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There are few things that matter to a person other than their reputation. Whether it be at work, with friends, or in any other aspect of your personal life, most people care about what others think of them.
You want to be known as someone that others think well of, look up to, and can trust.
Your company’s reputation is no different. You need to know what consumers are saying about your company online to understand how that affects your potential buyer’s opinion of you. Managing your online reputation involves a lot of reaction on your end: it’s figuring out how to respond to your online feedback—both positive and negative—and solving problems before they affect your bottom line.
The basics of online reputation management
When we talk about online reputation, we’re talking about how the internet talks about your company, service, or brand. It is a cumulation of all the little interactions, big campaigns, and countless impressions you’re making on the digital world. One minor incident—say, an offhand reply to a commenter on LinkedIn—can have a cascading effect that follows you around for…well, let’s just say the internet has a long memory.
While you truly can’t control what others think, there’s a lot you can do to influence your online reputation through online reputation management (ORM). A valuable marketing strategy to have in your back pocket, ORM relies on metrics and other social media measurement tools to figure out what type of content works best for you, identify negative feedback so you can respond to them, and push forward more positive content.
There are three major sources of input to consider for your online reputation:
- Paid media: Advertisements that you pay for to get the word out about your brand online. This includes banner ads, social media ads, pay-per-click ads, etc.
- Owned media: Anything that belongs to your company that has a permanent place on the internet. This includes your website, social media, blog posts, etc.
- Earned media: When a piece of your owned media is shared by someone else or when your company is reviewed by influencers or thought leaders online. This includes likes, retweets, news articles, etc.
How to start tracking your online reputation
To track your online reputation online in paid, owned, and earned media, you’ll need to institute metrics that capture your company’s performance online. Be sure that you implement software with robust analytics to help you track and understand these metrics to create actionable goals.
1. Monitor relevant metrics
When you’re sharing content for your company, you want to build a robust portfolio of material that engages users. The goal of this content is to help establish a positive reputation and elevate you as a thought leader in your industry.
But unless you track relevant metrics, you have no idea how your content is actually performing or how it’s benefiting your reputation. Make sure you’re tracking the information below.
Online reviews
Online reviews are what come to mind for most when they think about online reputation—and they aren’t wrong. Your reviews, whether on Google, Facebook, or an industry-specific platform, are deeply influential. Approximately 90% of customers use Google to research companies, and every one-star increase in a Yelp rating means a 5 to 9% increase in revenue.
Traffic to your website
Website traffic is a broad category, but it paints a clear picture of your online reputation and how effectively you manage it. To drill down, configure a reputation management dashboard in Google Analytics to look at:
- Traffic Sources
- New, unique, or returning visitors
- Value per visit
- Bounce rate
- Exit pages
Consumer advocacy
Successfully building your online reputation means creating a long-term relationship with your customers. When you prioritize customer experience, you’ll build strong support among your audience—which is visible when you look at some critical KPIs:
- Positive comments and reviews
- Customer engagement metrics across your social channels and website
- Social reach
Carefully nurturing your consumer relationships has a positive impact on your online reputation—answering a complaint or addressing a concern can increase your customer advocacy by up to 25%.
Share of voice
Share of voice is one of the biggies for online reputation management. What is share of voice? It’s the number of conversations about your brand, divided by the number of conversations about your industry. In short: it’s your slice of the reputation pie.
Share of voice is valuable because it gives context to all your other metrics. Run a business in a small-but-mighty industry? You might not need thousands of comments every day on social posts to get top billing among your competitors.
2. Media monitoring and social listening
Media monitoring involves tracking different outlets online to see what users say about your brand. When you see your brand talked about in a comment on a social media post, this allows you to step and address people’s concerns. Doing this on a public platform will build trust and improve your reputation with users.
Look for media monitoring tools that cover
- Social media platforms
- Blogs
- Forums
- Newsletters
- Videos
- Podcasts
There are a range of tools that let you track your brand across social platforms. These tools not only help you monitor your reputation and give you valuable insight into customer needs, voice of consumer messaging, and all kinds of other marketing and product development data.
One quick and easy way to start monitoring your brand in the media is to set up Google Alerts for all variations on your brand name. This will put any negative feedback directly at the top of your inbox, giving you a head start on responding to negative stories. (But also the positive ones!)
3. Promote employee advocacy
You have one enormous tool at your disposal for a positive reputation online: your employees.
Employee advocacy means that you encourage your employees to share your company’s online content on their personal social platforms. This can have a significant impact on your online reputation. For example, Facebook’s algorithm favors local, familial, and friendly posts over business ones. If someone sees a post about your company by one of your employees, they’re more likely to click on it than if your business posted about it.
Manage your online reputation with Clearview Social
However, you need to make social sharing as easy as possible for your employees to actually do it. Take the sharing burden off your employees with Clearview Social. Our easy-to-use employee advocacy software offers one-click email sharing, so your employees can share pre-approved content to their social pages in seconds, straight from their email.
Plus, our robust metrics make it easy to track your social pages and understand what content works best to secure a positive online reputation.
Secure a ⭐ five-star ⭐ reputation for your company by Getting A Free Demo with Clearview Social today.