ORM – Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Management (ORM) refers to the process of evaluating a brand’s presence over the Internet, addressing the controversial issues which may negatively impact the specific brand and protecting the goodwill of a brand. The ever-increasing popularity of the Internet has made it necessary business owners to actively monitor news or information related to their company, products, brand etc. It has been shown that negative news spread via the Internet can considerably impact a specific product or business.

The Importance of Online Reputation Management

Any experienced businessman would realize the importance of the reputation of their business. Reputation is everything and it can drive your business to a successful path by increasing your customer base, increasing the confidence of consumers and the overall revenue enjoyed by the business. In today’s modern world, people use online tools like search engines to gather information about a specific product or company before deciding to buy. Detailed reports reveal that online shoppers read reviews and gather information about a specific product before purchasing it. They also look for positive or negative news – especially in the fields of payment protection, refunds, and especially customer service!

If the information available over the Internet about your company or product is negative or not satisfactory, your company may lose a valuable customer. This is where the need for Online Reputation Management comes to forth to protect your business.

Online Channels to be Monitored

Information over the Internet is spread across various channels like news sites, blogs, forums, review sites etc. User generated content sites are the most important to track the online reputation of a brand. Social bookmarking sites, high traffic forums and video sharing sites like YouTube are some of the online channels that have to be tracked by a marketer who intends to protect their brand. Since information in such sites is contributed by multiple users, web users may consider such information as trustworthy even if it’s untrue.

How to Track Online Information

There are various ways through which a business owner or marketer can track the information/ news related to his brand over the Internet.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free service provided by Google Inc. through which you could receive alerts via email when specific information related to your search term is found in news sites, websites, blogs or video sites. It is a great tool to actively monitor information or news related to your company, product, employees, brand, etc.

Search Engine Results

As web users extensively use search engines like Google or Yahoo search to research about a specific product or find information about a specific company, sites ranking in the top results have the power to influence those web users. If the information in such sites is convincing it would definitely drive those visitors to buy the product else they may drop the plan of trying your product or service.

Using Your Site’s Statistics

If you own a website for your business, you should be having a tool for checking the traffic statistics (like Google analytics). Such tools would give the information about “Site Referrers” – the url through which a visitor came to your website. You could visit those referring urls and find information posted there.

You should carefully analyze such sites and if the information is misleading you can respond in a positive manner as listed below:

a)Remain calm and focused – work hard on any rebuttal and stay polite no matter the circumstance
b)Commenting the post (if it is a blog)
c)Posting a reply (if it is a community forum)
d)If there is no option for replying (Independent sites) he could contact the webmaster and politely request to remove the content or allow a rebuttal
e)If the matter is very serious you can also take a legal action against the site owner(s).

If you don’t maintain your own website ask your webmaster about existing statistics modules and if they don’t yet exist, have them added. These stats are like gold for many marketing reasons!

By actively monitoring your company brand, products etc on the Internet you can build new customer relationships while protecting your hard work from potentially damaging incidents. There are third party companies that offer online brand protection.

Tags:   blogs · brand · brand protection · business · forums · google · internet · marketing · online reputation management · orm · product · tracking · website