How to improve and monitor Online Reputation
The online reputation is one of the most important assets for your business activities, and for your work both as an employee and as a freelancer. Surprised to read this?
When you decide to be present on the internet you cannot ignore everything that allows the public to take, find and evaluate information about you. Just go to Google and Facebook , write your name (or company brand) and you’re done. And you have to show the best cards.
You will not have a second chance to make a good first impression. This is why you need to take care of your online reputation. How to monitor and improve it with good control, interaction management and content creation? This is also web marketing!
What is online reputation: Definition?
To start with I think it is appropriate to give an explanation of this step. With online reputation we mean what allows the company or individual professional to build the opinion that customers, leads, prospects, collaborators, colleagues, competitors and influencers have about you.
In short, you have to work on brand reputation to make sure that there is not only a good opinion of you among those who have chosen your contribution. The goal is to use these testimonials in your favor . In order to have greater contractual power in the estimate phase.
How to improve online reputation
The first useful step in these cases: optimize what people think about your work, your presence on the internet. The first step concerns the need to be there at best. It is not enough to activate, it is not enough to open a Facebook page or an Instagram account to get an extra gear. Here’s what to do to conquer virtuous space on the web.
Register a proprietary domain name
Yes, this is the first step to move to improve online reputation. It may seem an obvious, almost trivial step. In reality, the purchase of a representative domain is important, both for the freelancer who collects his name and surname for the company.
Which, of course, works with the brand name. In these cases it is important to choose also a good extension , the first level domain (gTLD) that can be national – like the .it – ​​or generic.
It is also important to register the main extensions to prevent competitors from taking alternatives to create websites that might bother you with alternative projects.
Create good content and publish frequently
Did you register the domain? Perfect, this is the starting point for a good content marketing strategy. Maybe with a corporate blog , an essential solution to combine the quality of posts with the advantages of inbound marketing . That is to say all that gives you the opportunity to be found.
But without interrupting, you are attracting potential contacts. Working in depth on content marketing (which is not just about blogging) helps you intercept the audience when they need you. Above all it gives you the chance to improve your online reputation.
Creates a line consistent with all channels
Brand, naming, payoff, colors, fonts, graphics: the authoritativeness is given not only by quality content but also by the ability to be recognized. Always and on all platforms, on the site and on social networks. Also via email , for example using a proprietary communications domain.
Work on social rehearsal
This is one of the key points to improve online reputation : you have to let people who have a good opinion about you and your work speak. The tools are at your disposal, just have a page of the site or a section of the home page dedicated to reviews.
Or you can take advantage of social networks, like tweets or Facebook posts left by satisfied customers. Some businesses may use Trip Advisor , Yelp, Trustpilot or Google My Business reviews. In short, take advantage of the social proof to convince the public to trust you.
How to monitor online reputation
Improving online reputation is important, but how can you evaluate the true scope of your business? You need clear KPIs to identify performance indicators. In this way you can manage operations and achieve continuous and constant improvement. So, how do you monitor online reputation? Here are the indispensable tools for this important work.
Hootsuite or Tweetdeck : decisive to identify the mentions on Twitter.
Mention , perfect to find out who mentions you on social and web.
Google Alert, a certainty to find new quotes on the sites.
Talkwalker, advanced tool for data analysis on social networks.
Seozoom or Semrush to trace the research that mentions the brand.
With all this information you can intervene to moderate the comments and thank those who compliment you. Or defend yourself against excise and criticism. Many interesting results, however, you can register them with the same platforms you use to publish.
For example, Facebook’s internal search is now much more precise and you can use it to locate mentions on public pages and accounts. In addition, Instagram gives you the opportunity to discover all the profiles that mention your account. Such as? Just click on the last link “post where you tag”.
Brand reputation online: appearance only?
No it does not. You can take care of all the details related to the reputation of your name, but there is an activity that really makes the difference: the work you do every day. So, do you move well with customers?
Do you offer a quality product or service? Do you work with the last phase of the inbound marketing funnel (to delight customers)? Then the activities to improve online reputation record great results. Do you agree with this relationship between daily work and brand reputation techniques?
