What is Online Reputation Management/ORM?
One day, while browsing the Internet, you decide to type your company’s name into Google/Msn/Yahoo! to see what comes up. Pure curiosity! You expect some good reviews, few very satisfied customers recommending your company, and lots of excellent buzz. Because buzz is good, you know that. Then, the results come up and you just cannot believe your eyes. Right under your official website, you see something every company owner dreads – a complaint against you, your employees, your services etc. A whole page dedicated to you on RipOffReport.com or Complaints.com. Ouch!
Companies have offline and online reputation. Here are some basic facts about each.
- Offline reputation is your company’s reputation in the “real world”. Your existing customers can either recommend your company or not. Depending on their personal experience, owners are going to deal with either good reputation or bad. It’s all logic, right?
- Online reputation is your reputation on the World Wide Web. The almighty Internet. Just like the offline reputation, your company’s online reputation can be either good or bad.
But, there are some crucial differences between those two. Offline reputation is something you cannot really check, read, FEEL. On the other hand, online reputation is there, sitting on the company’s roof and loudly exclaming either great information or very, very… I mean, very harmful. Harmful for the company, harmful for its employees, harmful for the business.
Another difference is the control. When you deal with the offline reputation, where people carry the reputation, owners don’t have very much control. But, there are some ways one can clean their company’s reputation. They can contact all their customers, figure out the way to buy the lie detector machine and individually test everyone. Then, after all the work is done, they can apologize, undo the damage and hope that all will be forgiven.
Of course not.
That’s why we have online reputation management. It’s the way to track company’s reputation, figure out the best way to find the solution if it’s negative, do some apology working as well as new content creation sealed with SEO coat (search engine optimization).
Online reputation Management is the best way to revive one’s company good reputation and go back on the right track where birds sing lovely songs about happy customers. Well, birds actually chirp…