How to manage Online Reputation?

Friends, Thank you very much for taking out time from your busy schedule to read my blog(s). Sharing knowledge with you has become my passion now. I feel encouraged after reading your feedback in the comments column. Today I’m happy to present my 92^nd Blog “How to manage Online Reputation?”

If you aren’t paying attention to what is being said about you online, you can be certain others are paying close attention to what is being said. Your online reputation is the most vital aspect in growing your business effectively.

– Ken Wisnefski, Founder/ CEO WebiMax.

Online Reputation Management is the practice of attempting to shape public opinion of an individual or a brand, or group of people, society or organization, by influencing readily available online information. It includes the process of identifying what is being shared online about an individual, a brand or an organization or the group. 

When we do a quick search about a person or product or brand or an organization what reviews do we generally come across? Answer is - Reputation. Today, every aware consumer or customer or buyer search for organizations that they can trust.

When it comes to making financial decisions before buying, buyers are choosey. Buyers want to know that whether the product, they're planning to buy would work, which is why they frequently look at reviews and ask opinions before any buying. Recently, my visit to Rishikesh and stay at Yog Niketan By Sanskriti was a wonderful experience, which I had shared on Trip Advisor.

Online Reputation Management hugely depends on monitoring good or bad reviews of / from customers, consumers, buyers, influencers, trade specialists etc. Therefore, there're online reputation management software tools which makes it easier to check key issues and instantly respond to the same. Hence, those who are super active on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, SnapChat, WhatsApp etc. must do a quick audit of their current online status before managing their own online reputation.  They should seek answers to some key questions to determine what goals and objectives they wish to achieve through their online presence.  Now the Key Question is - Does me or my product or my brand, or my organization are on first page of search results when anyone search the brand, products, or keywords related to the product? e.g. whenever I Google search for " P R Guru In India" then my name as "Suresh Gaur P R Guru" either comes on the top of the page or on the first page. Therefore, it is extremely important to do this kind of quick search using multiple keywords, products, and brand names we're interested in and to know their current state of online reputation.

Personal Reputation Management

Personal Reputation Management is the practice of using digital marketing tactics and channels to help shape the public perception of an individual online.

People will search online to learn more about you whether you are looking for a date, searching for a job, selling something, applying to college or meeting a client.

Your personal online reputation can affect every area of your life, both personal and professional. Employers, co-workers, hiring managers, romantic endeavors and possible business partners will likely search you online before making any decisions about you.

As per a study, 75% of recruiters and HR professionals have rejected a candidate based on search engine results. 48% of people have searched for someone before a first date and found information that made them decide to cancel their plans.

When someone looks up your name online, you want them to find results that present you in a positive manner. Ensuring the result demonstrates who you are and what you do, and how you want to be perceived. Employers, colleagues, family and future employers could be influenced by your online search results.

There are many free and paid tools to handle online reputation and track e.g. search engine results, social media networks, Google reviews, forum threads etc. Some of the historical and most intelligent online reputation management tools are shared here under for your ready reference please.

1.      Agorapulse: Like Smart Moderation, Agorapulse another comment moderation tool that tracks down negative comments and instantly hides or deletes them according to your filters. You can add hundreds of words to these filters. The only issue here is that you manually have to add the filters. Also, this is best for companies who run multiple social pages and manage paid social campaigns.

2.      BirdEye: The BirdEye tool is unique on its own. You will receive negative comment alerts, so you can handle it before it spirals, turning frustration into success. The program is an all-in-one platform that turns your customers into your marketing engine. With BirdEye, it is a breeze to collect new Reviews. Your organization’s positive reviews displayed on your business’ Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and company website highlight your success. BirdEye indexes by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing for higher search ranking.  Features include Competitor Analysis, Social Ticketing, Customer Surveys, and much more.

3.      Broadly: Broadly gives your business the boost it needs to look fantastic online through verified customer reviews. The programs review strategy makes it simple for customers to refer friends and relatives on the most vital search engines.  Also, their platforms SEO technology aids your business to stand out online. Features include: Customer Referral and Tracking, Website Design and development, SEO service through the distribution of positive feedback online, and much more.

4.      CustomerLobby: Customer Lobby assists organizations gain more reviews on Facebook, Yelp, Google, and across the web. The process works by automatically collecting reviews via syncing to the organization’s invoice system.   Once customers make a transaction, they automatically receive a request to leave a review. The tool directs the customer to leave their feedback on Facebook, Yelp, and that business’ social media outlets. The program also provides local organizations with their own Customer Lobby review page. They provide this so that customers can leave a review if they chose.  

