Ultimate Reputation Management Guide

Reputation Management

Reputation management (RM) is where a company protects the image of the organization, its staff, and its offerings. This form of marketing entails branding, image, and customer service strategies to control the way the public and its market perceives the organization. It can include marketing and public relation campaigns both on and off the Internet to monitor and maintain public perceptions.

People often see reputation management campaigns in the terms of individuals. Whenever a scandal occurs, and a famous person holds a press conference to tell their side of the story they are practicing reputation management. Companies often do this as well when a major event impacts the opinion of people against a company. The Valdez oil spill and recent bank scandals are two examples of when the public felt negatively toward a specific company and the organization created a public relation’s campaign to sway public opinion.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is a technique that a business uses to make Internet content easier for search engine spiders and humans to find. These strategies are also important to use as a way of explaining what the content is about so that surfers know if it is pertinent to their search.

Search engine spiders crawl over content to look for keywords to categorize and rank content. Originally, this lead to web builders filling content with popular keywords to place their information at the top of a search engine results pages. Changes to the way the algorithms analyze and interpret information on web pages has resulted in companies abandoning these techniques. Now they rely on HTML, meta tags, and other strategies in addition to keywords to affect the way spiders rank their content.

The Differences between SEO and RM

When considering SEO and RM companies need to understand how they work separately as well as equally to create a marketing strategy. For while many companies know about SEO and actively use key strategies to impact Internet Marketing, many organizations don’t create and implement a RM campaign. They believe that RM is only necessary when something bad has already happened, when in truth, a comprehensive management strategy helps to mitigate the effects of negative occurrences in the market.

There are many different elements needed to create a marketing strategy. While these elements may intertwine they are dissimilar, and it is important for businesses to understand that there is a significant variance between SEO and reputation management. Once an organization understands these differences they will be able to utilize the benefits of these strategies to create a successful marketing campaign.

Finding You and What They See

The main difference between SEO and RM is that SEO is used to help a target market find a company’s Internet content and RM is used to determine how they interpret what they see when they look at information about the organization.

If a person is looking for golf clubs for a birthday present, they may do research on the Internet before making a purchase. The search engines results will offer them with many different companies where they can buy golf clubs. If the person has already heard about a company, the information may impel them to either rule that company out or put that business above other ones they haven’t heard of.

RM is all about Perception

Reputation management is all about perception. It is how the public perceives a company, its staff and its products that matters, and facts aren’t always a part of this perception. This means that a company can work for years to create a positive image, but one negative campaign based only on innuendo can destroy everything in a matter of months.

SEO, on the other hand is not about perception it is about information and utilizing the right strategies to impact results. And a company can use SEO to impact RM, while RM can’t be used to impact SEO. An organization can create all the TV ads it wants to create an image for a new product, but that project won’t appear at the top of Google results without an aggressive search engine campaign. Yet, if a company has a negative image, it can create content that will impact public opinion and use SEO to make sure this information ranks higher on a results page than negative information posted by competitors.

SEO Can Convert Contacts

Search engine optimization can be used to help convince potential contacts into customers whereas reputation management is the main reason why those in the market become and stay loyal customers. By utilizing branding, image and customer service strategies, a company can monitor how the market perceives the organization and its offerings to create a marketing campaign to overcome objections and inspire confidence.

With most adults researching products and services on the Internet, it is important for reputation management to include content that educates people about the organization. This can be done on websites, blogs, social media sites, press releases and downloadable content. By informing individuals about the organization and its expertise, the company will help build trust. Trust is an important aspect of converting contacts into customers. Even if an organization has a superior product, if the market doesn’t trust the company they will not buy from it.

RM Can Prevent a Negative Reputation

Companies often believe that there is no way to prevent a negative reputation; they just have to react when it happens quickly to minimize the damage. This isn’t true. Reputation management doesn’t have to be about closing the barn door after the horse gets out, it can be about fixing the gate to the stall and checking on the horse to prevent escape.

