It can’t be denied, we live in a world where we are constantly on our phones and computers, whether it’s for school, work, or pure entertainment. Being online has only grown since so many people have transferred over to online school and work.

So, this means that online reputation is more important for businesses now than it’s ever been due to a high increase of customers and targeted audiences being online. Even though people have always used the internet for a variety of reasons, the amount has gone up, especially since the challenging times that we’ve been facing.

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What’s Online Reputation Management?

Now, you may be wondering what online reputation management is and why it’s so important to have in digital marketing. If that’s the case then you’ll want to keep reading. You won’t want to miss out on this informational content, that’s for sure!

According to Overit.com “Online reputation management (ORM) is about monitoring and improving how your business is viewed online. It means looking and analyzing what a potential customer, reporter, or partner will discover about your brand, your people, or your product/service when they perform a Google search. Before they ever land on your website or pick up the phone to call you — what will they find when they look for you? And will they like it?”

As you can see from the above text, businesses need to take note of how crucial it is to constantly monitor how your business is being viewed online. This can either cause a positive or negative impact on your business as a whole. So, it’s important for businesses to realize what you can do to improve how your business is being viewed from your audience.

How YOU Can Manage Your Online Reputation

Managing your business online reputation should be incorporated into your digital marketing strategy since this could potentially improve your overall traffic flow to your website. But, if you’re stuck or confused on where to start in reference to managing your online reputation then you’ll want to stay exactly where you are for more information on this important topic!

Respond To ALL Reviews

In order to successfully manage your online reputation and keep it part of your day-to-day digital marketing strategy, you’ll want to make sure you respond to every review. This means that you need to respond to every positive review as well as negative reviews.

According to Content Marketing, “You can set up review notifications for review sites where you have an account, like Google My Business, or Healthgrades. Set aside time in your day or assign an employee to respond to these daily, especially the negative ones. But people may also post complaints about your company on any part of the internet. And you could miss a damaging post until it’s too late to control any damage.”

As stated above, it’s extremely crucial to understand the impact of not responding to reviews, especially complaints and negative comments. This could cause major damage to your reputation which is what you don’t want at all. So, make it a priority to have someone constantly check on reviews and respond in a timely manner. This could benefit your business tremendously!

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Find Creative Ways to Get Your Customers to Write Reviews

It’s a great idea to find creative ways to encourage your loyal customers to write reviews for your business. This allows your reputation to grow successfully since new customers or potential customers will see a high number of positive reviews in reference to your business.

According to Digital Future Times, “There are several ways to encourage reviews without being pushy: Add a note to your invoice asking, how did we do? and point them to your website. Provide links directly to your Google My Business write a review feature.Create a big “Write a Review” button on your website which takes them to a page of links to your Google My Business, Bing Local, Yelp or other online review sites.”

These are some of many tips that you can use to increase the chances of your customers leaving positive reviews on your website. This will allow you to bring more traffic to your website as well as an increase in the amount of reviews you’ll have. That’s a win-win situation if you ask us!

Don’t Give In to Online Arguments

As hard as it may be, you don’t want to get yourself in an online argument regarding your business. This could heavily impact your reputation and potentially damage it which could change the way your customers perceive your business. If you continue to be a part of an online argument, it could make your audience feel as if you’re coming off as unprofessional which is never good.

According to Creative Click Media, “It does not matter who is right or who started the dispute – engaging in online mudslinging almost always comes across as unprofessional. If you allow yourself to react to criticism emotionally, you could end up saying or doing something that tarnishes your reputation.The best way to avoid getting into a public online argument is to try to move the conversation offline in an effort to fix the problem.”

Instead of engaging in an online argument, you’ll want to focus your time and energy on how to solve the issue at hand rather than getting involved with unnecessary drama. At Paton Marketing, since we are a digital marketing agency, it’s important for us and all businesses to strategically plan how to address a situation that will result in a solution that works for not only us, but most importantly for our audience.

Final Thoughts?

Online reputation management is becoming more and more relevant in digital marketing. There’s no way to get around it, that’s why you’ll need to pay close attention to ways you can improve your online reputation. We hope you’re able to gain some insight from these tips on how to manage your online reputation and incorporate it into your digital marketing strategy.

If you enjoyed reading about how to manage your online reputation in digital marketing then make sure to keep an eye out for more insightful tips and tricks, here at Paton! You won’t be disappointed, that’s a guarantee!