Online Brand Reputation Management Helps to Grow Your Business

What is online reputation management (ORM) definition and why does it matter for individuals and businesses? As the name suggests, monitoring and managing the sentiments and conversations around your brand so that prospects and customers see it positively, is called online brand reputation management. Online brand reputation monitoring and management should be at the centre of any online brand promotion activities as even a single negative review about your company or the brand can affect its future sales and influence how customers perceive your brand. Even if you are an individual, your personal online brand reputation management is as important as a company. You may be the brand of your company whom potential investors and employees look to as an asset. Negative reviews about you can dent the public image of your company.

In the digital world, where anything and everything is just a search away and where thousands of prospects are looking for your products every minute, it

becomes all the more crucial to manage your online reputation to sustain in the business. Your employees, your potential partners and prospect customers, all are part of an ecosystem where, how well they perceive the tangible and intangible benefits of a brand, determines its success. The brand reputation goes beyond the offline customer interaction where what customers and prospects are saying about you online. Everyone in your company, be it the employees, the management or the CEO, must align themselves to the brand communication guidelines and always convey a uniform message to the world. They are the brand advocates and managing what goes out should be compulsory. Not every organisation has an online brand management team. So, hiring an online reputation management company can be a strategic move. You can either hire from local ORM service providers or find from the best offshore online reputation management companies. There are SEO companies who claim to provide ORM services however ORM is much more than SEO activities. ORM does include search engine optimisation component however it isn’t all. An ORM service provider can offer SEO services however an SEO service provider may not provide online reputation management services. Online reputation management strategy is much more aggressive as it is not only concerned with promoting positive links in search engines when searched but it is also responsible for creating a positive overall image of the company. There are various ORM tools that companies use to easily monitor millions of brand mentions online to check and respond to them quickly and appropriately. When hiring an ORM service provider, look for the service cost, the previous case studies, if any, and their own brand reputation in the search engines. Showing up negative mentions in the search results from previous clients, will be a flag when hiring them. There are various websites where you can read about online reputation management company reviews and how they are rated against other companies on various criteria.

As whomsoever you hire as your ORM service provider, be sure to align them with your company’s brand communication guidelines so that they are part of your brand management initiatives.