Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Management is about improving or restoring your name or yourbrand's good standing. This is by countering, weakening or eliminating the negativematerial found in the Internet – defeating it with more positive material to improvingyour credibility and customers' trust in you.

Vital Strategies for Managing Brand online

Search for your Brand

Search for your company’s name on Google, Bing and Yahoo. What are thetop results? How many of those are negative? If majority of the first resultsare made up of negative entries it can create serious damage to your brandand your profitability. Keep tabs on the conversation and run searches onyour company regularly to understand brand reputation.

Get Active with Social Networking

Being active on social media gives you the means to create positive buzzsurrounding your company, and Google in particular loves social media(which means that you have a chance to create some positive entries inthe Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs). Of course, the real value hereis that you’re able to create genuine engagement with your customersand potential customers. That’s the real value of social media – being ableto connect directly and more deeply with your target audience.

Vital Strategies for Managing Brand online

Handle Negative Content Correctly

Whether you run a large company, a midsize firm or a startup, chances are good that you’re going tocome across negative content regarding your company at some point. When this happens, it isabsolutely vital that you handle the situation correctly. The most common place to come across negativeposts is on a consumer review site.

Take this opportunity to dig into the situation and determine what went wrong, where and why. When youarrive at a course of action, respond to the individual by contacting them through email, or if theirinformation is in your database, give them a phone call. Ask what can be done to make the situation right.If possible, give your side of the story and explain that you’re very happy to take any steps necessary torectify the situation

Actively Listen

Some negative content is posted by people just looking for attention. Other content might beposted by competitors seeking to smear your online reputation. However, that’s not the case forall instances. Some of those comments, posts and blogs may be created by customers withlegitimate complaints. Listen to what they have to say. Use this as an opportunity for growth,and then show the poster or commenter how you’re taking action. Remember that everycustomer who leaves dissatisfied is one more who is going to your competitors, and do whatyou can to adjust your processes, fees or practices to better position yourself as a true leaderin the industry.

Executing an ORM Plan

Search Engine Optimization and Management

Do this for your content so that Internet users searching for you, your business or topics that relate toyour business will find you. Moreover, they will find honest, relevant information about you in the process.If there is negative information about you in your search results, use your ORM plan to strategize ways touse truthful, positive content to detract from any negative content by pushing it back farther into the listof search results. This way, people who search for you or your business won't be immediately greetedby negative results.

Content Development and Management:

This goes hand in hand with SEO, because in order to rank well in search engines and to build up a goodreputation, you need to have good-quality content. This means making your website and blog organized,unique and well written. It also means creating quality press releases, guest Blogging on other Websitesetc. to spread the word about your business the right way. Improve your existing content and create newmaterial so that Internet users will not only find positive results about you or your business right away,they'll also see that the content you share is real, relevant and worth reading. This adds even morecredibility to your brand and your reputation.

Guest BloggingPersonal bloggingDigital PRSocial Media Articles TestimonialsInterviewsVideosConsumer PortalsReview Portals

Executing an ORM Plan

Social Media Management

You're likely already on several social media networks, be it for personaluse or for your business. While platforms like Twitter, Facebook andInstagram can all help you grow your business or personal brand, it onlytakes one inappropriate picture or comment to cause a PR nightmare. AnORM plan can help you clean up your social networks to make surethey're appropriate, and monitor how your social media profiles affectyour reputation, too.

Third-party website monitoring:

Even if your website and social media presence are up to speed, outsiderscan still easily damage your reputation. This includes former employeesand displeased customers. Not only are there a wealth of review websites,like Yelp, Mouthshut, Glassdoor & Consumer forums where anyone cansign up and post a review of your business, it is also incredibly easy tocreate a new website or blog, where people can write whatever theyplease! monitor the Internet for this kind of content to see what people aresaying about you and then use prudent responses to overcome thesituation by getting in touch with user and resolving their issue if genuineand or using any of your SEO and content tactics to come on top of thesituation if it's a malicious campaign. If malicious, one can also look at takinglegal course.

What to monitor?

Brands Products Company Key Executives

Include modifiers: “worst service” “scam” “kudos”

Types of content to monitor include: News Search, SocialMedia/Tags, Standard Search Results, Blogs and Forums.

Where to Monitor

Google Alerts – google.com/alerts Yahoo Alerts – alerts.yahoo.com RSS feed subscriptions to search results Technorati, Yahoo &Google News, BlogPulse Social Media via tags: tagbulb.com, tagfetch.com, keotag.com

Commandments for ORM

Become well respectedBe radically transparentMonitor what they are saying about youReact quickly and politelyAddress criticismTreat your Google page 1 as your business cardUnderstand your detractorsAttack your illegitimate attackersLearn from past mistakesAsk for external help if necessary

Implementing a proactive monitoring campaign provides insight into the kinds of contentinteractions audiences are having with your brand. When identified and qualified, situations need tobe addressed directly. At the same time, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, andcompanies need to implement holistic brand content optimization as a best practice. The morebranded content in the search results, the more diluted any negative brand content will be.

Agency with a creative heart and a technological backbone

@mcountsIndiasales@mcounts.com+91-9986114420+91-7799656664 www.mcounts.co

Email | Mobile | Search | Social | Programmatic | Technology | CRM | Content | Disruption |