What is Reputation Management and Why is it important?

Reputation management is the process of shaping and influencing public perception of an individual, company, or brand. The goal of reputation management is to ensure that a person or organization is perceived positively by the public and stakeholders.

Brochure websites and static marketing campaigns are no longer in use. It’s all about having new, positive social proof these days — people trust what other people say far more than what companies say. Here are a few eye-opening BrightLocal statistics to back this up:

• Online reviews are used by 92% of people to make decisions.
• Online reviews are trusted by 84% as much as personal recommendations.
• 68% form a purchase opinion after reading between one and six online reviews.
• 73% of respondents only value reviews written within the last month.
• 49% prefer businesses with at least four stars.

What exactly is reputation management?

At its core, reputation management is the strategic efforts made to directly influence how others think about an individual, a brand, or a business. Reputation management is a deliberate strategic practise that encompasses a variety of areas. Any reputation management strategy must include efforts to shape public perception.

Common types of reputation management

Each type of reputation management requires a different approach, but all are aimed at preserving and enhancing an individual or company’s reputation.

Online Reputation Management:

This involves monitoring and managing an individual or company’s online presence, including search engine results, social media profiles, and customer reviews.

Crisis Reputation Management:

This involves responding to and mitigating the damage from negative events or incidents, such as a public relations crisis, a product recall, or negative publicity.

Personal Reputation Management:

This involves managing the online reputation of individuals, such as public figures, executives, and celebrities.

Brand Reputation Management:

This involves managing the reputation of a company or brand, including monitoring brand mentions and customer feedback, and addressing negative comments or reviews.

Local Reputation Management:

This involves managing the reputation of a business in its local community, including monitoring local listings and reviews, and addressing negative comments or feedback.

Reputation Management Steps

A Reputation Management Process is a strategy used to influence and control an individual or organization’s reputation. The plan outlines the steps to be taken to maintain or improve a positive image, and to mitigate any negative impacts that may affect it. Here are the steps to create a Reputation Management Plan:

Assess your current reputation:

Start by understanding your current reputation and the factors that contribute to it. This can be done through online searches, social media monitoring, and surveys.

Identify your target audience:

Who are the people that you want to influence with your reputation management plan? Knowing your target audience will help you tailor your plan to their needs and preferences.

Define your reputation goals:

What do you want to achieve with your reputation management plan? Your goals should be specific, measurable, and achievable.

Develop a content strategy:

Create a content strategy that aligns with your reputation goals and appeals to your target audience. This can include blog posts, infographics, videos, and social media posts.

Monitor and respond to online reviews:

Regularly monitor online review sites and respond to both positive and negative reviews in a professional and courteous manner.

Engage with your audience:

Encourage engagement with your target audience by asking for their feedback and responding to their comments and questions.

Measure and evaluate your plan:

Regularly measure the impact of your reputation management plan and evaluate its success. Make changes to your plan as needed to continuously improve your reputation.

Reputation Management Softwares

Using reputation management software can be beneficial, especially if you work for a small-to-medium-sized business with limited PR resources. We’ll go over some options below.

1. Xoopah

Software like Xoopah allows you to see all customer interactions and online reviews in a single dashboard. Customers can use Xoopah to request reviews, respond to reviews in real time, and even text with potential customers. With Xoopah, you can organize, track, and make informed decisions based on your customers’ feedback and reviews about your business.

The Xoopah support team is available by phone or email to ensure you have the assistance you require to properly implement their tool. The software is best suited for small-to-medium-sized local businesses that have the time and resources to manually send text messages to customers or leads.

2. Yext Reviews

Yext excels most in customization. They allow users to customise most of the reputation management tool’s features. You can design these tools however you want, from review invitations to analysis. With your programming skills, you can use APIs to take customizations to the next level. Yext, on the other hand, lacks a good tool for tracking customers and generating repeat business.

Yext appears to provide an infinite number of customization options within the app and the content you send to your customers.

3. Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a customer review management platform that assists online businesses in establishing a trusted brand, collecting customer reviews, and gathering feedback. The solution enables businesses to showcase their reputation, improve customer experience, expand their online presence, and increase overall conversions and sales.

It works in two steps: the client shares their experience, and brands create a better experience, making it a win-win reputation management tool.

4. Reputation

Reputation is the only platform that manages consumer feedback from acquisition to loyalty. Reputation analyses vast amounts of public and private feedback data to uncover predictive insights for companies to act on and improve the customer experience. It acts as a business’ eyes and ears in the spaces where customers talk, post, review, and recommend.

From reviews and surveys to social and business listings, the Reputation platform assists businesses in anticipating business needs and customer concerns. Furthermore, auto dealerships that use the Reputation platform see 4x more leads from their business listings, 3x more Google Impressions, and 60 more vehicle sales per year on average.

5. Podium

Podium is another good option for the best online review management tool. This is due to its user-friendly feature, which allows you to acquire new reviews while also managing them once they have been posted. This review management tool encourages customers to leave reviews through text messaging. You can even send personalised text messages to customers asking them to leave a review. Customers can quickly leave a review by clicking a link within the message and specifying which site, such as Google or Facebook, they want it posted to.

6. BirdEye

Birdeye is the best online reputation management software for large businesses and for acquiring reviews. It provides several ways to contact your customers for feedback, including personalised text messages, email, the company website, Facebook plugins, and mobile kiosks.

Birdeye also offers several tools for managing and tracking reviews, such as automatic alerts and updates. It also includes options for monitoring your social networks, detailed reviews analytics, and the ability to keep your online business listings up to date.

They even demonstrate the entire review acquisition and management process in detail.

7. Grade.us

Grade.us adds a professional touch to your review process. It allows you to add your branding at every stage of the process. From one dashboard, you can easily see how your brand is performing across multiple sites. It enables you to monitor your company’s reputation across multiple sites and allows you to customise your review marketing campaigns.

Grade.us assists you in automating the review generation process. It provides you with the necessary social proof badges to help you gain the trust of your customers.

Conclusion

Managing your online brand reputation is important because it keeps your brand visible, connected, and growing. When you handle customer issues as they arise, you become a better and more trusted brand.

A dedicated team is not always required for reputation management. It’s something you can do effectively and efficiently with the help of a tool.

Most of the heavy lifting is done for you by online reputation management tools, leaving you with plenty of time to run and grow your business.

Do you want to manage your reviews? Xoopah can help you keep track of them all in one place. Sign up for Xoopah now and know how to manage your online reputation.