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A Guide to Online Reputation Management (ORM) for Digital Marketers
Your online reputation is among your most valuable digital assets in today’s internet-powered world.
However, building and maintaining a positive online presence has become increasingly complex with the proliferation of diverse social platforms and review sites.
As consumers spend more time discovering brands and making purchase decisions online, their perceptions are largely shaped by what they find on search engines and social media.
Therefore, it is crucial for businesses of all sizes to pay attention to their online reputation through a strategic online reputation management (ORM) approach.
Online conversations about your brand are happening, whether or not you participate in them.
According to a recent survey, around 90% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses before deciding where to spend their money.
Similarly, research shows that positive reviews significantly influence up to 85% of potential customers.
On the other hand, just one negative interaction could diminish years of marketing effort and drive customers away from competitors.
To complicate things further, brands today have little to no control over their online visibility and the type of content that surfaces in their search results.
For instance, negative news headlines, anonymous customer complaints on forums, or a disgruntled employee’s social media posts may suddenly appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), skewing prospective customers’ perceptions before they can learn about the true reputation and quality of service.
Such fluctuations in online search rankings and narratives highlight the need for an ORM strategy that can effectively monitor, measure, and manage a brand’s digital footprint across various touchpoints in order to consistently cultivate trust.
With the right monitoring and engagement tools, brands can not only track conversations but also actively shape their narrative by publishing helpful and engaging content that attracts positive audience interactions.
In this detailed guide, we will cover the importance of ORM for modern digital marketers while exploring its best practices.
By understanding the fundamentals of ORM and implementing a comprehensive strategic plan, businesses can achieve marketing goals like increasing online visibility, enhancing engagement, gaining customer trust, and protecting their brands during potential crises.
Let’s begin our journey of learning how to make ORM an integral part of your company’s marketing framework.
Table of Contents
What is ORM?
ORM, which stands for Online Reputation Management, refers to the process of monitoring, engaging with and influencing the perceptions that online audiences have about a brand.
In today’s digital landscape where consumers heavily depend on online reviews and opinions shared on social media to make purchasing decisions, it is extremely important for businesses to pay attention to what is being said about them online.
ORM allows brands to have visibility over all online conversations taking place about their products and services across search engines, review sites, social networks, forums, and beyond.
It gives organisations the opportunity to address both positive and negative feedback, answer queries from customers, and shape the overall narrative about their brand online through helpful and quality content.
While ORM shares some similarities with digital public relations, its goals are more proactively focused on building trust and credibility rather than reacting to crises or issues.
The key objectives of implementing an ORM strategy include protecting brand reputation by mitigating the impact of negative coverage, cultivating positive user experiences online to boost recommendations, as well as enhancing customer engagement through community management.
An effective ORM strategy can help businesses address reputation crises in a timely manner, and also catch brand mentions that could damage the perception of online users if left unaddressed.
It promotes transparency and accountability, both of which are important factors for potential customers researching products and companies online.
In the end, ORM is about paying close attention to what is being said on the internet and using that insight to strengthen a brand’s online image and relationships with target audiences.
Why is ORM Important in Digital Marketing?
ORM plays a crucial role in various aspects of modern digital marketing.
With consumers heavily relying on online reviews and social media conversations to make purchasing decisions, maintaining a strong online reputation has become imperative for business success.
Here are some key reasons that highlight the importance of implementing an effective ORM strategy:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Our research shows that nearly 90% of online experiences now begin with a search engine.
Therefore, how a brand is perceived in organic search engine results pages (SERPs) significantly impacts its discoverability and visibility.
ORM allows businesses to have control over the types of results that surface about them on search engines.
By addressing outdated or negative content through monitoring and engagement, companies can optimise their SERP presence.
They can also create and publish new positive content regularly to attract organic traffic.
This leads to enhanced SEO rankings and increased website discoverability.
Customer Conversions: Numerous studies have revealed that online reviews directly influence up to 85% of potential customers.
Positive ratings and testimonials build trust that sways purchase decisions in favour of brands.
