This article is skewed towards those looking to fix a crisis rather than those looking to have general reputational well-being by embarking on Online Reputation Management (ORM). It is also mostly for medium to large enterprises. While this does give some skeletal information about ORM for the SMEs or SMBs, do look out for a self-help guide specific to those to be released soon.
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the purposeful conglomeration of one’s owned or third-party digital assets and capitalizing on them via various strategies to influence how they are perceived by the general online users or consumers. In simpler terms, ORM is the pro-active influence of you, your brand or your company’s image online.
While most people embark on ORM to fix an overall unfavorable online sentiment, it is of pertinence that one has a basic handle on their online brand image and therefore takes some effort with their ORM from the get-go. While the former has all the time to strategize and implement ORM slowly into their online identity, those fixing an all-out crisis do not have the luxury of time.
Your online reputation directly impacts your business or career. Negative publicity, false allegations, misleading information, or even an ignored customer complaint can sabotage your hard-earned reputation.
Challenges that you may have to overcome without Online Reputation Management:
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Growing negative reviews
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Social Media Backlash
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Fraudulent or Real Negative Search Listings
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Executive Mishaps going viral
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Data breaches
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Activism targeting the brand
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Malicious Cyber Attacks
Where would you need to remove content from:
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Search Engines
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Social Media sites
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Review sites
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News Platforms
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Blogs
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Forums
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Directory Listings
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Shaming Sites and more
This blog is tweaked to be informative mostly to those trying to practice their high jumps in the middle of an impending stampede; AKA those in a crisis.
Where do I Start?
Now, the information online can get rather overwhelming.
Breathe.
You know your problem. We are going to lay out the tools and solutions that are at our disposal. This article is to help you understand which solutions would best serve your interest to alleviate that problem. If you want to fast-track that solution or if a knife is going to be at your throat if you don’t get the problem sorted, then:
For businesses and high-net-worth individuals, a single negative headline or viral post can cause significant harm, making a strategic approach to online reputation management indispensable. As ORM experts in the APAC region, we understand the complexities and sensitivities involved in navigating these turbulent waters. This guide will equip you with essential strategies to protect and restore your digital image, ensuring that you emerge from any crisis with your reputation intact.
If you want to fast-track that solution or if a knife’s going to be at your throat if you don’t get the problem sorted, then reach out to us at: https://auremglobal.com/contact-us/
Understanding Online Reputation Management
Importance During a Crisis
When a crisis strikes, the importance of online reputation management skyrockets. News travels fast. Negative information can spread like wildfire and quickly shape public perception. For businesses and high-net-worth individuals, such shifts can lead to substantial financial and reputational damage. During these times, a well-managed digital presence acts as a buffer, helping to mitigate potential fallout. It allows you to control the narrative, address misinformation, and engage with your audience proactively. Effective reputation management during a crisis ensures that stakeholders receive accurate and timely information, building trust and credibility. Moreover, it helps to safeguard long-term relationships and maintain brand integrity. Ignoring online reputation during a crisis can lead to loss of clientele, diminished brand value, and a tarnished public image. Therefore, prioritizing reputation management is essential to navigate crises successfully and emerge with resilience.
Key Players in Reputation Management
In the realm of online reputation management, several key players are essential to crafting and maintaining a positive digital image:
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Public Relations (PR) professionals are at the forefront, tasked with crafting strategic communications and managing media relations.
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Crisis Management experts specialize in navigating turbulent situations and mitigating negative impacts.
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Social Media Managers play a crucial role in monitoring and managing interactions across various platforms, ensuring timely and appropriate responses to public queries and concerns.
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SEO Specialists are vital for ensuring that positive and accurate information ranks higher in search results, effectively overshadowing negative content.
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Legal Advisors provide guidance on defamation and privacy issues.
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IT and Cybersecurity teams safeguard digital assets and protect against cyber threats that could harm your reputation.
Each of these players brings unique skills and insights, working collaboratively to defend and enhance your online presence.
Strategies for Effective Crisis Management
Building a Crisis Management Plan
Creating a robust crisis management plan is pivotal in safeguarding your online reputation during turbulent times. The first step involves identifying potential risks and vulnerabilities specific to your business or personal brand. Conducting a thorough risk assessment helps in understanding where issues might arise. Next, establish a crisis management team composed of key players such as PR professionals, legal advisors, and IT experts. Define clear roles and responsibilities to ensure a swift and coordinated response. Develop a comprehensive communication strategy that includes crafting pre-approved messages and identifying appropriate channels for dissemination. It’s crucial to maintain transparency and consistency in messaging to build trust. Regularly updating and testing the plan through simulations can enhance preparedness. Additionally, monitoring digital channels for emerging threats allows you to respond promptly. By having a well-structured crisis management plan, you can effectively manage challenges, minimize damage, and maintain a resilient online reputation.
