In this era of digital marketing, a business ought to know views of people about its products, services and the brand as an entity. Your customers and suppliers rely heavily on reputation before they venture into purchases, investments and any relationship with your brand – internet is a free and most popular source that is referred to for such information! Naturally then, good 'online reputation' matters. The volume of consumer generated media on the web is really high and it grows with every passing minute Nonetheless, with a comprehensive plan to monitor online reviews, it is possible to manage online reputation.

Here are four important ways to get organized for this task:

1) Chalk out a plan: Like any other business marketing strategy, online reputation management (ORM) calls for proper planning. Randomly jumping on to social networking sites, blogs and customer forums without a plan would cause lots of confusion and problems. You need to have a team of competent people and identify the sites that have the largest and most vocal membership on the web. You also need to constantly monitor and participate on such communities.

2) Identify the things that really matter: On the World Wide Web, a new blog goes live every four or five seconds but many of these do not attract much attention. At the same time there are posts and discussions that become viral and create lots of online noise. A way to measure engagement is to check the number of pages viewed in a session or the amount of time an average visitor spends on the site. The efforts of a business should be focused on the forums and social media sites that have the largest and most vocal audiences – these will be the places where a business can expect to see conversations that matter for its reputation.

3) Monitor with proven analytical tools: There are several online tools to monitor online brand reputation. Some of these are designed to automatically scan blogs, forums and other social media outlets and capture any mention of the terms or phrases you specify – the name of your company, or a product/service. Google Alerts for instance allows you to specify the terms you want to monitor and sends you an email each time it encounters this term with a link to the site where it was found. It is your job then to check the mention and see how it is related to your reputation on the web.

4) Promote: Besides checking the mention of brand on the Internet, it is important to proactively promote its good image. This can be through posting of engaging articles, press releases or videos – the more relevant, engaging and interesting they are, the better it is for brand image.

The key to successful online reputation management is persistence and a dogged determination to maintain positive brand perception in the online world. This is exactly what we do at NET Marketing Consulting Group. Outsource your ORM work to us and enjoy a good rapport with your customers, business partners and suppliers!