A business’s reputation is key to whether it succeeds or fails, especially if it’s a new business that’s trying to get established. If a customer or patron has a negative experience at a company, they can go on Google or Yelp, or even social media and shout it out to the world. Depending on their influence, it could cause a ripple effect where companies suffer.
For this reason, companies will hire a reputation management company to help. Learn about this topic and how we can help.
What is Reputation Management?
Originally a public relations term, reputation management refers to influencing and controlling an individual or group’s reputation. Reputation management companies, along with the internet and social media, make search results a central part of a person or company’s reputation. Online reputation management has grown in popularity and focuses on product and service search management. As the term public relations evolved, mainly due to the advent of the internet and social media, the rules have changed. The stakes are higher since anyone can online and check a review, testimonial, or complaint/rant.
What defines a company or individual’s reputation has several factors attached to it. Some of these factors include:
- Product/service quality
- Customer service
- Return policy
- Shipping methods and time
- Replacements of products
- How long in business
- Website quality/user experience
History of Reputation Management
Reputation is a social construct based on other people’s opinions about a thing or person. Before the development of the internet, people had few options in which to review a company. The only access to companies was through the Yellow Pages or word-of-mouth and typically relied on a person’s experience. Public relations used to include a few medians such as printed media, events, and networking campaigns.
A company grew its reputation from the market’s perception of the brand. Companies hired public relations to manage the image and build their reputation. The concept was developed outside of media relations with academic studies pointing to it being the driving force behind Fortune 500 corporate public relations since the first of the 21st century.
With the creation of Google in 1998, the internet’s popularity established new branding and marketing opportunities. Instead of just journalists being the primary source of media content, now we had review sites, blogs, and social media to give voice to consumers regardless of accomplishment. Public relations then became part of online reputation management or ORM, which included implementing traditional reputation strategies, focusing on building a long-term reputation strategy, consistent across all platforms and web-based channels.
ORM counters negative search results by elevating positive content, but some companies have manipulated the concept to improve their reputations falsely. For example, some eBay sellers undertook reputation management by selling products at a discount for a positive review, gaming the system.
Benefits of Reputation Management
By hiring a good reputation management company, you can reap several benefits, which include:
- Less Risk
- Better talent
- More trust
- Treated better online
- Given a second chance
- Increased profits
When you’re given a good reputation, you become more trusted, and potential customers are more willing to buy from you. It also helps in keeping possible customers evergreen, meaning they will stay your customer for life. Brands with a good online reputation are 83 percent more trusted when referred by friends. Nearly 70 percent believe the opinions from consumers rather than paid advertisements—a vast difference from that of the 20th century.
An excellent way to build trust is to ensure your business is more transparent in all the right places. It’s crucial to listen to customer’s comments, whether they’re negative or positive. When you show you care about their opinions or listen to their feelings and respond accordingly, you show good faith. If you see a negative comment on Google or social media, respond and let the customer know what they say is essential. Try and rectify the situation and make it right. This show of good faith goes a long way to earning trust and could be the key to giving your company a second chance.
How Revity Can Help
To ensure your company gets the best reputation, we offer reputation management that includes consultants who can provide the tools you need to spot the issue and remove negativity from search engines, quietly. If you don’t have a problem but would like software, we also offer a program that monitors what’s said about your brand, so you can keep abreast of what’s going on.
Our process involves services that enable a company to either suppress or remove search result comments; it also includes protection and review management, effective search techniques, replacement with positive information, and ongoing monitoring activities.
Using reverse engine optimization, we provide a skilled team that fixes harmful and unwanted internet information about your business or you. You are virtually guaranteed a credible and positive internet reputation with services including:
- Cheater websites removal
- Rip-off report deletion
- Ratings and bad reviews removal
- Removing slander and negative internet news stories
- Fixing Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engine results
- Removal of information detailing court cases and litigation
Our expertise involves ascertaining the needs of different businesses and individuals that have unique reputation management needs. Our staff has researched and reviewed many services regarding reputation management and found ones we believe are best for individuals and companies. We offer services to businesses and governments, whether small or large and from a variety of industries and fields.
We understand the importance of public perception and know the end goal is increased sales and bottom line.
