Let’s just start with two major facts that caught my eye today, the first one is that “there are 4.66 billion internet users in the world today” and the second one is that “85 Percent of internet users conduct online research Before buying anything Online”.
We can assume here how much the Online Reputation of the company, person, product, or service matters these days. Online reputations basically include reviews, comments, ratings, customer posts (blog, social), etc.
These elements, whether it is about you, your business or your products can influence the decision of potential customers so easily.
In this world with a population of around 7.8 billion, almost half the population uses the internet and 85% of them do research before purchasing anything online, while they do research they just put the Company/ brand/ product/service name in the search bar and hit enter and every single detail of the product, company or service will be visible on the SERPs.
Someone’s angry comment, review, bad buzz, negative news, or especially video can ruin everything and cause harm to your business and sales, that’s why Online businesses and business owners are always looking for methods and solutions to prevent negative information from Spreading Online.
Can You Prevent Negative Information From Spreading Online?
Our answer is No, you cannot. Even if you didn’t do anything wrong, you can’t control what people are posting about you online, and you can’t control anyone’s words, thoughts, and emotions.
So, how to maintain a positive perception of yourself or your business on people?
Instead of waiting for magic that can change people’s minds and motivate them to remove their bad buzz, You can showcase more positive information about you or your business.
So How Can You Do That?
Online Reputation Management which is also known as Online Reputation Repair is the perfect solution. And that’s what we are covering here today. Before going deep into this subject we also want to make you aware of how to check your current online reputation, and how to stay up-to-date about it.
Find What People Are Talking About You Online
There are a few methods that will help you to find out what is the current status and also keep eye on everything that is about you or your business. So here we are enlisting 5 such methods below.
Google Search:
Just Google your Name and Business Name together, and carefully check the results on the first page. Is there anything negative that appears about you or your business?
No? Great, If there is nothing negative about you up to the third page then you just have to take care of the future incident, but if there is something that can harm your reputation then connect to the best SEO company that provides Online Reputation Management services.
Thus a simple Google search can provide a rough idea of your reputation, but only rough, because Google Search doesn’t often include Social media data on its SERPs.
Google Alert:
It is a well-known and free service from Google that can help you stay up-to-date with the stuff related to your name and business on the Internet.
The tool is very easy to use, visit the Google Alert website and log in with your Gmail id, and create Google Alerts for your name and business name together and separately. In this way, you will receive detailed and more comprehensive results.
Mention:
The mention is an all-in-one powerful web monitoring tool that will track the web, blogs, forums, social media, etc. to let you know what and where people are talking about you and your business.
It has a good UI and it will make online reputation repair easier because you can track almost all major social networks, news, reviews, blog, forums, and review sites.
Buffer:
The buffer needs no introduction, and some recent updates made it even better and more powerful. With Buffer, you can manage Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, and Instagram.
You can use this platform to know what people are talking about you and with some new features you can also post your reply easily.
Hashtags and Mentions:
For every business Creating brand hashtags and mentions/ handlers and popularizing them on social media platforms become very important these days.
Hashtags will keep you informed about everything people are talking about, writing, posting, and sharing about you or your brands.
People also look for the way you or your business are handling all the negative posts and comments thus you can also post responses/replies with hashtags.
So finally you know what people are talking about you, now if you and your business received mostly positive mentions, reviews, and comments then you surely deserve a pat on your back.
Whereas, If you have negative comments, posts, reviews, and information then you need an SEO company that provides Online Reputation Management services.
I guess you probably want to know about how companies can provide Online Reputation Repair services and how they can help you and your services. So, Don’t worry, we will explain to you everything under our next two headings.
How Online Reputation Repair Works
Online Reputation Repair service is a combination of various internet marketing techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and social media optimization (SMO) techniques.
And by combining all companies and experts to build a positive online image of a client whether a business or person.
Basically, people learn about you or your business from Social media or search engines so reputed companies such as SAG IPL practice online reputation repair strategies to repair online reputation on search results as well as social media.