Components of Your Online Reputation
1) Your Brand Assets
Essentially, this is the basic building block of ORM. Your brand’s digital assets strewn across the web curate your perception. If you have embarked on ORM from the get-go, then you will be the master of your digital real estate. The more assets you control, the greater the ownership and dictatorship of your digital real estate space. The less control you have, the more you are at the mercy of rebels, insurgents, and crisis mongers.
The following is the proprietary methodology and framework we use to explain Aurem’s ORM solution and the core of what we do to fix your crisis. Your digital real estate is the online physical space you own in context to your brand keywords and industry keywords.
At this juncture, it is critical to point out. Just because the assets are owned, shared, or earned, does not mean you are in full control of them. One part of Online Reputation Management is capitalizing on these to regain control of your real estate space. This is essentially the core of what we are trying to accomplish. Of course, you are in control of your paid assets. If you are not, then someone else is probably paying to run you down and you have probably lost control of your ownership if you have entertained negative affiliates. There have been instances when our clients have affiliates who have your brand’s messaging and website on porn sites and they have no idea how these affiliates came about.
Our framework is essentially about cleverly using and gaining new assets within these 4 quadrants and interweaving them via either optimizing them or linking them to reinforce the control of your brand’s real estate.
Our managed ORM service incorporates all your asset channels to curate a customized solution that is unique to you. Technology and proprietary frameworks are used to ascertain your preferred outlook: https://auremglobal.com/repair/
2) Reviews
In the broadest sense, reviews of your brand on your online space are like avocados to your breakfast toast. It ain’t considered healthy lest you have the right ingredients. As such, positive reviews are pretty much what makes or breaks you.
Search the 101 blogs on the importance of reviews and you would get the low end of the statistics. Let’s skip that and get to the crux of how to manage your reviews; AKA doing your best to have as much avocados on your toast.
How do you get bad reviews?
While the most obvious reason would be due to the natural limitations of new businesses, therefore having legitimate negative reviews due to the mistake of the business or brand itself, there are times when competitors could initiate a cyber attack on your review platforms and cause a sudden streak of false allegations. Regardless of the reasons, it is essential to stay ahead of potential problems and remain in control as much as possible.
Use fake reviews as a solution?
Now, the biggest problem with review management is not about getting enough positive reviews. Those can easily be manipulated with a hundred emails or 1000 friends. If that is your solution, then it would be best to change your mindset. At the end of the day, great reviews only showcase that you are heading in the right direction and bad reviews help you be a better brand by showcasing your faults.
How are reviews positioned within a review aggregator?
Secondary to that, whether or not the review is legit, if it ends up trending within the platforms, that is when the real problem begins. In most review platforms, if the filter isn’t engaged, the default is to let an engine’s natural algorithm rank the reviews. Most of the time, the most trending review gets selected. If people react to one specific review by liking it or commenting further on it, it automatically starts ranking. The higher it goes within the review ranks, the more people get to see it, and it becomes a never-ending cycle that is difficult to break. If this is a legit review that you need to displace, then it would be a longer cycle of review management solutions to correct it. However, if the reviews are unverified, then there are direct solutions to get them removed especially if they are false. There are various other formulas for review ranking and displacement; At Aurem Global, we use knowledge of these methodologies and algorithmic rules to create strategies to overcome a review concern.
Review management is about entertaining all reviews from your consumers; know that you are on the right path if they are positive and know what you need to change if negative. So unbiased collection of reviews is essential though, showcasing as many positives as possible on the various platforms, be it Social Media, app stores, or third-party review sites is what matters.
The Solution?
Best practices of review management and a subscription to a review management software. Period. It would be extremely crucial to get your Marketing team or customer relationship management team to engage a dedicated person/s to manage the entirety of the review verticals of your company if you want the quickest fix.
Best practices range from:
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Encouraging customer reviews on Google and review sites via sharing links or QR codes if at a physical outlet and offering discounts for reviews. This applies to purely online-based stores or physical outlets.
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Respond to the reviews as quickly as possible which could even encourage the reviewer to remove the review if their issue is resolved or they are satiated.
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Have a clear directive to respond to reviews that is made standard throughout the organization.