On the flip side, even a single negative review acts as a major deterrent.
ORM enables addressing feedback in real-time to change negative perceptions.
It also helps surface engaged discussions and authentic positive reviews to showcase brand value.
This instils assurance in new customers and boosts conversion rates across sales funnels.
Social Media Marketing Success: Online communities have become a primary channel for customers to discover brands, seek recommendations, and share buying experiences.
Active engagement through social listening and responses is important here.
ORM provides insights into audience sentiment and pain points discussed on platforms.
It allows for addressing issues promptly and offering support to dissatisfied users. This strengthens relationships and fosters brand advocacy.
It also helps create engaging branded content aligned with community guidelines to attract new followers organically. Understanding social conversations through ORM thus enhances the ROI of social advertising campaigns.
Crisis Management and Reputation Protection: Unaddressed negative publicity, whether legitimate complaints or misinformation, can dent a brand’s reputation rapidly.
However, with the right crisis response plan in place, ORM helps curb potential damage.
It enables organisations to identify reputation threats in real time, assess root causes, and take corrective actions promptly through open communication.
This restores lost trust and protects goodwill built over years with customers.
It minimises the long-term harmful effects of a backlash during unforeseen crises.
Improved Customer Service: By monitoring keywords and replies, ORM provides insights into recurring queries, issues, and pain points shared by audiences online.
It gives actionable guidance to enhance product or service quality based on customer needs.
ORM also improves response times through 24/7 surveillance of brand mentions.
Addressing feedback promptly improves experiences and satisfaction levels among existing customers and prospects. This enhances loyalty in the long run.
Benchmarks Competitors: Comparing the content strategies and audience interactions of competitors provides valuable learnings for business growth.
ORM allows analysis forums, review sites, and social feeds to mention rival companies.
It identifies differentiators as well as gaps in offerings to improve unique value propositions.
ORM thus helps optimise marketing budgets and outperform competitors organically with data-driven insights.
In a nutshell, implementing ORM gives marketers a competitive edge by proactively identifying reputation risks, addressing customer concerns transparently, and enhancing overall customer satisfaction through improved online experiences.
It enables the harvesting of positive word-of-mouth that drives more qualified traffic and increases conversion potential significantly.
With the right monitoring and engagement approach, ORM strengthens brands from within by building meaningful relationships with target audiences.
5 Key Steps of ORM in Digital Marketing
Implementing an effective ORM strategy consists of several important steps.
By methodically undertaking monitoring, analysis, planning, engagement, and content creation activities, brands can proactively manage their online reputation.
1. Monitoring for Insights: Tracking Conversations Across Channels
The first step involves comprehensive monitoring of all online sources where consumers discuss your brand.
This includes setting up custom search alerts for your business name, logo, products/services, and leadership team across search engines, review sites, social networks, blogs, forums, and more.
You should also regularly track mentions on platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Trustpilot, Facebook, and keyword forums.
It is ideal to monitor at least 2-3 times per week to ensure timely responses.
Various tools like Mention, Google Alerts, Social Studio by Hootsuite, and Brand24 can assist with organised monitoring at scale.
It is important to not just keep tabs on volume but also analyse sentiment.
Nearly 60% of buyers check multiple reviews online before purchasing.
Therefore, identifying tone – whether the feedback is positive, negative, or neutral – is equally important.
This will help assess your brand’s online reputation holistically.
2. Analytical Wisdom: Deriving Meaning from Online Discussions
After consistently monitoring for 2-3 months, you will have gathered a wealth of data on conversations about your business.
The next step is to perform a deep analysis of this data.
Some key aspects to evaluate include:
- Best and worst-rated products/services based on customer reviews
- Topics that garner the most engagement and those considered pain-points
- Locations and demographics of positive and negative discussants
- Peak times when conversations are liveliest and sentiments are extreme
- Major influencers driving online perception through endorsements
- Comparing brand sentiment vs competitors over time
Analysing patterns will reveal reputational risks and strengths to address in future strategies. It provides actionable customer insights too.
