In this digital era, everything seems to be visible and public. A host of information is floating around the web. It takes a lot of time to build a robust online reputation but it just takes a bad moment to destroy your image and tarnish your reputation as an individual or business.
As per https://www.cnbc.com, today, your online reputation is becoming more crucial as compared to your credit score. You need to realize that your online reputation is gradually serving as your new credit report. Whether for an individual or a business, whatever is being discussed about you online, would carry a lot of weight and would be of pivotal importance. Remember your credibility for doing business would be impacted according to what is being said about you. Whatever is being said about your business or brand, it would have the potential to either make or break the reputation and reliability of your business or brand.
You must focus your attention on online reputation management instead of getting bogged down by certain myths relating to online reputation management. Here are some of the most infamous myths doing the rounds on the Internet. Let us debunk these fallacies so that we could do ORM more effectively.
Myth: You Simply Cannot Control Your Reputation Online
It may be a fact that you cannot control customers or users from writing reviews on specific sites but you could certainly control the way they react and the way they choose to process and use the information. Remember that a suitable and prompt response to a negative comment or review could help in mitigating the damage. We have seen that businesses with prompt response rates and high-feedback sensitivity could always get an upper hand. If you ignore an issue, it would make things even worse.
You need to keep in mind that customers simply can never be wrong and you must attend to their needs and wants and attach the utmost value to their opinion. You must necessarily respond to online feedback with understanding and empathy and a dedication to delivering the best possible experience for your customers. This way, you could demonstrate that you care about your customers, their needs and wants and you could convince them that you are doing everything for catering to their needs.
Myth: All You Need to Do Is Simply Delete Negative Online Reviews
You simply cannot forget the fact that once published online customer reviews are bound to be permanent. Valid customer reviews cannot be deleted as they act as reliable signals for people. You could consider revoking a customer review by proving that it is packed with lies and false claims, it is fake or written to tarnish your image and reputation, by your competitor. Seek the expertise of a reputed digital marketing company like RMG Digital Solutions for effective online reputation management.
Myth: Reputation Management Is Truly Time-Consuming & Involves a Lot of Hassle
If you had to manually log into every review site one after another for checking reviews and then respond, that could be a painstaking and time-consuming process. It would be taking hours every week. Fortunately, technology had advanced tremendously hence, you have access to a host of cutting-edge tools and tech solutions that would be compiling all your online reviews into a single dashboard so that you could get notifications whenever new customer reviews are published so that you could respond promptly. It is quite possible in this digitalized world to streamline reputation management.
Conclusion
You are very much in control of creating and maintaining your online reputation in 2020. Negative reviews need to be tackled well to make sure they do not end up spelling doom for your business. Be aware of the online reputation management myths or misconceptions to stay ahead of the rest.