Your business’s online reputation is everything - it tells prospective customers why they should consider buying from you. But good reputation management isn't just about asking your customers to leave a review, it’s about actively managing the collection process, responding to what they have to say about you, and displaying feedback in your marketing. This guide will help you succeed with your online reputation management.
If you’re looking at online brand reputation management for your business, this guide has everything you need to know, including why reputation management is important, how your business can improve it, and some examples of big brands that got it wrong.
We'll also be looking at how your business can use SEO to improve your online reputation and include some top tips on responding to negative reviews. We have advice on how to manage a brand reputation crisis and explain why measuring and monitoring your brand reputation is so important. If you need some support, we’ve also identified the best tools and platforms to help track your brand reputation online.
What is online reputation management?
Online reputation management is the process of successfully managing the messaging around a brand online. You can use it to monitor digital mentions of your brand, so you can address any negative feedback and continue to enhance your image.
Online reputation management is sometimes confused with PR. The biggest difference is that PR is proactive, whereas online reputation management is reactive. With PR, you are proactively trying to strengthen your business presence. With digital reputation management, you’re reacting and responding to content online.
Why is online brand reputation management important?
Online brand reputation management can affect your company’s visibility and customer perceptions. While no company can ever have complete control over what is said about them, you can manage the messaging. Managing your online reputation can help:
- Identify potential areas for concern and alleviate customer problems early on
- Increase lead generation through the enhanced perception of a company online
- Boost recruitment efforts, as potential new hires will want to work for a business they’ve heard good things about
- Improve business financing opportunities, as banks and lenders are more likely to support businesses with a good reputation.
Online brand reputation management also puts a business in a strong position should a crisis occur. A company with a proactive and approachable online presence will be able to manage a crisis situation better than those with a slow or limited one.
Online reputation management gone wrong
There are many examples of online reputation management companies that have transformed a business's reputation overnight. Let’s look at some:
Metro Bank
In May 2019, shares for Metro Bank fell by 11% because it was unable to address social media rumours regarding its financial health. Rumours quickly spread across social media from WhatsApp, and the bank was left scrambling to recover.
Ryanair
In 2018, Ryanair came under fire after a video from one of its flights went viral, where many called the company racist with some calling for a boycott. Media outlets and social media users accused Ryanair of a weak crisis management approach.
Dove
In 2017, an advert from Dove appeared to show a black woman 'turning white' after using their product. Just three years earlier, some Dove products suggested they were suitable for ‘normal to dark skin'.
The common theme in these examples seems to be the lack of online reputation management strategy and crisis management in the companies’ response to business errors.
How to improve your online reputation management
Fortunately, you can learn from the mistakes of others. Follow a few easy steps to improve your online brand reputation management:
Create positive content
Positive content supports your brand. When you ensure you’re making the most of your brand by presenting it in a positive light, you reduce the risk that any negative exposure or reviews can present.
Offer great customer service
When customers feel great about the service they have received, they’ll talk about it publicly, especially if you encourage them and make it easy to do so.
Entertain your audience
Consumers do more research about what they are buying than ever before. Get to know what your customers value and think about how you can entertain them in a different way.
Always respond
If you become known for the quality of your responses to both complaints and compliments, it could have a positive impact on your brand.
Be consistent in brand tone and message
Remember who you are, what you do, and how your customers recognise you. If the look, feel and tone of your communications are inconsistent, your customers may question your reliability.
SEO
What is SEO?
One of the most common types of online business reputation management is search engine optimisation (SEO). You can use SEO to drive traffic to your website through organic search engine results, encouraging customers to find and click on your results on Google or other search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO works by crawling the content of a website and then ranking that website based on how closely it aligns to what a customer is searching for. You can target specific keywords and phrases using SEO by writing relevant content that includes key phrases. Search engines use many different factors when ranking a website, including content, links, keywords, traffic, usage, social media and more. SEO is all about perfecting these factors for the best possible performance on SERPs.
How are online business reputation management and SEO related?
There's a clear link between SEO and a brand’s online reputation. Successful SEO allows you to take control of your brand’s narrative online by influencing the search results users are presented with when they search for your brand. Both share the same goal: strengthening your business’s credibility and authority online.
Content across a range of digital channels, such as websites, review platforms and social media, will affect your online reputation. You can control some of it directly, for example reviews and social media mentions, through how you react to this content, using SEO to improve your brand perception online.
