What is ORM? (Online Reputation Management)

What is ORM? (Online Reputation Management) – Updated 2024

dharma

November 12, 2024

Your image on the internet matters a lot. And how you are perceived by people is equally important.

today’s topic is online reputation management. Your online reputation is your image online. And ORM is all about improving, or restoring your name or brand’s good standing.

Now this is all about weakening or even about eliminating the negative material and replacing it with more positive material. Improving the credibility and also the customer’s trust in you.

Why Do You Need ORM?

So now let’s talk about why do we even need ORM, right?

Now for every brand, increase sales comes from the trust. And if you wish to increase sales, your brand better project positive reviews and footprints on the internet.

Your visitors, especially customers, depend heavily on Google reviews, Facebook followings and Twitter trends.

Now social medias and search engines are the new tools for increasing sales.

Your customers discuss their purchases to their friends and when they have a problem, they would most likely spread the word about their experience.

Even from an investor’s point of view, now an investor does not know your company well enough.

And will often make decision on information that is available to them. Once again if you have a negative reputation online, it will show. So do you want to be associated with a company with a negative reputation? No, right?

How Does a Good Online Reputation Boost Sales?

Now positive online reviews matters a lot on these day and age. Customers are heavily driven by positive online reviews.

97% of the customers read online reviews for local businesses.

And a massive 85% of consumers trust online reviews.

And also that you can see that 49% of the customers need at least a four-star rating before making their buying decision.

So yes, all these data gives us the idea that yes, ORM is very important for any brand. Okay so now you understand that ORM is crucial for your business.

Top ORM Tools to Check Out

How do we even find the problems of the people and react to them?

There are various tools available that makes these jobs extremely easy.

Some of my favorites are Brand24 and Reputation Defender. Almost all of them are real time social media marketing platforms that shows brand what they need to know.

These are paid tools but they offer free charge for you to check them out and if you like them, then you can buy the monthly payment brochure.

Handling Negative Comments

So now let’s talk about how to deal with these negative comments. So first of all, respond to all comments.

Now most companies do respond to complaints that they believe to be genuine. But not to other complaints. The trouble with the strategy is that other people are watching.

Now not responding can be taken as a lack of care or an inability to listen. Even in situations where the complaint is obviously a social media troll, if you can respond with grace and neutrality, this can speak volumes of the integrity of your business to other social media users. Complaints should be responded to within 24 hours.

Let me show you an example.

So here we have an example of Flipkart support as you can see that here Flipkart support is helping one of their customers with their issues.

Similarly, Jet Airways is also using Twitter to handle customer support.

Similarly in the Intel App as well. Now thinking before you react. Now when, illegitimate or downright truth complaints are posted, it is tempting to respond in a combative or indifference manner.

Instead take a brief moment and consult on other members of your team on how respond. Also don’t make assumptions, sometimes the customer’s complaints may sound implausible because no one else has ever experienced that problem.

But don’t dismiss it or assume that they are mistaken until you have all the information and have checked with the relevant departments or distributors.

Also try to inject some fun and humor to your response. Introducing humility shows your brand’s personality and can resound discredits very easily.

Acknowledging your mistakes is another crucial part. Make sure that you acknowledge your mistakes. It’s often said that denying a problem makes a problem bigger. This is true for social media complaints as well.

Most people will be appeased with a simple and direct admission of wrong doings and an apology.

Also try to take the conversation to other channels like email. If a complaint is particularly aggressive or if a person’s complain is of a sensitive nature, take the conversation to the email as soon as possible. Ask them to directly message as well.

Conclusion

So this was it about online reputation management, I gave you an overview and also showed you various tools that will help you in your ORM strategy and I’ll see you in the next article.