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Have a clear means for consumers to contact customer service if they encounter an issue so that they are not pushed to leave a bad review to get their concerns answered.
At Aurem Global, we formulate strategies and create end-to-end best practices and customer complaint management white papers customized to your team and train them with monthly review sessions to get them up to speed with rep repair.
Review Management Software
Monitor and manage reviews across all platforms. Having a singular source for the acquisition of reviews makes their management that much easier. Using that software, to assemble a review acquisition structure makes it undoubtedly perfect to both collate reviews, absolve the customer’s issue with negative reviews, and displace it to non-existence.
RAW (Review Aggregator)
At Aurem Global, (RAW) is our proprietary software to manage and respond to reviews with AI response systems. This seamless review management tool integrates with the overarching customized strategy built for you. From customized auto-response on Social Media to intelligent chatbots, an end-to-end automated solution is customized for your review channels. RAW is only available as a managed service.
3. Brand Keywords
Monitoring your brand keyword mentions yourself in the vastness of the online space will be as impossible as witnessing a sloth winning a cheetah in a race or even more so inconceivable; understanding every word Stallone says.
What do you monitor?
If you have reached a stage in your business where you are delving into monitoring, then your first scope of monitoring wouldn’t be your brand if you are relatively new; rather, it would be that of your competition and subjects related to your industry.
This article is skewed towards SMEs and Crisis management. As such, let us shift focus towards managing that. The core of crisis is when your brand name or individual name is hanging on one hand off a cliff. That would be the time to get Vin Diesel to harpoon his vehicle across a bridge to save you.
The surprising keywords that you should be monitoring:
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Your company brand name
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Your personal name (This isn’t a separate entity from your company name; it’s co-related)
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Your slogan
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Your CEO & Key Decision-makers
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What you are known for
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Your packaging
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What is trending and the overall sentiment in your industry
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What your sphere of influence is talking about you
The big question is, now that you have monitored and seen the result. What are you going to do with that result? What is the purpose of even monitoring your keywords? We will dedicate a separate article as a self-help guide for those looking to use ORM as a marketing tool to address concerns for their business: Future article Link
Why monitor your brand?
At the point of a crisis, reaction time is what makes or breaks your digital reputation. The longer one takes to fix the crisis, the longer does the link accumulate clicks and trends. Over other platforms, including Social Media, etc. After a crisis, you are further at risk of malicious attacks by competition via spambots or fraudulent articles.
We nip it at the bud.
What to monitor?
There are many instances whereby a singular source of negative sentiment propels into a storm that you have to brave through. They could range from:
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A single tweet
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A bad review on Playstore, iTunes, 3rd party review sites, Social Media, Google
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A post on a forum
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A news media article or a digital media article that was propagated by a newsworthy event which could be any of the above even
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A malicious cyber attack on Social Media
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A hashtag
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Your industry-specific trends (A negative impact on your industry can absolutely affect you as well)
To be able to monitor all of these and filter through a massive inflow of results would be an absolute time waster if you are not able to separate the weed from the stream of healthy online content. Furthermore, there are many keywords that you might have to monitor if you are a conglomerate as showcased earlier in this article. With technology, is manual monitoring the best way to be ahead of a crisis or to dampen a potential allegation?
How to Monitor?
The first 3 pages of Google are of the highest concern when it comes to your online reputation. Though the best-case scenario is to completely be rid of any negative articles, with an irrevocable crisis that cannot be resolved with legal solutions or direct removal; complete assimilation of a negative search result is impossible.
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Go Incognito
Without the influence of your personal search, opening an incognito window on Google or any other search engine, would give a bird’s eye view of your current SERP (Search Engine Result Page) of your selected search term. Incognito basically removes all previous cookies from your browser and starts a search from a clean slate; just as how a new user would search for you. This is the most basic monitoring which is like swimming at the surface of the Mariana trench, trying to find self-luminating Ocean life.
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Google Alerts
Google alerts is a great beginner monitoring tool. It sends you scheduled curated alerts. As the name suggests, it is limited to only Google search results. It, however, cannot monitor Social media mentions. There are no functionalities or reporting structures to Google Alerts. You would not be able to filter results according to their sentiments (Positive or Negative sentiments of a search result or article). It also isn’t detailed or searched extensively enough over the engine. It does a very surface-level search to bring alerts to you. For those amidst a crisis, real-time updates are of absolute importance. Filters and overall monitoring to understand the results are required. As such, Google alerts don’t substantiate the purpose of monitoring when you are back paddling through a tsunami.
