search engines—specifically Google—use to rank the most relevant and high-quality information. Achieving results requires a flexible process for continuous optimization of your brand’s content on search engine results pages (SERPs). Reputation management companies use many strategies, including:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The ongoing process for raking content on specific keywords that define your business, including your name and goods or services you provide.

Content development: Content is still king, and it’s essential that you regularly feature quality, relevant content on both websites that you own and in earned media.

Social media management/monitoring: Even if you aren’t active on every social media channel, it’s crucial that you own your social media profiles to avoid confusion and monitor what others are saying about your business on these platforms.

Negative results: If there are negative search results about your business, a reputation management firm can help develop strategies that promote positive content for counteracting what is harmful or defamatory
How do you protect your brand reputation?
Your brand reputation is one of the most valuable—if not the most valuable—elements of your business—which is why it’s surprising that so many companies decide to risk their brand reputation, leaving themselves completely vulnerable to crisis.

The first step to protecting your brand reputation is monitoring what is being said about your company online. The name of the game here is breadth, so we recommend that you monitor at least the following for your company, key employees and primary competitors:
- Google search results
- Google news results
- Google image results
- Social media results (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc.)
- Review sites (Google, industry-specific review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, G2Crowd, Avvo etc.)
There are several viable free and paid tools to help automate some or all of the monitoring process. Even then, the reporting received requires human interaction for understanding the initial input, interpreting results and determining the most appropriate course of action. And how often should you review monitoring results? Crisis communications case studies would suggest daily—to be able to see potential issues brewing before they turned into large problems or heated conversations—but this may not be practical for most busy companies, with research showing that many review quarterly at most.

Instead, savvy businesses prefer to entrust their most valuable business asset to a professional reputation management firm. A reputation management firm keeps intelligent eyes on the pulse of your online reputation with diligent monitoring, communication and optimization.
Can reputation be managed?
Team members at your company cannot always successfully manage or control what others say about your business—so if there is a negative review, an erroneous Facebook post, or an unflattering blog, you may want to consider a reputation management company with experience in a wide range of situations, including how to effectively contact the author or publishing website to request the removal and deindexing of a particular link. Naturally, there are many considerations that dictate which solutions may be the right fit.

In some situations, the best way to deal with negative search results is to promote positive results about your business—things like case study blog posts, numerous positive reviews, testimonial-driven social media posts, and other types of media to highlight your success or expertise. Your reputation management firm will work with you to develop a strategy and supporting content to counter the negative and defamatory results. Ensure that the team you engage continuously optimizes the positive content and tweaks the initial plan when results materialize.
How do you fix a bad business reputation?
Fixing a business’ reputation is a multi-step process that you must be willing to tackle with humility and determination.

The first step is figuring out what went wrong—what was the specific source of the issue? Was this a long-term issue with the slipping quality of your products or an acute problem with an inappropriate or controversial comment by your CEO?
- Next, publicly acknowledge what happened and what you are doing to fix it. Apologize openly on social media. Use all of the channels available to you—your website, social media, press releases and advertising to amplify the message that you’re making this change.
- Ensure that, in your statements, you’re putting your customer and their needs first. People’s natural inclination is to wonder, “What’s in it for me” and they will be even more suspicious if you’ve recently stumbled. Ensure that communication is genuine and your focus is in the right place.
- Follow through on your commitment. Prove to your customers that you’ve fixed the problem and you’re serious about resolving it. For example, if the problem was product quality, reach out with post-purchase quality surveys to document your progress; if the problem was an insensitive public remark by your CEO, highlight positive press and build an educational campaign around a new initiative or social impact.
- Get in front of the next issue. Open up communication lines with your customers and your employees to identify potential problems before they cascade into crises.
Fixing a bad business reputation can feel overwhelming. Your dedicated reputation management firm will help guide you through the process of rehabilitating your business reputation.
What does brand reputation management mean?
Brand reputation management is one of the most important and foundational aspects of your business strategy. Chances are, your business is either neglecting it or doing it wrong. If so, it does so at its peril, in terms of both profits and its future.
Are Reputation Management Services only Permissible to Brands?
No, Reputation Management services are not only permissible to brands but also extend to personal reputation. Personal reputation becomes extremely important if one works at high profile field like lawyers. In such cases, Reputation management companies provide services which include brand reputation management as well as personal reputation for lawyers or related fields.