How to Choose an Online Reputation Management Company
Janaya Jensen • October 23, 2019
Businesses need a positive online image if they want to succeed. A bad PR campaign, a couple of negative reviews, and a few horrible social media posts can ultimately spell disaster for online reputation if you continue to ignore them.
The stakes are high when it comes to your online reputation, and many businesses are waking up to the sense of urgency that comes with online reputation management.
In particular, they are turning to online reputation management companies that specialise in the removal of negative online content, offsetting bad PR by churning out positive content, spreading positive news, promoting good reviews, and in some cases, doing precision damage control.
If you want an online reputation management service to clean your online persona, this article will help you choose the ideal firm based on the services it offers.
Understanding the Role of Online Reputation Management Services
Online reputation management firms provide a wide range of services, offering more than just the removal of bad online reviews or damage control.
They can establish, analyse, secure, and restore your company’s online reputation using different methodologies. These strategies are applicable for both business leaders and businesses alike.
This includes CEOs, stockholders, and other professionals who want to control how they are perceived on the internet. Below are some of the most common strategies that are used to promote a positive online image.
Using Search Engine Optimisation
Investing in search engine optimisation is an organic (unpaid) means of managing your content, ensuring that it ultimately trumps negative content that shows up on the front page of search engines such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. SEO comprises of techniques and strategies that bring more visitors to your web page.
In order to secure accurate results, online reputation management firms have to keep on top of the dynamic changes being made to search engine algorithms so that the target audience and other businesses can reach you.
While SEO itself is a very broad field, it is ultimately used to promote a positive image in place of negative content.
If you have a lot of negative results appearing after typing a search query on Google, your online reputation manager will find intuitive ways to promote positive and truthful content to overshadow the negative content, displacing malicious PR campaigns under a mountain of positive content.
This ensures that when people run search queries related to you, their dashboard wouldn’t be flooded with negative content, at least not if they stick to the front page results.
Using Content to Improve Search Results
To cultivate a good reputation and rank higher on search engine results, businesses need to produce high-quality blogs and articles on a consistent basis. This also requires them to update their website and ensure that the blog is well structured, unique, and easy to read.
A good reputation management service will help you create knowledge-based content that users will find interesting, and they will ultimately feel more positive about your business.
The best way to spread awareness about your brand and remove all negative misconceptions is to create content that is shareable and worth reading. This is the best way to create credibility and improve your online reputation.
Targeting Social Media
It is common for people to use their social media channels to handle both their business and personal lives. The most common platforms people utilise to grow their personal brands and businesses are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
An estimated 2.46 billion user accounts cumulatively exist on all social media channels, making for an impressive number people that tune day in and day out to keep track of trends and interact with each other.
All it takes to ruin a brand’s image is one inappropriate comment or picture that could fuel a potentially unending negative PR machine. A good online reputation management service digs through your social networks and removes anything controversial to create a more wholesome image. They also actively look into third-party social media profiles that could influence your online reputation negatively.
Dealing with Online Reviews
A bad online review has enough clout to offset 10 bad reviews. It is extremely easy for someone to create a fake profile and enter dozens of negative reviews about your business.
Some people also go to enormous lengths to upload in-depth videos criticising your product or service, with the specific intent of damaging your online reputation.
Depending on how the law sees it, the online ‘critique’ might fall under fair use, thereby making it a pain to deal with the negative reviews.
A good reputation management service will help you acquire positive online reviews and manage negative, fake reviews more efficiently. These services utilise different tactics to encourage your existing customer base to leave good reviews on websites such as Yelp, Google, and TripAdvisor. It is common for services to include a suite of software that can help you manage all your reviews under one platform.
Monitoring Third Party Websites
While it is incredibly easy to clean up social networks and websites that belong to you, the same cannot be said about third-party rivals who actively want to damage you and steal your client base.
These could be former employees, angry customers, or dishonest competitors. It is not difficult for a motivated person to create a website and start a blog dedicated entirely to damaging your reputation.
For instance, if a customer doesn’t like a product and feels spiteful about doing business with you, nothing will stop them from pursuing a malicious marketing campaign such as using blog posts, social media reviews, and other types of information to damage your brand’s reputation. Many CEOs aren’t even aware that someone they rubbed the wrong way in the past is actively hurting their reputation.