No matter the monitoring tool you are using, the essential bit is knowing how to engineer the prompt for the keywords. See, within most or all monitoring tools, teaching the system to search for your selected keywords as efficiently as possible is a challenge. Most of the time, irrelevant results pop up being a complete waste of time.
Having an AI-based monitoring tool and having Boolean search capacity where you can accurately pinpoint your brand mentions, makes life a whole lot easier. Even so, engineering the Boolean keywords takes time and constant monitoring of the monitoring tool until it eventually becomes self-sustainable.
DAMN – Aurem’s monitoring tool
DAMN (Digital Asset Monitoring Navigator) is our proprietary monitoring tool where we have adapted our monitoring strategies wholesomely. We use DAMN for our managed services for monitoring. Intelligent, Adaptable, AI-based learning model and complete access for clients of our managed services – DAMN blog coming soon link (Contact us for more info form)
4) PR
ORM is sometimes mistaken as purely being Digital Public Relations. Digital PR is the propagation of articles to showcase a development within the company or to resonate positive sentiments towards a company’s brand image. There is an overlap between the 2 but the usage of PR to evoke positive Reputation changes and to fix a crisis has a lot of technical difference.
Leveraging positive media is a powerful way to repair and enhance your reputation post-crisis. Begin by identifying media outlets that align with your brand values and have a broad, relevant audience. Craft compelling stories that highlight your successes, innovations, and community contributions. Press releases, guest articles, and feature stories can effectively communicate these positive narratives. Engaging with influencers and industry leaders to share your story can amplify your reach and add credibility. Utilize social media platforms to share positive news and updates, encouraging your audience to engage and share content. Videos such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage can also provide a more personal and authentic connection with your audience. Additionally, participate in industry events and conferences to showcase your expertise and commitment to excellence. By consistently promoting positive media, you can shift public perception, overshadowing past negative incidents and reinforcing a strong, positive reputation.
Essentially, Press Releases and Digital Media Sites are portions of Public Relations that can be used to create digital assets to be used in your overall ORM strategy. PR on its own, cannot function as a solution to a crisis. It is essential but it needs to be used correctly towards a focus on the mitigation of how a brand is perceived online. It needs to be optimized to complement your ORM strategy.
PR Reputation Management
As ONE of the tools to help with your overall strategy, PR has to be done focusing on Reputation management. A PR firm hired for reputation management needs to understand ORM as a whole, how
A PR firm hired for reputation management needs to understand ORM as a whole, understanding how it plays a part of an overall strategy.
Aurem Global works with a PR agency that has a dedicated ORM arm and has been in partnership for years.
Our PR agency conceptualizes themes or angles together with the Aurem PR team. Together, they, assert the efforts towards a wholesome brand reformation that is strategized to change your brand image on search engines or in the online space in the quickest way possible.
Technical aspects that will be mitigated with PR reputation management:
– Keywords
– Secondary media articles
– Optimising the article to work with the ORM strategies
– Optimising the article to work with SM and Onsite Optimised Tags
– Accessing how to incorporate a negative sentiment keyword within a positive article to influence seo strategies.
In conclusion, PR is a crucial means of creating digital assets to help with your overall ORM efforts. Think of it as building distinctive landmarks within your digital real estate. And than using ORM, to make the landmark clearer to people searching for your land space.
5) Asset Accumulation
This is a part of our proprietary framework. There are assets you can collate that would make the control of your digital real estate much easier. There are assets you can create and pay for that would be deemed as rather unorthodox and that you would not even consider. There are digital assets that are unclaimed that have already listed your brand on the online space. Most of the time, you probably have not even seen or heard of these asset listings.
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Search Engine Delisting
This is Part 2 of our proprietary framework. Another term for this methodology is Reverse SEO. While many ‘claim’ to use this strategy to resolve their clients’ digital crises, we believe it cannot function as a strategy on its own but must be incorporated with all the factors of this article to be efficient and effective in fulfilling its purposes.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
SEO is the purposeful creation of backlinks to bring up a single domain or URL of your brand or blog for a specific keyword(s). Let’s take that in…
Think about the number of self-declared SEO specialists and experts who dive into your contact form on your “Contact Us” page. You probably remember weeding out 1-2 real queries from the 100 SEO gurus who want to ‘help’ you because they couldn’t help but notice that your business was lacking authority in the digital space.
The point is, too many people proclaim the ability to do this because it is easy to create 10,000 ridiculous backlinks, but what you don’t know is how detrimental they can be to your brand assets. Thus, it is always important to work with professionals with networks and experience across different business verticals to help structure your specific SEO strategies.
