ORM Strategy – What it is, Why you need one

O – Online
R – Reputation
M – Management

To the surprise of no one reading this, reputation matters.  And the degree to which it matters is only going to increase.  No longer can you stick your head in the sand, and ignore the reviews and comments being left by your customers. A good reputation takes time to earn, but a bad one can take over in the blink of an eye.

Trying to hire people in an ultra-competitive job market?  Your potential candidates are scanning not only Google and Facebook, but also Indeed, Glassdoor and more.  They want to know that their potential future workplace environment and company culture will be positive.  If you have yet to deploy a strategy to manage online reputation, you’re already behind.  But it’s never too late to do something about it.

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Google Yourself

Want to see what the typical customer sees?  Open an incognito window in your browser and do a search for your business.  Check out the reviews.  Look at the comments.  Check out your employee reviews. Inspect the “Reviews from the web” section to see other key channels.  Open the “Maps” section to see the reviews for ALL of your locations.  Just because one location has a decent reputation, you may have several other branches with horrendous reviews. They all matter.  Best of all, by improving scores across all locations you strengthen your overall company rating which is what really matters.

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Benefits of Deploying an ORM Strategy

Your online reputation is a comprehensive view of how people see your company or brand.  Improving your reputation online builds trust, authority and relevance, all of which have massive benefit to search results, ad performance, and ultimately sales.  Don’t take our word for it.  This comes directly from the search giant themselves:

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What you CAN control, and what you CAN’T

Your overall brand prestige has many components.  Some of these components you have influence over.  For example, your own website, blog, press releases, and social media channels are great places post content helpful to your business reputation.  Community service initiatives, industry awards, and employee spotlights are excellent ways to communicate your core values, however they have limitations- while that content may appear to be helpful to your brand, it does little to help your overall online reputation.  You need volume, quality and recency in your reviews to make a difference.

A good ORM strategy not only utilizes content that you can craft and manipulate, it also engages with customers…the ultimate judge of your capabilities.  Your strategy needs to make it easy for your customers to leave you feedback. Using a partner with the tech to simplify this process will make your strategy easier to deploy and manage.

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Smart Tech to the Rescue

While it can seem daunting to put a grassroots ORM strategy in place, thankfully there are tech solutions that can make the process much easier for your team.  Instead of requiring team members to manually log in to various social dashboards to monitor and manage reviews, Reviews Up provides key integrations that offer notifications and assistance for inviting customers to leave reviews as well as notifying you when reviews need responding (another critical component to your ORM).  In addition, the intuitive Reviews Up dashboard also offers help in crafting appropriate responses for both positive and negative feedback.

While it can be enjoyable responding to a glowing review from a happy customer, in most cases, it can be uncomfortable dealing with negative feedback, leaving many businesses to simply ignore it out of fear for being uncertain on how to handle it.  Unaddressed online complaints should be addressed as quickly as they would if a customer was standing in your showroom.  Not responding to negative feedback can really be a red flag to potential customers.  Using a tech partner like Reviews Up makes these engagements much easier, allowing your potential customers see just how these important concerns are addressed.  If a negative review is either a result of spam or a bad actor, the Reviews Up system automatically flags that review and reports it on your behalf to the platform.  Malicious reviews from bad actors can also be dealt with by carefully crafting responses that let the public know that the review is in bad faith, and not from an actual customer.

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The Takeaways

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Activate ORM

Get an online reputation management strategy in place now.