5.       FutureSolutions: Future Solutions is a powerful and useful program that concentrates on negative reviews customers leave. Do you have negative comments you want to be removed? If you are in need of assistance getting your customers to leave positive reviews, this is the solution for you.   Future Solutions assist with reputation monitoring for both small and medium organizations. The tool helps you gain the control of need of your online presence. That includes social media and reviews.  Features Include Testimonial Display, Social Content Generation, and Keyword Alerts. Review Generation, and Review Notifications.

6.      Gadook: Gadook utilize advanced search engine optimization techniques, as well as relevant social media syndication methods to ensure that the most visible information about you online is both positive and in your control. In addition to the creation of strong, external online assets, Gadook take time to analyze your main website to see if optimization of your site will be beneficial.

7.      GoFishDigital: Google reviews are essential to every business. These are often the first thing that people see when searching your products and brand name. Go Fish Digital Complaint Search lets you search keywords and then show you negative reviews found on over 40 websites. You can check out what reviews are most popular, see your brand ratings, and respond to those reviews on certain websites. In other cases, you may be able to flag or remove reviews manually.

8.      Grade.us: Grade.us made its way up the ladder to become a leader in reputation management services for SEO’s, marketers, and agencies. Every business wants and needs positive reviews. However, how are you supposed to get reviews from customers when they make their purchase and leave it at that? You do this through a company such as Grade.us that takes the best reviews on your business and applies them to search engine friendly web content and social media. This strategy amplifies your company’s positive reputation.  However, it gets even better. With Grade.us, the program allows you to retrieve unhappy customer’s reviews before posting less than stellar reviews on your business.   The platform also aids in monitoring all reviews your business gets online to help you track how customers rate your brand.

9.      IFTTT: IFTTT was created to help you automate simple online tasks like sending a text when it’s raining or turning on the lights in your smart home. However, you can also use it to track and support your goals. For example, if your brand is mentioned on Yelp, you can send a direct message to your customer service team’s Slack channel. You can get a text message every time your Talkwalker Alert sends a new mention to your RSS feed.

10. ImageRaider online reputation manager: Image Raider tracks the misuse of your image across the web. You can upload any image into and let ImageRaider look up any websites that are using your image across Google, Bing, and Yandex. People who use this tool the most are likely in SEO or digital marketing, but photographers and rights holders also use it to see who is misusing images without copyright.

11. Internet Reputation: In today’s digitalized world, your reputation is a powerful currency.  A positive online image can boost your credibility, secure your dream job, and set you on the right path to achieving your biggest goals. Internet Reputation knows the online world is an ever-changing landscape that can pose major challenges for anyone looking to make a good name for them. Using tried-and-tested tools and techniques, and counting on a team of experts consisting of SEO and PR specialists, skillful content strategists, and IT geniuses, Internet Reputation is ready to confront any threat that might come your way. From bad press and negative reviews to trolls and social media chatter, they exist to help you build a strong reputation and look better online.

12. KnowEm Internet Reputation Management: KnowEm is an easy research tool that should help you in the beginning phase of an online reputation audit. You can see where your brand or products pop up on the web on over 330 social media and news sites. You can instantly see an overview of how visible you are online, and what those profiles say about your brand. You may not even have known that you have a Facebook page or that customers are leaving negative Facebook reviews you will want to remove until using KnowEm.

13. NetReputation: NetReputation.Com conducts an in-depth analysis of your online reputation to determine all positive and negative items shaping your reputation. Once analyzed, it utilizes that insight to customize an effective strategy for removing threats and building a brand that puts you in control. Once analysis is complete, it identifies all positive websites, blogs, social profiles and business listings you control across the web. Its team then develops optimized properties to fill in the gaps and build the framework to post content throughout your campaign. New content creation is essential to reputation repair and maintenance. Throughout your campaign, it develops high-quality, search-optimized articles, blogs, bios and guest posts to grow and strengthen your brand across all Google searches of your name.

14. Podium: Podium is a platform that places its focus on the relationship between the customer and your business. It carries out this by merging customer experience, marketing, and operations into one single platform. Your business gains an increase in online visibility that will influence purchase decisions. You will have the power to influence what consumers say about your company and the location.  They do this by applying focus on the thematic and sites crucial to your business. Your business gains online visibility that allows the influence on purchase decisions established by the technology of the everyday consumer.  Features include: Generating Reviews on Social Networking Sites, Improving local SEO on search engines, tracking online reviews and more.  

15. Reputation911: Reputation911 uses a three-staged approach based on client needs and situations to help businesses take control of their online presence. The engineering team tailors the techniques from the My Online Reputation™ package to help businesses restore, promote, and protect a positive online image for improved immediate and long-term results. Reputation911 specialty is removing, when possible, and suppressing unwanted or inaccurate negative search results. That provides the client with the freedom and control to portray them accurately online.