Reverse SEO
Now, it’s a ton of effort to bring your domain or required URL to the 1st page of your search engine as showcased above.
Imagine then, the work required to bring down a negative problematic article from the 1st page of a search engine. You essentially have to bring up 10 URLs to delist or derank that one article from the 1st page.
That’s 10x the effort of normal SEO work. Take that in!
Disclaimer: Crisis Management is NOT cheap if DONE RIGHT.
A proper ORM strategy for delisting a problem article needs to go through steps such as Collate, Optimise, Integrate, Interlink, Strengthen, and Effect, before finally being used to effect ‘Reverse SEO’. Many think of Reverse SEO as something that can be done with the same methodology as SEO. That is far from reality.
We can wait a long time to get our brand listed for a keyword ranking. We can’t wait for a crisis to resolve itself. The longer you wait, the more deeply rooted the problem becomes for crisis management.
Negative SEO
Some solution providers offer quick solutions. If digital reputation was so easy, businesses would be nonchalant about their digital image, throwing eggs at customers or sending vulgar emoticons to bad reviews.
Negative SEO uses black hat techniques to delist an article. Shortcuts never work. Spamming, bot attacks, cyberattacks, and many other cheat codes never end up working; instead, they backfire. Brands get caught red-handed the moment they initiate these actions. The consequences can be severe, with penalties that exacerbate the problem.
Do not entertain quick fixes. No problem in the world that is avoided can be fixed that easily.
Legal Delisting
This section should be right at the top of this page. It is technically the first action you should take at the onset of a crisis, if it falls within legal subsets that facilitate a link removal. However, we’ve placed it here because the likelihood of executing this approach successfully is, at best, slim.
Just because there is malicious content about you or your company online doesn’t mean it constitutes online defamation. It needs to meet certain legal criteria to be removed from a legal basis alone.
ORM is handled in silos by various agencies, be it PR, reviews, monitoring, legal, etc. The best way to approach ORM is by letting all quadrants work hand in hand. Even with legal grounds for content removal, you still need a technical team to execute aspects like halting Google crawling or removing domain listings.
Our content removal attorney partners have worked closely with our technical team, curating various legal theories and tactics to tackle difficult and damaging content from the internet on behalf of our clients.
Some examples of scenarios where there is a basis for legal removal of content:
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Removal of Defamatory Content
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Updating, De-Indexing, or Removal of Negative News Articles
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Ceasing Internet Threats, Harassment, and Hate Speech
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Takedown of Personal and Private Information
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Removal of Negative Business Reviews
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Copyrighted Content Takedowns
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Blogger or Influencer Content Exploitation
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Identifying and Removing Revenge Porn
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Stopping Sextortion Attempts
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Deletion of Impersonation Accounts
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Identification of Anonymous Online Actors and Removal of Their Content
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Mugshot Removal from State Databases
Examples of actionable steps via legal channels:
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Contacting the original poster
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Contacting site admins
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Reporting content to a website for community guideline violations
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Reaching out to Google
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Sending a DMCA takedown notice
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Negotiating for the purchase of copyright and submitting a takedown request
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Asking websites to add a no-index tag to the URL
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Filing a lawsuit and obtaining a court order for removal
Choosing the Right ORM Partner
Selecting the right online reputation management (ORM) partner is crucial to effectively safeguarding and enhancing your digital presence. Start by evaluating potential partners based on their experience and expertise in reputation management, particularly in your industry or personal domain.
Look for a proven track record of managing similar crises or challenges. Assess their range of services, ensuring they offer comprehensive solutions that include monitoring, strategy development, crisis management, and long-term reputation building.
Transparency and communication are vital in establishing trust and understanding their proposed strategies. Additionally, advanced technological capabilities can significantly enhance monitoring and response efforts.
By choosing an ORM partner that aligns with your values and goals, you can confidently navigate reputation challenges and strengthen your overall digital image.
Don’t Worry
This article is exhaustive, no doubt, but it gives you a clear understanding of how ORM can help subdue a crisis. Various tools and methodologies can be curated to resolve your predicament. Over time, a bad reputation in the digital space can be overcome.
ORM is a specialized solution to a niche problem, and the best advice during a crisis is to work with a solution provider who is experienced and can guide you in the right direction.
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Do not believe in quick-fix promises!
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Do not believe in guarantees!
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Do not believe in you doing nothing and getting a solution!
It’s a journey. But it will be worth it.