3. Strategic Direction: Defining Reputation Goals and Guidelines
With a thorough understanding of your brand’s online profile from monitoring and data analysis, the next logical step is to devise an ORM strategy.
This includes:
- Defining 3-5 reputation and relationship goals over the next 6-12 months
- Establishing guidelines for responding to feedback within 24 hours
- Creating a standardised messaging template addressing frequently asked questions and criticism
- Deciding if issues require public response or private resolution
- Designating specialised team members or hiring outside experts for monitoring, engagement, and content responsibilities.
- Developing a 1-2 page crisis communications plan outlining immediate actions during emergencies.
A well-researched strategy sets expectations for proactive engagement and issue management.
It serves as the guiding light for all future ORM activities.
4. Engagement Excellence: Responding to Build Relationships
Engagement is the core component where monitoring and strategy come to life.
It involves addressing customer concerns effectively.
From responding to queries and complaints on social media to thanking positive reviewers, some engagement best practices are:
- Respond to all feedback within 24 hours, keeping the tone polite, solution-oriented and grateful
- Address individual frustration privately but share group resolutions publicly for others’ knowledge
- Highlight top fans and advocates regularly by thanking them personally or via features
- Invite dissatisfied customers to resolve issues directly through phone calls or emails
- Encourage delighted customers to post additional reviews on search and social platforms
- Monitor forums for incorrect information and politely correct with facts
This level of humanised responsiveness fosters trust in your brand’s credibility and care for communities.
5. Content is King: Crafting Experiences through Stories
Publishing helpful, engaging, and consistent content aligned with business goals is the final ORM step.
Some successful tactics include the following:
- Share valuable how-to guides, checklists, and tips through your website and social platforms.
- Leverage major channel strengths – in-depth articles on blogs, and visual media on Instagram and Facebook.
- Curate and publish positive customer testimonials with permission on your website.
- Record innovative product demos or behind-the-scenes videos for channels like YouTube.
- Participate in relevant industry discussions on forums and communities.
- Promote transparency with articles addressing reputation challenges transparently over time.
- Maintain an SEO-optimised knowledge base accessed through search engines.
By proactively addressing common consumer pain points through high-quality content, brands can effectively sculpt desired online perceptions.
Conducting ORM involves an ongoing cycle of these various activities.
But with regular monitoring, analysis, and strategic response, businesses can efficiently build customer trust to safeguard their hard-earned reputation.
Consistency in engagement and the creation of valuable content are equally important pillars of success.
Essential Tools and Resources for ORM
Online reputation management requires the right tools and platforms to monitor brand mentions, analyse sentiments, and effectively engage with customers.
Here are some of the popular ORM tools that can help streamline your ORM processes:
Google Alerts: One of the most basic yet effective free tools is Google Alerts.
It allows you to track brand mentions, keywords, competitors, etc. across the web.
You can set up customised alerts via email to stay updated on any new content.
While it covers a wide network, the alerts aren’t very detailed.
Meltwater: As one of the most prominent social media listening platforms, Meltwater helps monitor over 300,000 global sources.
It provides competitive analysis, sentiment scores and engagement reports.
Businesses get customised dashboards and the ability to analyse data based on locations, languages, publishers, and more.
The advanced version offers media monitoring and PR measurement tools as well.
Brandwatch: This powerful Consumer Intelligence Cloud gathers data from both traditional and social media sources.
It provides quantitative insights around brand impact, competitive analysis, audience behaviour, and content engagement.
Brandwatch is known for its sophisticated sentiment analysis and visualisation dashboards.
The reports follow industry standards like BARB and comScore.
LinkPulse: Mainly focused on social media, LinkPulse monitors brand mentions across platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Its key features include sentiment analysis, influencer identification, content engagement metrics, and competitive analysis.
LinkPulse gets extra points for accurate real-time geotargeting and easy report customisation.
Sprout Social: Best suited for social media and community management, Sprout Social offers monitoring, engagement and publishing tools all in one.
It tracks over 30 social networks and delivers actionable reporting.
