Why exactly is online reputation management important? In the age of a highly-connected digital world, rave reviews could spread and increase the reputation of business instantly. However, on the other hand a business could also be torn apart by negative feedback overnight. When your brand is taking a hit from negative comments, it can be tough to recover.
Comments that are detrimental to your business often leave a permanent trail of footprints on the internet. If nothing is done to address the negative sentiments, the damage on your brand may be irreparable as the same unpleasant narrative continues to rub into the mind of consumers.
While it is hard to contain bad news on the internet, there are ways where you could lessen the impact, or repair the brand damage with effective online reputation management strategies. Such strategies are particularly helpful in Singapore as sentiments drive consumers in their buying behaviours. This is where a professional online reputation management agency comes in and provides the right strategies to save a brand's image.
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It is crucial to maintain a positive appearance on the search result, particularly if you are enticing new customers. According to Forbes, 74% of consumers claimed that positive reviews make them trust local businesses, while 84.4% believed that online reviews are as important as word-of-mouth recommendations.
The practice of online reputation management is about ensuring that your brand generally appears favourable in search engine. This is because searches that end up with negative mentions of your brand are likely to hurt sales and turns off potential customers.
Therefore, it is essential for an ongoing online reputation management effort, where any occurrences of negative keywords related to the brand are immediately reported. This will facilitate a remedial strategy to produce more favourable content and reduce the visibility of the negative content.
Gone were the days where sales happened after consumers viewed an ad and clicked on it. Today, consumers tend to seek more information related to the product and brand before making a decision.
With the various digital channels available, consumers may seek information on Google, Facebook, and other channels where there are mentions of your brand. Therefore, your brand must maintain a positive impression on the various channels that consumers may interact with.
The cumulative positive impression on various touchpoints will add up in influencing consumer’s decision to purchase from your company.
It’s no secret that Singaporeans are savvy buyers and always do their homework before buying anything. Whether it is daily-necessities like tissues or luxurious jewellery, Singaporean customers are likely to check out reviews left by other buyers before making a decision.
Singaporean customers are wise enough to turn to real user reviews instead of glossed marketing content generated by the company itself. Reviews on Facebook, Google and authority sites like TripAdvisor, are trusted resources for customers that shape their opinions on your business.
Here’s a local brand in Singapore that is getting positive reviews on Google.
Whether you are running an online or offline business, the reviews about your company will ultimately affect how customers perceive your brand. Depending on whether it’s positive or negative, you will enjoy an increase in sales or suffer a drop in revenue as your reputation takes a beating. According to Reevoo, positive reviews produce an 18% uplift in sales.
In business, it is always important to have a high level of credibility to build trust with your customers. Online reputation management is one of the best ways to achieve that. With the right strategies, you are able to respond promptly to any negative news and convey the perception that your business cares about its customers.
Also, online reputation management allows you to shape your brand image and connect with customers aligned to the same value. It enables your business to create a positive vibe that is naturally attractive whenever consumers stumble onto your brand on the internet.
Here’s a local Singapore brand that seems to be getting it right with positive reviews on Google.
And here’s a restaurant that isn’t faring well on Google and Tripadvisor.
A company’s reputation isn’t all for increasing sales. It also affects how the company fares in recruiting new hires. Employees tend to prefer working with companies that have great brand values and are free from negative press.
For example, positive reviews for our company on GlassDoor increase the likelihood of potential employees joining our team.
As much as you would like to be on the good books of customers (and Google), sometimes mistakes happen, and you end up with some negative reviews. These reviews can quickly turn into a PR nightmare, and you will need to engage an online reputation management agency in Singapore to turn it around.
Here are some of the strategies that are highly effective in addressing negative search results for your company.
If you’ve got negative reviews on a 3rd-party site, you will want to have them removed to avoid further damage to your brand.
Before you do that, you want to ensure that you have addressed the issues that have triggered the review, or if it stems from misunderstandings, you’ll want to provide evidence to prove that your company is not at fault.
For example, the owner of this restaurant may feel that such a review is unjustified, as it was not supported with photos.
In such situations, you can reach out to the reviewers, whether on social media or email to resolve the issue. Find out what you can do to have them remove the negative reviews on Google, social media or blog.
If you are confident that the negative reviews are baseless accusations and can prove so, you can submit a request to Google for a legal removal request.
However, there are times where Google does not remove negative reviews and you have to respond appropriately. Take a humble approach, make the response fact-base and offer solutions to the customer.