How to improve managing online reputation with SEO
You can create a consistent and positive brand image for your customers using SEO to improve your online reputation. Here are some of the most effective ways to use SEO as part of your online reputation management:
Digital PR
Businesses often incorporate digital PR into their SEO strategy. Digital PR is the process of using online channels to grow and manage the awareness and reputation of a brand, and involves building relationships with bloggers, influencers and journalists to secure media exposure.
Digital PR can help you to set up highly targeted campaigns across various channels, including podcasts, news sites and business networks. Using these channels can boost organic traffic and improve rankings on search engine result pages, as well as supporting online reputation management.
Content management and creation
SEO content creation is the process of creating content specifically to improve your search engine rankings. Typically, SEO content focuses on a specific keyword or phrase, in the belief that that page will rank highly when users search it. Regular, unique and high-quality content is critical for SEO. Websites with regularly published blog posts experience 350% more traffic than those that do not.
Good SEO content can help control the conversation around your brand online. You can use it to answer questions that your audience frequently ask and portray your business in the best possible light or counteract any negative articles online by producing positive content.
Online reviews
Online reviews help both your digital reputation management and SEO. Although you can’t control the reviews that customers leave, you can control how you respond to them. Search engines use online reviews to gather vital information to display to users when they search for your business.
Advantages of combining online brand reputation management and SEO
There are many advantages of using SEO to improve your online brand reputation management:
Conveying your brand story
By monitoring your brand mentions and responding where possible you can swing the conversation to a positive narrative. Digital reputation management can highlight your positive reviews, while SEO ensures your content counteracts any negative search results.
Improving communication
Your website, social media and review platforms all add value for your customers and improve your communication with them. Provide immediate responses to reviews to help manage your reputation online.
Creating strong brand recognition
People publish new information about your business all the time, and not all of it is going to be positive. By using online reputation management and SEO, you can make sure that only the positive content is associated with your brand.
Negative reviews
What impact can negative reviews and false content have on your business's reputation?
One of the most trusted digital information channels is customer reviews. People reading negative reviews are likely to take away a negative perception of the business and are less likely to purchase a product or service from them. The same applies when brands use fake positive reviews – real consumers spot these easily and they can make a business appear untrustworthy.
How to respond to negative reviews
Negative reviews don’t necessarily spell disaster for a brand. It’s how well you respond to bad reviews that makes the difference. Respond to any negative reviews in a professional manner. By being polite and expressing a genuine interest in helping a customer, you’re more likely to resolve, neutralise and even change a customer’s negative perception than discarding the concern as irrelevant or inaccurate.
How bad is bad?
Your business should have a clear vision of what constitutes a negative review. You should judge each review individually on the content within it, but also consider to what extent you have control over the issue, whether your business is at fault, and if you can rectify the situation.
Is the customer always right?
If a bad review relates to a supply chain issue that your business is responsible for, the customer will see it as your problem. While it may be appropriate to explain to the customer what has happened, you should always respond to any issues as professionally as possible. If there is a genuine issue with a product, service or experience, you should offer options to resolve this.
Judging how to reply to a negative review for an unrealistic expectation can be trickier, but you should still respond. If the misunderstanding is the customer’s responsibility, you can issue a standard polite and professional reply to highlight this.
Closed vs open review platforms
Open consumer review sites are more likely to attract negative content as anyone can leave a review, which can attract bot content, inauthentic and spam reviews.
Closed platforms like Feefo invite customers to leave a review once they have made a confirmed purchase, participated in an experience, or used a service, to minimise the risk of fake reviews.
Top five tips for brand reputation crisis management
While ongoing reputation management should help you avoid a crisis, let’s look at what to do should something go very wrong.
1. Be prepared
Having a plan with clear roles and responsibilities in the event of a crisis will help you solve the problem successfully. Organise a team that will run your plan, including employees from HR, Marketing, PR and Legal. The crisis management plan should focus on what could cause issues for your business and how to resolve them.
Set out a clear social media policy for employees. The guidelines must be precise and give expectations for acceptable use of branded accounts. Listen to what people are saying about you. Monitor and evaluate your customer feedback using social listening tools – the ability to spot trends could help you predict a crisis.
2. Assess the situation
If you’re faced with a crisis, the first thing to do is assess how significant it is. You should have an outline of the different levels of crisis in your crisis management plan. The way you conduct your response will revolve around this evaluation. Understand what the problem is and how the media is presenting it and use social listening tools to establish what your audience is saying and feeling.
If you have experienced a significant crisis, such as a data leak, understand people's immediate needs. Speak to your employees and keep them informed of the unfolding situation, giving them clear instructions on how to respond.
