ORM is the practice of monitoring your online presence and mitigating the risks that come from negative reviews about your business. Whenever you decide to buy something; What is the first thing you do? You do the online research, see options and various providers, check with your friends or family, etc. After this research, you come across positive and negative reviews about the product or service you are planning to buy, which can impact your buying decision. According to a recent survey, 95% of consumers read online reviews before buying a product or service and over 81% read Google reviews before visiting the place in person.
A good review can enhance your presence while a negative review could make you lose a prospective customer. It is important to monitor how your digital presence is affecting your business. Let’s learn more about what is ORM in digital marketing and its importance.
What is ORM?
ORM stands for Online Reputation Management. ORM involves monitoring and managing how individuals, brands and businesses are seen on the internet. ORM is the practice of tracking online mentions, comments, and reviews about businesses, monitoring them, and mitigating the risk that can tarnish the brand’s image in public. Online Reputation Management (ORM) focuses on maintaining a positive image for the business by promptly addressing negative criticism professionally and encouraging positive reviews from the audience. The focus is to save the brand’s online reputation and enhance its credibility.
3 Ms of ORM
Monitoring: Keeping an eye on every mention about your company across the web- right from reviews to comments and reactions to your communication on social channels. It helps you stay on track in real time making it easier for you to address the issues before it turns out to be terrible.
Management: Once you monitor the presence, the next thing to do is to manage the data gathered. This involves engaging with the audience and addressing the feedback with utmost care, patience, and solution-oriented steps. For effective ORM, you can bank on the positive reactions and reviews for the brand and reinforce positive perceptions.
Mitigation: Mitigation focuses on addressing and alleviating the negative instances like dealing with negative reviews, and misleading information, and implementing content and SEO strategies that aid in bringing up the brand’s presence for positive content.
What is the difference between ORM and SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and focuses on content-rich resources to improve the website’s ranking in search results. While ORM on the other hand focuses on maintaining and improving the online reputation of the brands.
SEO focuses on content marketing strategies to enable the website to rank higher. ORM focuses on identifying the negative reviews, comments, feedback, and mentions of the brands on various platforms and addressing them effectively to enhance the brand credibility and trust. This requires handling feedback with positive content-rich resources and a strong SEO strategy to bring the brand in a positive light.
Importance of Online Reputation Management
- Brand Image Protection
Building brand image takes years and one negative review can be a dark spot. ORM aids in maintaining a positive brand perception and addresses damaging feedback with patience by bringing in more encouraging content for the potential customers to have a fair and neutral understanding.
- Customer Trust and Credibility
A strong online reputation comes with happy customers. If your customer has faced a difficulty while interacting with your business it should be taken care of with priority and steps should be taken to mitigate the effect. Your ORM personnel should ensure that the customers have an affirmative outlook towards your business.
- Crisis Management
Online reputation management and crisis management go hand in hand. A small spark unnoticed can blow up into a full fire. By identifying possible risks and vulnerabilities and backing up with proactive ORM strategies can play a crucial role during the crisis. Swift and appropriate steps should be taken to mitigate the damage to the online reputation.
- Search engine ranking and optimization
The company should employ robust content and SEO strategies to impact the rankings positively. Optimize the website and rank for the targeted keywords, feature genuine profiles talking about your brand encouragingly, and push the negative keywords by influencing search engines with positive content to achieve the desired results using SEO strategy.
- Customer Retention
A satisfied customer becomes a long-term client and a positive brand advocate; this can be achieved when you are actively engaging with them, being upfront about the downsides and addressing them with positivity and sincerity. Consumers are likely to choose brands where they sense being heard and valued.
How ORM is different from PR?
PR stands for public relations and focuses on overall brand communication and relationship building with the public, media and various stakeholders. This is carried out by conducting events, releasing press releases, and managing media channels and relations. ORM uses online tools to track and influence brand perception, focuses on protecting the businesses from the probable crisis that might disrupt the image and engages proactively on various channels where the brand is being talked about.
Online Reputation Management: A Checklist
- Check if your business ranks at the top of search engine results.
- Assess if third-party links about your business are positive or negative.
- Identify any ORM issues needing immediate attention.
- Verify the accuracy of your business information on external sites.
- Monitor social media for customer opinions and interactions.
- Track relevant hashtags to gauge brand sentiment.
- Look for negative comments and see if supporters defend your brand.
- Scan Google Reviews for customer ratings and feedback styles.
- Check blogs and other content discussing your products/services.
- Regularly monitor online mentions to stay informed about public perception.
Take your ORM management to the next level with Spinta Digital!
At Spinta Digital, we work with brands to strengthen the visual aspect of your brand and drive impactful outcomes. Looking to delve into online reputation management and enhance your brand identity? Our tailored strategies are designed to meet your unique needs. Take your brand to the next level with dynamic marketing strategies.