Responding to negative reviews creates an impression that your company is willing to take responsibility. It contributes to building a good reputation in the digital space.
If you want more exposure, traffic and positive branding for your business, you will need to be on social media. About 4.6 million Singaporeans are active social media users. Most of them are likely to be active on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Businesses need to set up their social profiles on social media to connect to their audience and build trust. That is because the common perception is that if a brand is not on Facebook, it's probably not so reliable.
A social media page for your company also tends to rank highly on Google due to its inherent authoritativeness. For example, search "Heroes Of Digital", and you'll find our company's profile on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram on Google.
When users want to know more about a business, they often type the brand name and search terms like “Facebook” or “review” on the search engine.
By identifying the search pattern, you can create new pages on your website that target similar keywords.
For example, a page that goes “Your Review On Our [Brand] Matters’ may appear on top of the search engine. It could push down existing negative results and allow remedial strategies within the page.
The same approach works when you’re trying to counter detrimental search terms related to ‘[brand] + Facebook].
Build pages similar to “Follow Us On Facebook” keep negative results from topping the search.
Another simple trick in increasing search visibility is to buy new domain names with different TLD extensions.
For example, if you already own ‘seofirm.com’, you can buy domains like:
‘Seofirm.net’
‘Seofirm.info’
‘Seofirm.org’
You can build blogs, create informational guides or news on these new domains and link to them from your primary website.
Once Google has recognized that they belong to the same brand, the new domains may also gain visibility on the search result.
Wikipedia is no stranger to anyone who uses the internet, and is highly beneficial for building your brand’s online presence.
It is not easy to create your business page on Wikipedia, as it’s vetted by a group of hawk-eyed voluntary editors. However, once you get your Wikipedia page, the perception of your brand is boosted.
Also, searches on your brand will likely return information and link from your Wikipedia page. Try searching McDonald’s, and you’ll find its Wikipedia page listed on the right column of Google’s search result.
We have mentioned that YouTube is one of the most popular social media for Singaporeans, with 82% of monthly active users. You would want to start engaging our audience on popular video websites because video marketing is a popular trend.
The numbers speak for it as users watched more than 500 million hours of video daily on Youtube alone. Videos also tend to rank favourably on Google. If your business has an active account on sites like Youtube, Vimeo or Daily Motion, it helps to keep your brand connected to modern audiences and increase visibility.
Did you launch a new product? Or celebrating your companies anniversary? Spread the news not only on social media but also by publishing a press release.
By properly optimizing for targeted keywords, there is a high chance that the press release will rank on Google when published on press release sites such as Newswire, PR.com and NewsWireToday.
Blogging is an effective marketing strategy and doing so on authoritative blogs or news site help to boost reputation and reach. For example, getting content published on sites like Vulcanpost and TechinAsia lead to brand exposure amongst local entrepreneur and startup community.
It is also an excellent way to drown the voices of negative reviews as content on authoritative sites tends to rank higher on Google.
Authoritative sites also mean established sites in your niche, which could be blogs run by individuals. You can find authoritative blogs that accept guest posts by searching the niche keyword + “write for us” or similar terms.
Here’s an example for sites that are accepting guest blogs on essential oils.
Here’s another easy way to increase your brand’s visibility that leads to positive perception.
Go to authoritative sites like GrowthHub, about.me or ContactUp and create a profile for your business.
When you have a few of such profile pages dominating the search results, the chances of negative reviews surfacing decreases.
Web 2.0 sites are associated with blogs and other forms of user-generated content. They can also be optimized to rank on Google.
Building web 2.0 sites is a great way to increase traffic, build an audience and sustain positive reputation management campaign. For example, you can create a blog about work-out routines if you are in the fitness or health business.
Having a separate web 2.0 site also gives you the freedom of style and language to connect with users. As it achieves better rankings in Google search engine, the site becomes a powerful tool to counter negative narratives about your brand.
Platforms like Blogger, WordPress and Weebly are some examples of where you can build Web 2.0 sites.
You should not limit yourself to publishing blog content as the only online reputation management strategy. Often, complementing with videos, interviews and podcasts help to cast your brand under favourable light.
The process also connects you with other stakeholders within the niche help to build real relationships, which will be pivotal in maintaining a positive impact on your brand.
Besides, these forms of media may cater to a different segment of users, which means increased exposure when published. When used correctly, they are powerful tools to counter negative allegations towards your company.
As mentioned, part of the benefits of online reputation management is to build a good reputation amongst potential employees.