Some of its useful features are scheduling, hashtag monitoring, analytics reports, and social listening workflows.
Affordable pricing plans are available based on team size.
Alerts.io: As a cloud-based monitoring tool, Alerts.io combs the web, social networks, and news sources for relevant mentions.
It provides sentiment analysis and visualisations powered by machine learning models.
The easy to navigate dashboard offers robust filtering and custom notifications.
Integration with other platforms, like Google Sheets, enhances its capabilities.
Cision: With a wide global network, Cision helps with media monitoring, influencer engagement and crisis communication.
It tracks brand mentions across online and offline sources.
Advanced analytics identify opportunities for PR amplification.
Marketers can measure the impact of campaigns through coverage reports.
Integrations with Microsoft technologies enhance functionality.
Sysomos: Known for real-time social analytics, Sysomos tracks discussions from over 100 social networks, including niche platforms.
Flexible filters deliver tailored reports on mentions, influencers, and visibility trends.
Map-enabled visuals make geo-tracking comprehensive. APIs empower third-party integrations for expanded functionality.
Socialbakers: This all-in-one social media marketing tool tracks engagements, competitors, and conversations across platforms.
Location-based analytics are useful for targeted campaigns. Its automated reports follow industry standards for benchmarking and measurement.
Socialbakers stands out for website customisation to showcase the brand’s presence and messaging.
Crowdbooster: Suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises, Crowdbooster monitors reviews from the top 100 websites including Google, Facebook and Trustpilot.
It offers automated response templates, social sharing integrations, and customisable reporting templates.
For moderating issues at scale, the approval workflows are highly effective.
Apart from using tools, marketers should stay aware of ongoing developments in the ORM space by regularly checking industry publications, blogs and case studies.
Some reliable resources include:
- TopRank Marketing’s Online Reputation Management blog: Covers strategies, insights, and tool reviews through expert-written pieces.
- Search Engine Journal’s ORM section: Provides useful case studies spotlighting ORM success stories of prominent brands.
- Moz’s Whiteboard Friday videos: The animation series discusses advanced ORM tactics and best practices ruling the SERPs.
- BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Surveys: Annual reports analysing consumer shopping behaviours and review influences.
- Reputational.com’s Whitepapers: In-depth studies delivered on the latest ORM techniques, measurement standards, and voice of consumer trends.
While tools offer great value, ORM is ultimately about understanding human behaviour and psychology.
Marketing professionals should continue learning about industry innovations to stay relevant and shape powerful online narratives for their brands.
Technology is just an enabler – human strategies and storytelling will define future reputation wins.
Conclusion
Online reputation management has become integral for brands to protect and enhance their image in today’s digital world.
As highlighted throughout this guide, ORM plays a crucial role across various aspects of modern marketing, including SEO, conversions, social media, and crisis management.
By judiciously implementing monitoring, analysis, strategy, engagement, and content pillars, businesses can proactively manage what audiences perceive about them online.
To conclude, an effective ORM approach offers clear advantages.
It helps increase organic visibility, improve search rankings, and achieve marketing objectives.
By addressing consumer pain points and nurturing relationships, ORM builds invaluable goodwill and trust – cornerstones that drive sustainable growth.
Whether enhancing the customer experience or mitigating crises, ORM creates transparency, which resonates strongly with today’s informed buyers.
Digital disruptions will continue reshaping industries at a rapid pace. However, human psychology remains constant.
As consumers increasingly rely on online communities to guide purchase decisions, reputation will retain primacy over promotional strategies.
This underscores the need for consistent, empathetic dialogue between brands and their advocates online.
Those who view ORM as a defensive measure are missing its full strategic potential.
When integrated thoughtfully across the customer journey, ORM becomes a catalyst for lasting advocacy.
It positions companies as partners progressing together with society, elevating everyday interactions into memorable experiences.
In this age of accountability, there has never been a better time to establish authentic two-way relationships, cementing trust for the future.
For marketers willing to listen with an open mind, ORM offers a blueprint for sustainable uplift through principled progress – online and beyond.
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