3. Connect with the customer
In the immediate aftermath of a brand crisis, the way you communicate with your audience is key to moving forward. Removing negative feedback or denying its existence when it’s accurate is the wrong approach. Your customers will respond with more sympathy if you admit your mistake, apologise sincerely, and explain how you’ll fix it. The faster you can do this, the better.
4. Present a united front
Share the impact of the crisis with your employees and stakeholders by informing them of what has happened and how you’ll fix it. If your employees and stakeholders understand and agree with your plans, you’re more likely to see a similar reaction in your customers.
5. Move swiftly
Once you’ve formalised your crisis management plan and stakeholders and employees are prepared, run with it. The quicker you’re ready to deal with the situation, the sooner you can respond and manage it.
Tools
Why measuring and monitoring your brand reputation is important
You need to measure and monitor your brand reputation to stay competitive within your field, retain a loyal customer base and maintain a steady revenue stream. Track your brand reputation over time to celebrate improvements but also react quickly to negative dips. Brand reputation also serves as a good temperature check for how your marketing initiatives are performing.
A positive brand reputation signals to your current and potential customers that you can be trusted to deliver high-quality products, services and experiences. By being proactive and tracking your brand reputation, you’ll also be in a far better position to spot the early signs of potential damage to your reputation.
Supporting metrics for brand reputation
Tracking and analysing brand reputation works best when combined with other key customer metrics, including:
Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely your customers are to recommend you to their friends, using an index that ranges from -100 to 100. You can use your NPS score to create an internal performance benchmark and as an indicator for brand sentiment.
Customer Satisfaction Score
The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures the satisfaction of your customers on a scale of 1-5, 1-7, or 1-10. Use it to measure an immediate reaction to a specific interaction or event, with the option to set multiple questions to measure different aspects of the customer journey.
Web traffic
It’s important to monitor all your website traffic, not just organic visits. A steady stream across all channels indicates a consistent flow of potential and actual customers to your website.
Domain authority
Domain authority indicates how well a website domain ranks in online searches based on its quality and trustworthiness. The more high-quality and trustworthy websites that link to your website and are associated with your business, the clearer it is you’re a brand with a good reputation.
Email subscription
When someone subscribes to your newsletters or emails, it’s a sign they trust your brand and want to hear more from you. The stronger your brand reputation, the more likely people are to subscribe.
Customer Lifetime Value
The lifetime value of a customer represents how much money you expect a customer to spend on your business during their lifetime. When used with brand reputation, it can indicate how positively or negatively your customers view your brand.
Word-of-mouth referral
Everyone knows how powerful a recommendation can be. It’s important to measure the source of your customers and how many are referred by people they know, even more so if you have a referral scheme.
Tools and platforms to use to track your brand reputation
Monitoring and measuring brand reputation isn’t a new phenomenon. Software companies around the world accurately track brand reputation and help businesses succeed.
Service and product reviews
Review platforms like Feefo ask customers about their experience with the product or service they have recently purchased. Managing your reviews is an important part of managing your brand reputation.
Company/employee online reviews
Websites like Glassdoor give employees the opportunity to leave reviews about their experience with your company, which – when the reviews are bad – can be damaging to your brand reputation. Try to understand the root cause of your employee's feedback and take steps to resolve similar issues others might have.
Social listening and mentions
Social media is the perfect sharing platform for feedback about your brand. It’s essential to listen to what’s being said and act on the information. Social listening programmes can find mentions of your business in harder-to-reach places like message boards, which gives you the chance to identify and resolve complaints fast.
Customer satisfaction surveys
The best way to find out how your customers feel is to ask them. Reach out via email using an online survey, which you can tailor to get feedback on a specific product or service. Act on the insights you receive and keep customers informed of any improvements you make.
Organic search volume change
Businesses find that most of their organic search traffic comes from brand searches. In other words more people find their websites via a search engine, with no paid promotion involved, when they search for the brand. The more organic website visits you have, the more your company is resonating with and reaching your target audience.
Sentiment analysis
If your customers are talking about your company at scale, you might not be able to keep track of every mention. This is where sentiment analysis tools, such as Feefo's Customer Sentiment Insight tool, can help you to spot key themes, highlighting areas of concern, areas for improvement, and areas that are performing well.
Share of voice
Share of voice refers to brand awareness you can measure, for example the number and reach of online mentions, your website traffic, campaign successes, and more. Measuring your share of voice can reveal how many people know your brand, how often they see and engage with it online, and how frequently they talk about it.