There are various job sites where the strategy can be executed. You can create and optimize a LinkedIn profile with videos that reflect your company’s culture, brand story and mission statement.
Glassdoor, which allows employees to anonymously review their company, can be used to showcase the benefits of working in your company.
Wantedly, a service that connects jobseekers with companies, allows you to highlight your company’s culture on its profile page.
By having positive reviews and professionally-created profiles on job portals, the chances of hiring an employee that aligns with your culture increase.
Below are some of the well-known and effective tools for online reputation management that you can use to manage your brand's image.
A tool that allows you to easily obtain analytics on how your brand is being mentioned in the digital world. BrandGrader allows you to obtain data on competitor brands by scraping info from social media and the web.
BrandsEye uses AI to listen to conversations of normal users that are related to your brand. It picks up signals of conversation deemed high risk, value or urgent to your business. It’s a time-saving tool that removes the need to go through neutral mentions.
Brandwatch is a handy tool that analyzes what and how consumers are responding to your brand by tapping into a library of 1.4 trilling conversations. Helps with brand management, crisis management and defining marketing strategies.
Rankur is a comprehensive online reputation tool that monitors social signals, blog and other web media. It features filters and automatic alerts when surges of negative mentions are detected.
Social Mention provides real-time data on conversations that are related to your brand on social media. You can sort the negative mentions from the overall chatters with the tool’s filter.
Alterian enables businesses to connect the various points of customer experience into a single platform. It allows businesses to refine customer interaction from feedbacks generated from every touchpoint of the customer experience.
sentiOne taps into social signals to identify opportunities for targeting new audiences. Based on the data, it enables pairing up customer service with AI to deliver a better experience to the customers. You’ll also get a better insight into customer sentiments with sentiOne.
Reputology allows you to manage reviews from Google, Facebook, directories and other sites from a single platform. The tool also converts unstructured sentiments into actionable data. You can also track trends and manage KPI within the platform.
A simple and powerful tool that send you alerts on specific keywords that appear in newly published content.
Getting out of a PR nightmare isn’t as easy as it sounds. Most of the works are highly technical and require years of experience.
In Singapore, businesses are operating on a very hectic schedule and meddling with SEO-related matters is not productive.
Instead, you would be better off with hiring an experienced online reputation management company like Heroes of Digital to handle the ORM of your brand. Our team is better equipped in handling SEO-related like these:
Our team is familiar with SEO keyword research and behavioural patterns of users, particularly when it comes to negative search results.
It is important to identify what negative search terms your brand is associated with before planning on remedial actions.
Once we know what we are dealing with, we may suggest strategies that involve buying new domains, creating new sites and publishing pages with optimized content.
These pages are highly targeted with your brand name to reduce the visibility of negative content when users are searching for your brand.
In most cases, we will go into the offensive mode in suppressing the negative content from the search results. This may mean publishing more content to flush the negative reviews down or optimizing existing pages.
We will also help you to create profiles on authoritative sites so that searches will lead to more occurrences of your brand instead of the negative news.
Part of our strategies also involves publishing press releases, which can be very helpful to counter the negative reviews.
Let’s be clear. Dealing with PR nightmare isn’t a pleasant job, and you’ll want to engage an online reputation management agency with a steady hand on choppy waters.
In such instances, it means being knowledgeable in SEO and content strategies that work. We will help you to create positive content that improves the perception of your brand. What is more important is that we publish these content in authoritative websites built with proven SEO techniques.
We will take care of the technical details like optimizing the image Alt text and title with keywords and maintaining a healthy backlink profile to your sites. Link outreach is a proven backlinking strategy that increases the visibility of your website, but if performed wrongly, can lead to penalties from Google.
Google penalties, which ranges from ranking drops to total removal from the search result, is not something you want on top of an existing PR crisis.
Online reputation management services in Singapore aren’t cheap, and you will need to be realistic on the timeline before getting positive results. Cost and time may total thousands of dollars, and a few months before negative content is suppressed.
It is important that you work with an online reputation management film that is transparent on cost, expectations and results. Avoid one that promises an instant fix, because it’s just technically impossible.
A good online reputation management agency or SEO consultant will provide you with a breakdown of what makes up the total cost. Often, the cost will also include engaging publishing sites to publish your content and collaborating with influencers to boost your brand.
If you are in the middle of a PR crisis and in great need of help, talk to our experienced team from Heroes of Digital today and they will be able to provide you with insightful recommendations.
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