Reputation management is the new big thing in online marketing. It is the process by which you can take control of your Internet presence and proactively manage public relations and branding in real-time. You may be wondering, why is reputation management important? Rather than passively allowing people to say negative things about you and your company, you can engage in proven online reputation management tactics through strong, preemptive SEO practices and by participating in online discussions about your brand and products or services.
There are many ways to manage and optimize your online reputation. Here, we will discuss three proven strategies for boosting and changing the direction of your digital reputation.
Table of Contents
3 Reputation Management Tactics To Boost Your Online Presence
1. Managing Your Reputation Via SEO
From an online marketing perspective, it’s difficult to separate search engine optimization from reputation management. SEO is, in part, the art of creating content that leads people to your landing pages and moves users through the sales funnel. Reputation management is very similar in a technical sense, but its purpose is to remove friction from the sales funnel using the tactics of good SEO. In this sense, you could think of it as branding. After all, branding is a synonym for public relations, which is a synonym for reputation management.
When it comes to doing better SEO, we could go on forever. It is, after all, a full-time job in and of itself. The bottom line here is that good SEO practices should always be in line with your reputation management goals. It’s about how you want your brand to be perceived by potential and active customers.
2. Influencing Online Reviews
This is where it gets complex. Managing online reputation can, and often is, about micromanagement. One of the most powerful tools you can use in the effort to boost your online reputation is to have staff members who actively engage with users in review spaces. Yes, that means paying people to write reviews or writing reviews about yourself. Yes, it does sound dishonest – but it doesn’t have to be.
We all know that some customers are going to have a sub-optimal experience with your brand. They will bring with them previous experiences and biases that will make them even more likely to do damage to your reputation in a review, forum comment, and other similar online spaces. Your task will be to give yourself the opportunity to be seen in the light of the things you do well. After all, you may have a great value proposition, do great customer service, and more. But one bad review can obscure all of that. By engaging with review spaces, you have the opportunity to represent yourself according to what you do well.
3. Social Media
Finally, we come to social media. In online marketing rhetoric, the importance of social media has shifted out of the limelight recently. But it is still a critical space for reputation management. Just like online reviews, if you aren’t participating in the discussion about your brand on social media- you may be missing out on the chance to portray your business the way it deserves to be portrayed.
Of course, it is also important to monitor your online reputation to perform damage control and stay ahead of the narrative. But that’s a topic for another time.