By monitoring specific keywords on the internet, a company can determine if there are negative conversations about the organization. These conversations can be from customers complaining about poor service, competitors creating negative campaigns and even spam campaigns created with the goal of ruining a company. Careful monitoring will also let a company know what people think about the company and its offerings. This will help create an understanding regarding public relation policies, improvements to offerings and future offerings the company may want to provide. If there are customers complaining on social media sites about a public or the way they were treated by employees, then the company can put a policy in action that will rectify these issues before their reputation is irrevocably damaged.

SEO can Make RM Strategies Visible

Once a strategy is designed, SEO is necessary to make it successful on the Internet. While RM can suggest keywords to target, keyword research will be necessary to determine which keywords will bring out the desired results. Tags and titles can be used to attract the attention of people who may be surfing for more information about a company. It can take time to achieve the desired ranking but combining SEO and RM strategies can help offset negative information on the Internet.

RM can lead the Conversation

People are always talking about companies on the Internet. Social media is one of the main resources people use to learn about an organization because they trust the opinion of friends and family over advertising. Even if a company doesn’t participate on social media a quick search will often reveal people talking about the good and bad points of a business.

Social media strategies should be a part of reputation management and monitoring conversations about a company and its products should be a task for the marketing and customer service departments. Companies should have a strategy in place for how to handle complaints on social media sites. When handled correctly, a business can turn a potential problem into a positive. This shows the market that the company does care about the customer’s experience and when a problem is discovered they act to rectify the situation.

An Ounce of Cure

They say that an ounce of prevention is better than an ounce of cure. By making reputation management an essential element of a marketing strategy a company can control the market’s perception and take steps to make sure that public opinion stays positive.

While SEO techniques can be used as a part of relationship management, RM entails much more than just SEO. It starts with a company deciding how it wants to be perceived by the market and how they can influence opinion. Once strategies are in place, monitoring is necessary to determine the current perception of the market and how the company can reverse negative opinion.

RM also means putting customer satisfaction first and strengthens relationships within the market so that if something does go wrong the public will give the company the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming the worst. SEO can help with all phases of relationship management, but businesses need to understand that search engine optimization alone isn’t enough to affect the perception of the public.

Does Every Company Need Reputation Management?

In their own unique way, every individual and company need reputation management. The term “reputation management” is commonly used to describe a service provided to a company that has reputation problems online. Rehabilitation centers, lawyers, accountants, jewelers, and many other types of industries are plagued with bad reviews written by customers on RipoffReport.com. But if you don’t have any bad reviews online or any reputation problems, do you really need reputation management?

Personal Branding

When an individual manages his reputation online, it’s called personal branding. Gary Vaynerchuck is the king of personal branding and teaches young professionals how to successfully manage their online identity to position themselves to get the job that they want (Entrepreneurship), get a raise at work (Scale), to succeed in the startup world (Build another company??? What’s your success look like?).

Crafting a strong personal brand can lead to thought-leadership online and inbound leads. Just look at what Gary has done in the realm of Entrepreneurship. Because he has positioned himself as a pioneer in the emerging gamification industry, he has closed deals with many clients on a consulting basis and been invited to speak at companies such as Keynote on the topic of Entrepreneurship.

Similarly, James has built a brand around location independence. Whenever any of my friends want to know how to escape the financial burdens of everyday life and travel the jet-setter lifestyle, I immediately refer them to James because I know he has that expertise. Because of the brand he’s built, he has created the Freelance Writers School, which is a subscription-based business that teaches individuals how to live a location independent lifestyle in the online digital media solutions space.

Personal branding is a form or reputation management

Gary, and James don’t have any online reputation problems, but they still utilized online reputation techniques to build their status online as thought-leaders in their industry. As an individual, don’t wait until you have a negative post about you online to start taking control of your online reputation. Start early, start now, and build a solid brand online that will help you create inbound leads or position you to excel in the career of your choice.

