As a start-up business owner or successful entrepreneur, are you guilty of overlooking your brand’s online reputation management (ORM)? If yes, then you must consider it at the earliest. Most customers research a brand today before making a purchase. Hence, if the search engine has too little information or harmful information about your brand, your sales will take a bad hit.

You can conjecture several scenarios here, such as:

• The online users might come across very little to zero data about your brand. Here the users can depend on your brand’s sales writing skills along with the guarantee you provide. Else, they also have the chance to search for any other brand that provides, what you offer. This brand might have an online reputation and presence that commands more confidence.

• If you have good reviews, your potential customers might conclude your brand of having an excellent reputation.

• The customers can come across any negative reviews from past users.

These are all the pros and cons that you need to consider. Ignoring ORM will ultimately affect your business negatively. You need to join hands with an agency to implement a productive ORM strategy. To know more, you can get in touch with an online reputation management company New York. Some of the best steps to go about it also include:

1. Leverage both negative and positive reviews

Count on the productive discussions to highlight your best services and instill more confidence in people. When it comes to the negative reviews, take them as checkpoints for improvement. When a customer writes a negative comment on social media, don’t defend it. Instead, address it and understand if there’s a scope to improve. Even the one who wrote the comment will have a positive take away from the entire experience. 

2. Leverage your favorable reputation

Do you have customers saying good things about your brand? If yes, you need to acknowledge the same publicly and express your gratitude as well. It will make the customers who share their positive feedback feel counted.  And once the customers are happy, they will promote your brand through word of mouth publicity. Hence, you will add more to your favorable ORM and customer good-will.

The ideal way to go about it is not to get fearful of asking for feedback and reviews. Your customers might have good things to share about you. Until you request and provide them a platform to share, you wouldn’t know. You can list the reviews on your social media page or website.

3. Address online complaints, low stars and bad reviews at the earliest

Don’t get complacent with low stars, bad reviews, and online complaints. Even if the ratio of complaints is less than appreciation! That will come across as a sign of over-confidence, and it might go well with your audience at large. You can ask the customer who complained as to what went wrong for him/her in the customer journey. Take note of the valid points and assure him/her of better service. 

Forgetting to pay attention to your ORM strategy will go against your brand name. Online users must have a positive image of your company and contribute to more sales.