A good reputation management service will scour the internet to find negative content that could prove to be harmful.
Here’s a good strategy to find out more about your online reputation: type search queries related to keywords about your business (or CEO) and run them through several search engines, including Google, Bing, and Yandex.
Scroll through the results, one page after another. What the search engines have indexed will be a rough estimate of the amount of content that has been uploaded on the internet related to you.
What Is the Cost of Hiring an Online Reputation Management Consultant?
The prices would vary from service to service. Most companies don’t give exact value, while a small percentage will have precise plans for businesses to choose from. As is the nature of online reputation, every person or business will have their own requirements, which explains why most companies offer customised packages and services.
Some leaders and businesses do not need the entire suite of services that a typical online reputation management firm offers. That being said, most companies will first run a thorough analysis of your business and offer strategies to serve your best interest.
This analysis will be a precursor to a monthly price quota. It is common for some consultants to demand prices to the tune of several thousands of dollars, depending on the nature of the problem.
It is true that some people require significant alterations to their online strategy to maintain their reputation, and more complicated alterations will require more resources and, ultimately, more capital investment.
If some tactics are deemed unimportant to your online reputation, they will be removed and the prices dropped. If it becomes necessary to add a new service, they can be added to the current strategy and the prices might increase, or some of the existing, less important strategies will be discarded so you don’t have to exceed the budget.
Do keep in mind that some of these reputation management services require a contract. Some of these contracts can range from six months to 12 months. Other businesses renew their contract every month, allowing you to cancel at your discretion without the fear of penalties.
Choosing the Ideal Online Reputation Management Firm
Most reputation management firms bring the same services to the table, albeit, with a different approach and price management model. This is why it becomes necessary to judge each firm on its own merit to decide which one will ultimately benefit you the most. Below are a few tips you can use to choose the ideal online reputation management firm for your business.
1) Decide Your Goals and Needs
Before starting your research for a good online reputation management service, you must have a clear outline of your specific goals. These goals will ultimately decide whether your campaign proves to be a success or failure. Having goals will also help the service decide on taking the most ideal strategy.
Below are a few questions you should ask yourself;
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Are you concerned about your social media channels?
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Do you want the service to focus more on your SEO ranking?
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Are your online reviews more important?
Every company will have a different set of goals which will require a completely different strategy. Online reputation management is not a set of one-size-fits-all rules that you could apply throughout the digital ecosystem and hope for consistent results, so it is important to revise the strategy according to the client’s needs.
2) Evaluate Their Customer Service
Before hiring the online reputation management service, you should first evaluate its customer service. When you get in touch with their sales representatives, they should happily guide you through the process, answer all your questions politely, and be prompt in answering your queries. Try to glean as much information about the services as possible from this one phone call, or online chat.
It is important to get good vibes from the company, if the person on the call appears bored or nonchalant, the firm is likely not a good place to take your business.
The representative on the line should have an understanding of the business, and not just assigned specifically to answer queries. They will be honest if they don’t know of an answer, promising to redirect you to someone on the line who does. As customer representatives, their job is not to secure just another customer, but to truly listen to your concerns and answer them honestly.
Below are a few questions you should ask the company before moving forward:
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Who will I be working with moving forward?
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Will a project manager be assigned to my project?
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Will my project fall under whoever seems to be ‘working the shift’ at the time?
When you do hire the company, they should provide you with honest feedback and offer a transparent service at all times. They should keep you informed about minute changes and interesting developments on the internet in regards to your reputation.
As their client, you are more than just a number, you deserve individualised treatment. After all, that is the only way to secure your online reputation.
Doing Your Research
It always helps to do your research about an online reputation management company that promises to look after your needs. Ensure that the company has a good reputation, because what good are its services if it can’t look secure its own profile?
Run several search queries on Google and other search engines to find out what other people are saying. If the company has listed a roster of clients on its website, try to reach out to them and learn from their experience.
Also take a cursory glance at the company’s website. It should look professional and provide you with information about its executives. Do your research about the executives and find out what others have to say about their reputation.
If the company offers an entire range of digital marketing services that use white hat tactics, then it is worth your while looking into those services as well.
It is common for online reputation management consultants to offer search engine optimisation, social media marketing, lead generation, email marketing and website management.
Should your business ever be in need of such services, your online reputation management company truly could become your one stop shop for all your digital marketing needs.
