All businesses, especially those who rely on Search Engine Marketing, can be subject to bad publicity. It takes just one negative comment on a blog or website with the right audience to drive your reputation into the ditch. If you haven’t heard of or are not doing Online Reputation Management (ORM), here are the basics and why this is something you need to start doing now.

What Is Online Reputation Management?

ORM is the process of following online references to a brand, company, person or service while having a plan in place to deal with any negative feedback. You can think of it as a three-step process, although they may not always occur in this order:

  1. Monitor – Maintain an ongoing system for researching and keeping track of public perception.
  2. Evaluate – Consider individual feedback, as well as the source, outlet, reach and timing, to come to a decision about the risk.
  3. Act – Comment, rebut, draft a formal response or simply ignore what has been said, based on your evaluation.

ORM is typically considered to be a mix of marketing (including SEO) and public relations. There are numerous firms offering ORM services, although it’s something you can do on your own for free.

Why You Need To Do It?

Here’s a hypothetical situation described by Alisa Gregory of Sitepoint.com

Let’s say you have years of experience, a solid client base, and great relationships with your clients and colleagues. You recently bid on a huge design project with a well-known company and won. One of the other candidates, who was not awarded the job, is resentful. Not only did he put hours into the process, but a friend within the company essentially guaranteed him the job.

Upon discovering that you were awarded the work, the other candidate publicly attacks your character, work ethic and values in his very popular design blog with over 5,000 readers. Unbeknownst to you, one of the top Google results for your name is now this scathing post, which at this point has 35 comments from people who don’t even know you, agreeing with the author. Anyone who Googles you will now see this potentially before they reach your own website.

It takes you two weeks, a drop off in normally steady inquiries, and a call from a long-term client asking for details on the situation for you to discover this post. At this point, you have no way to know how much business this has cost you, but you are quickly scrambling to find all references to this post, and trying to do damage control.

By monitoring your online reputation, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to avoid this situation. In fact negative comments are a reality in today’s world. However you can do a few things immediately to defray some of the damage. The most important part of online reputation management is being aware of what’s being said about you, to whom and why. It also requires that you do it consistently and have a plan in place when action is necessary.

In the next post I will provide a list of free tools you can use to monitor and manage your online reputation.

Here are some resources where you can find out more about ORM:

Do you monitor your online reputation? Do you think it's necessary?

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4 Responses to “Basics of Online Reputation Management”

  1. This is a very big challenge for small business owners who have no resources to monitoring and maintaining reputation online.
    It will be interesting to learn free tools…
    Thanks for sharing this vital information.

  2. Rudy says:

    Given most of our time is dedicated to presenting our product in a given field of expertise ; This can be frustrating. Its like puting up a billboard only to have someone deface it . It takes a lot of effort to stakeout a website, Put relevant content on it, then do SEO , Then tweak the site & follow the metrics. Now you have to defend your reputation . So when do we get to sell our product ?

    • Ed Gluzman says:

      Rudy,

      You’re absolutely correct. Running a business on-line has many challenges and ORM is one of them. This is why we recommend outsourcing some of this work so that you can concentrate on selling your product.

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