Outbound vs Inbound Marketing

There are two ways to market your company:

1. Outbound marketing

2. Inbound marketing

Outbound marketing is the traditional form of marketing that we’re all accustomed to. This includes cold calls, emails, networking events, trade-shows, conferences, and any other form where the company reaches out to customers.

Inbound marketing is the opposite of outbound. Inbound marketing is the method of establishing thought leadership in an industry, thereby becoming the expert and getting customers to come to you. Instead of hunting customers down, customers come to you because you’re the expert and they want to learn/get service from the best.

Inbound Marketing is all about Reputation

To generate inbound leads as a company, then you need to establish thought-leadership in your industry. Thought leadership is all about building the right reputation online.
Blogs, social media, and SEO are all methods to build a solid reputation online and generate leads for your business.

A Preemptive Strike

If you utilize your personal brand and establish a company brand, not only will you generate inbound leads and establish thought leadership, but you’ll also inherently set up reputation management for your company. As you guest blog for other sites and have people link to your social profiles, you’ll create an in-penetrable barrier that no bad press can get through.

Therefore, reputation management is important for every person and every company — it’s all a part of the online marketing strategy that needs to be crafted.

Despite what most companies and individuals believe about reputation management, it’s not just for businesses that are dealing with a reputation problem. With the advent of sites like Ripoff Report, Angie’s List, and Yelp, which all provide places for customers to leave reviews and feedback regarding the quality of product and service providers, companies and individuals need to be more careful than ever that their website—the place where their company lives online—doesn’t get outranked in Google by a slew of nasty reviews that could make or break the business.

Why Good Companies Get Bad Reputations

The internet has opened your business to new opportunities, but it’s also opened you up to several types of people, including customers and clients who can act crazy, bitter, or threatening to get their way.

You see, customers know that these sites are a weakness for companies, because companies are already at a disadvantage in Google search. They know that companies have no way to take down reviews on Ripoff Report or Yelp, even if they are full of false accusations.

Reputation management is not just for companies. All companies need reputation management, but it doesn’t stop there. Individuals need reputation management too. Some of the most successful businesses online today are those that provide a platform for others to build their businesses on top of. For example, shortly after the iPhone came out, Apple created the app store, which many companies who specialized in everything from gaming to productivity to fitness were able to build profitable businesses on top of. Likewise, when Twitter first came out, companies like TweetDeck, HootSuite, and Buffer emerged to augment the Twitter experience and provide additional tools for tweeters to use. Sites like WordPress.org emerged as the forefront blogging platform that allows companies and individuals to build websites without having much technical knowledge.

In the same way, Google has become a platform for many other industries to emerge. Search engine optimization, click-through advertising, and reputation management came about solely because companies want to get the best Google search rankings possible, and were willing to spend a large amount of money to get either organic or paid placement at the top of the page.

Who is Reputation Management For?

Reputation management is for companies that want to create a strong brand online. Not only do you protect your brand by owning your Google search results, but you also funnel people to your landing pages, so you can close deals, land speaking engagements, attend conferences, and get more clients.

Reputation management is also for companies that want to create a strong defense. As I mentioned in the beginning part of the guide, clients in the rehabilitation industry had problems with reputation management because even if they did an excellent job for their clients, sometimes their clients would get kicked out of the program or relapse (which is common when dealing with a lifelong disease like alcoholism or drug addiction). When these things happen, they go on sites like Ripoff Reports and write bad reviews about the company, which hurts the company’s brand. A good company has no way to remove fraudulent reviews from Angie’s List, Yelp, and Ripoff Report, so they need reputation management to help them get those bad search results off the front page of Google. Lastly, reputation management is for people who want to build thought leadership opportunities.

Does Every Company/Person Need Reputation Management?

Without question, YES! Reputation management is not just for companies who have bad reputations online.

Google Search: How Does It Work?