We are explaining both below.
How to Repair Online Reputation
There are some proven strategies that will help to repair online reputation easily and very effectively and that’s what we are exactly explaining after this point in this article.
Online Reputation Management on Social Media
After going through the above methods you will find out the negative buzz about you and your business, people are talking and posting online.
So, here we are providing some strategies you can follow to repair or improve your online reputation on social media platforms:
- Do not allow posts on your Facebook account
- Always respond, and respond as a business owner
- Never make excuses for the problem, focus on solutions
- Try to resolve the problem even if it requires some investment
- Try to take it out of the spotlight
- Stay away from negative things,
- Never feed social media trolls
- Keep sharing positive news about you and your business
- Stay polite while responding to tags, posts, and comments
Leading Social Media platforms have various tools, and features that can help you to engage with your audience without any worries and smoothly.
You or the hired company will spend 70% of your time and effort on handling negative buzz on social media and the remaining 30% on building a positive image on these platforms.
Reputation Management for Web Results
This part will have different strategies for different cases. At first, you or the hired company have to find out all the places where bad buzz or negative information has been published, these websites can be anything from reputed review websites to blogs and forums.
Basically, you have to displace these search results from the first three pages of Google search results. It is because only around 0.02% of searchers go beyond that.
So the main question is How will you do that?
Maybe reputation management for social media seems easier, but doing the same and getting the required result on web results is a bit complex.
After making a list of websites where something bad about you or your business has been published you need to check the authority of the domain/website.
After that, you need to find websites with higher authority and you have to persuade their admins to publish positive news posted on such websites.
Only half of them will get ready for it, after publishing the positive news about you and your company you need to promote such a website.
The work becomes complex if the bad buzz is posted on some review websites. In such cases, you really have to find a very powerful website to post or publish positive news so you can displace the review website with negative information from the search result.
The complete procedure will be on a case-by-case basis, every time a new strategy is, a web authority website will be used to repair the online reputation. What about DIY online reputation repair? Will it be helpful?
Not every time, It depends on the authority of the websites showing negative results, if such websites have low authority then you can do it by yourself but if they are good authority websites then definitely you need help from professionals.
Pro Online Reputation Repair Strategies
There are a few more proven strategies we found helpful and effective for repairing online reputation effectively and engraving all of them below.
Create Multiple Blogs
Creating multiple blogs on high-authority websites is one of the most beneficial strategies to repair reputation online. In this way, you will get the benefits of the power and higher authority of such blogging platforms.
Now if you like the idea, and wander here and there in search of such a blogging platform having higher authority, we can reduce the load.
Here we are enlisting some free websites/blogging platforms that have higher authority and also don’t cost a penny.
- Quora
- Blogger.com
- WordPress.com
- Weebly
- Tumblr
- Medium
Additionally, it is clearly observable that long LinkedIn posts also rank on Search Engine Results.
Write Guest Posts for Leading Websites
The other strategy that will work surely is Guest Posts for Leading Websites, you need to find out such leading websites that allow guest posting and then you need to talk to them and submit your article there.
Create and Maintain a Blog
You should create and maintain a blog section on your business website that not only provides more info and details about the work you are doing. You also have to keep your blog up-to-date and well-organized.
Get Influencers Spread a Word
To improve your online reputation you need to connect with the influencers of your field and share your ideas, and thoughts, appreciate their words and you have to persuade them to spread positive info about you and your business.
People do search for brands, people, and products online, and the reputation of companies and people matters a lot these days thus you as a business owner need to take it seriously.
By including your name in the answers
There are various forums and question-answer portals, and a smart company will definitely use them for improving your reputation. They will find some good and relevant questions and they will answer them on your behalf or they will include your name and link in their answer. It is generally a forum posting strategy but it can also help you in repairing your reputation online.
Hiring a professional online reputation management service provider company such as SAG IPL can help you to stay on top of the negative details, and bad buzz and also maintain a good image of you and your business online for all the potential customers.