Looking to build your online reputation? Regardless of the industry, there are always conversations going on around your social media posts, blogs, products, research, or opinions. Executives, VIPs, and brands invest in building and sustaining their online reputation to gain control over the narratives, gain followers and build their personal brand. 

Online reputation management refers to a mix of strategies and techniques that help positively influence how people perceive you or your brand. The seven easy ways successful people manage their reputation online include prioritizing content, search engine optimization, creating profiles across social media and popular sites, monitoring online mentions, and responding positively.

These leaders take a proactive approach to reputation management instead of reacting only when a crisis unfolds.

1. Creating useful and impactful content

Successful people know their reputation is shaped by the content they produce. What they say across social media channels, press releases, podcasts or blogs reflect their expertise and personality while influencing people’s perceptions.

These leaders craft a powerful content strategy that is a driving factor in how their personal brand is perceived. The key components of effective content are quality, relevancy, authenticity, and consistency. 

  • Relevant – By creating useful and relevant content, successful people position themselves as authoritative and credible sources for information in their industry.
  • Consistent – While the content of these leaders reflects their personal brand and authority, it maintains consistency in style, voice, writing, and tone.
  • Quality – Original research, thought-leadership articles, expert tips, user testimonials, and reviews are some ways leaders engage with their audience. Research shows original content is much more impactful than the use of videos or visuals.

High-quality, authentic content helps successful people go beyond reactive reputation management to a proactive one. Studies show that 91 percent of readers reward brands for authenticity. Content marketing leaders gain 7.8 times higher site traffic as compared to those who do not have a clear-cut content strategy.

Leaders set the benchmark in their field by creating engaging and useful content that the audience is not likely to get anywhere else. 

2. Maintaining an active presence on social platforms

People who succeed at building and sustaining a positive reputation have an active presence across social media channels. They create and maintain a strong profile across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and others. With each social network, these leaders use their business name or personal name to build the profile which helps their profile rank higher. Apart from using high-quality profile pictures, these leaders make the most of all the fields including location, description, and updated contact information, which boosts legitimacy and search rankings.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Given that over 75 percent of internet users never go beyond the first-page results on search engines, having a smart SEO strategy is vital for people looking to manage their online reputation. Successful people take the help of the best online reputation management services Miami has to craft a long-term, effective SEO strategy. This helps put their personal brand on top of search results, making it easy for people looking for their expertise, find them.

A good SEO plan focuses on using strategic keywords and phrases across all content forms to boost visibility, website traffic, and credibility.

4. Monitoring online reputation

Successful people know the importance of monitoring and tracking what people are saying about them across the internet. A wide array of both free and paid tools related to online reputation management for people are available. These include Google Alerts, Social Mention, SEMRush, Reputology among others. These tools help you track mentions of name or brand across billions of sources while also analyzing their reach, strength, and sentiment (positive versus negative mentions). 

Leaders who are adept at managing their reputation work with the most experienced online reputation management services Miami has to keep track of

  • sites and blogs talking about them
  • sites that mentioned their name the most
  • location of the mention
  • sentiment – positive versus negative mentions
  • follower count on social media platforms
  • feedback and reviews

5. Investing in review management

Effective online reputation management for people is not only about monitoring the reputation of the individual on the internet but about proactively building positive reviews across review sites and social media platforms. Successful people invest in collecting and highlighting positive reviews, comments, and recommendations.

They also work with the most reliable online reputation management services Miami brands and individuals trust to collect reviews and feedback and manage online reviews. This helps them optimize positive reviews across Yelp and Google that are two of the most prominent reviews that show up on search results.  

6. Responding to mentions

An easy way successful people manage their online reputation is by being proactive and positive when they respond to their mentions. Any mention across the internet represents a huge opportunity for brands or individuals to create a positive impression on the target audience and boost their online reputation. Whether it is criticism, compliment, or a concern, leaders in reputation management personalize their reply instead of using a generic one. They are also adept at moving the concern or discussion of the public forums (such as social media) to avoid unnecessary conflict.

7. Creating profiles across important websites

Executives focus on creating a strong profile across popular websites such as CrunchBase, About.me, Inc.com, and Yelp while editing their Wikipedia page to ensure it represents the facts about them accurately. Crunchbase entries Wikipedia entries.

These sites are used by millions of professionals, entrepreneurs, and others who are looking for industry-specific information and to connect with other professionals. Healthcare professionals build their online reputation by getting their practice listed on popular sites such as Doctor.com, Healthgrades, and Wellness.com.

Apart from creating a strong profile, leaders also contribute guest posts on relevant sites such as Medium and AllBusiness.com. They also work with the most experienced online reputation management services Miami is known for to feature their interviews across sites such as Future Sharks, Inspirery, Young Upstarts, Ideamensch among others. Answering questions on Quora related to their domain is another way these successful people position themselves as experts in their industry.