In this guide, we’ll dive deep into social and search engine optimization to understand why it’s important and how you can use it to improve your company’s online presence. For now, it’s important to know the basics. Google has technology that allows it to crawl your site (visit all your pages and anything you’ve linked to) looking for specific keywords. By picking out these keywords, Google can tell what your site is about, so it can use your site in relevant search results. They also give your website a ranking, based on several factors that we’ll cover in this guide.

If you are a real estate agent in California, for example, Google will rank you for the keyword “real estate” and “Real estate agent California.” The more relevant content you have for those keywords, the higher your website will rank.

A second major factor in Google’s ranking algorithm is who links to your website and what their ranking is. When you have high-quality external sites linking to you, you move up in the rankings very quickly. Every link back to your site is like a vote that your website is a credible source for Google to display. Wikipedia is a fitting example for this; you can Google just about any celebrity and their Wikipedia page will likely be among the first three results.

The flipside of this is that every site your website links to is a vote for their website. That means you must be careful and only link to highly reputable websites. Google’s algorithm is very good at figuring out which sites are important and worthy of the elusive top spots in their search results, so it’s important to have a professional, reputable website that is not labeled as spammy in any way.

Reputation Management: How Does It Work?

Reputation management is a complicated topic that we’ll dive into deeper in the next section, but for this section we’ll talk about this in three general parts:

Positive Search Results

Reputation management depends on having positive search results in the first 10-30 spots of Google’s results for your company’s name. This ensures that even if someone writes something bad about you online, you and your company brand are protected because you still own the search results whenever someone searches for your name. Most people will never look past the second or third page in Google search results, and even if they do, you will have had the chance to make your case before a customer sees a disparaging review. By pushing down the negative content, you can avoid making a bad first impression.

Long-Term Defense Opportunities

Reputation management also helps companies build a brand with long-term defense capability. We go beyond teaching you to get a profile up on Facebook or Twitter. Instead, we land guest blogging opportunities or weekly and monthly contributor opportunities to influential blogs in your industry. These opportunities take time to land, but that’s because they are the most worthwhile. They ensure the long-term defense against people who want to damage your brand.

Response Opportunities

Finally, reputation management means that a company looks at bad reviews as an opportunity to respond online. There are right and wrong ways to do this. How do you respond to Ripoff Report? How do you respond to Yelp reviews? How do you respond to a blog post that speaks negatively about your company? We create the perfect strategy and messaging that helps your company respond in a way that doesn’t add to the controversy or fuel an angry debate online, while still allowing you to address specific points within the disparaging review.

How Long Does It Take to See Results?

We’ll be discussing this in depth in our analysis in the latter of this post, but we have found that there are two effective strategies: a quick fix strategy and a long-term defense-building strategy. We do both for our clients to get them the best results.

The quick fix strategy is to create social media profiles and use video and images to quickly rank in search results. It also includes some public relations, which we’ll be discussing later in this guide. We execute the quick fix strategy over the course of 60 days and can show results very quickly with it.
The long-term strategy is to build thought leadership and branding by owning those top Google search results. We spend at least six months executing this strategy because it requires lots of solid, thought-provoking content, which takes time to build.

This guide is a suitable place to start with reputation management. So far, we’ve learned what reputation management is and how search engine optimization is used to build a solid brand. We talked about the three parts of reputation management to give a broad overview of what we do, and we shared how quickly we can get results.

Next, we’ll go over the 8 core principles of reputation management—search engine optimization, blogging, reviews, social media, video and images, public relations, external links, and personal branding. This overview of the 8 core principles will be fantastic because the framework will help you analyze your company and the kind of reputation it has online. It will also set up the next section of the guide, which will dive even deeper into each core principle with a full lesson devoted to each.

Throughout this training guide, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of questions, so be sure to ask them using the comment section of this post. You can also reach out to me at mgabbard0 [at] greengabbard.com to get your question answered. See you in the next section!

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Ultimate Reputation Management Guide https://greengabbard.com/reputation-management/ultimate-reputation-management-guide/ micah4232 August 01, 2018 at 06:15AM