16. ReviewBuzz: ReviewBuzz is a suite of tools to help you manage your reputation and the relationships that influence it.  ReviewBuzz aids business’ in gathering a significant amount of 5-star online reviews. It is the most straightforward avenue to gain online reviews.  ReviewBuzz software gets your business the reviews it needs on sites where it will matter such as Facebook, Yelp, Google, and more.

17. ReviewTrackers: ReviewTrackers is an award-winning online reputation management software company that helps businesses discovers actionable insights about their customers. ReviewTrackers offers a paid tool that tracks customer reviews across 80 different sites and sources. Then, it collects all reviews to manage your online reputation better from one dashboard. You also receive email reports that keep you up to date and let you quickly respond to reviews that may bring down your brand. Also, ReviewTrackers also has a feature that measures your customer feedback and notes patterns so that you can easily see what topics concern your customers the most.

18. RocketReferrals: Rocket Referrals analyses existing clientele of an organization and establishing individual profiles for every contact. Each profile stems from a customer’s loyalty to the organization that it measures over time.   Purpose-driven and personalized communication extends to the company’s clientele to encourage positive behavior. That communication stretches across online review sites, social media, handwritten cards, and email. What makes this platform different is that it is not a universal technique.  It is an optimized answer to research, the leading practices preconfigured, and psychology.  

19. SmartModerationAITool: Smart Moderation is an enhanced comment moderation tool that allows you to automatically hide or delete comments that you do not want on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. It is mostly used by advertising agencies and brands to support their social media teams. While it can be costly, it is beneficial if you run any paid advertising on Facebook as you may receive 1,000 comments per day and may not be able to monitor all of those comments for negative mentions, curse words, inadequate responses, and credibility ticks.

20. SocialMention: You can use Social Mention to monitor certain brand keywords and see where you are popping up on the Internet. Social Mention will return results that let you see top keywords, top users, sentiments, hashtags, and networks that are popular with your brand. You can search blogs, microblogs, social networks, images, and videos. Your social management team can also benefit by looking at top users who are talking about your brand and seeing different hashtags related to those keywords.

21. SocialReport: Self-professed the World’s Most Complete Social Media Management Platform, this tool is exceptional for managing any brand mention on any part of the web. You also get analytics, social scheduling, and a smart inbox with task management, keyword monitoring, automated responses, custom reports, and API integrations. If you are a very social brand or just want to be able to automate some of your moderation and responses, then this is a great platform to use.

22. Talkwalker: A top pick for online review monitoring tool Talkwalker lets you monitor sentiments towards your brand. It calculates sentiment based on posts, tweets, and articles that are driving different social signals about your brand. The search covers over 150 million websites and all social networks, so you get a unique view of your brand’s reputation from various parts of the web. There is no limit to the number of searches that you can conduct, so it is easy to monitor your ORM in real-time. Talkwalker Alerts is online review management software to watch your brand online. This allows you to track and notify when your brand is mentioned through different keywords.

23. Trustpilot: Trustpilot is an online review platform that through its global clientele builds trust and transparency between businesses and consumers.  The platform currently has 160,000 reviewed organizations and close to 30 million reviews. The tool provides a stage where consumers can review any business if they have had a service or buying experience with that business. That includes an email interaction, phone call, or customer service request. Due to this, Trustpilot has become the go-to resource for consumers shopping looking to make smarter, better-informed purchasing decisions. The program offers a free trial and paid service to organizations which thrives on harnessing the power of channeling customer reviews. All organizations can utilize and invite customers to give them a review. Its features are: Search Engine Ratings, Monitor Internet reputation reviews, Google Partner, Widgets, and so much more.

24. WebiMax: WebiMax offers a complete and full analysis of your reputation and create a customized strategy to achieve maximum results with minimal costs. WebiMax experts use the most cost-effective techniques to bury negative content and promote positive content, providing you with fast and budget friendly results. WebiMax proven results have been acknowledged. There is no room for stagnation when it comes to your Reputation. WebiMax continuously evolves to match Google's algorithm changes.

25. Yotpo: The industry’s smartest reviews solution. Generate authentic reviews that make a difference and display them where they’re most impactful. An essential aspect of a stellar online reputation is creating positive content. The best form of content for businesses is organically generating a great review. While many tools focus on brand monitoring, Yotpo is a proactive service that helps you improve your reputation by encouraging customers to write positive reviews about your company.

To conclude;

Successful reputation management combines multiple resources and tactics. There is no one tool or software that fits all to solve the problem of negative reviews, comments, poor brand mentions etc.. It is best to decide from your own assessment your most important goals before making your final selection.

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