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Online business is all about leaving no stone unturned and working hard so that none of your customers leave your website disappointed. An online business helps you connect with one-on-one customers. If you are into the business of e-commerce, you end up working even harder to develop new features and products to meet all the needs of the customers.
No matter how superior customer service you provide, your business is bound to witness a fluctuating reputation – sometimes high, sometimes low. A strong reputation of your online business would always work in your favor. However, when things hit low, know that you need to strategize accordingly to combat this problem.
The factors such as low ratings and reviews posted by angry customers, a critical media story, etc. directly affect the reputation of your business. This is when the strategy of online reputation management may help your e-commerce business. When you manage the reputation of your online business actively, you end up minimizing negative customer feedback, thereby keeping your online presence positive among the people at large.
Today, online reputation is the backbone of any business, and should prioritize online reputation management to achieve all your business goals.
What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management, also known as ORM is when you constantly monitor the mentions of your brand on social media and websites to check if any negative feedback or false comment has been posted on your product. This concept helps to address all the negative and false comments and manages the same.
Online reputation management works by responding to all the negative comments online as well as reacting to the false stories on traditional and social media that put your business in a bad light.
Online Reputation Management and PR – What’s the Difference?
Both online reputation management and public relations (PR) are similar to each other. However, they cannot be taken for one. Both of them are known to be working towards enhancing the reputation of your online business.
The key difference between the two is while a PR firm works externally to enhance your business’s reputation, the role of online reputation management is more intimate. PR is concerned with the task of advertising your brand or products to the coordinated media. Online reputation management looks into the internal reputation of your business. It is done by pointing out the negative comment or feedback, responding to the same. Finding out the loopholes and then fixing them to enhance the reputation of your brand, etc.
Why it is Important to Manage Your Online Reputation?
Often little things such as a negative comment, unwanted criticism, or a false testimonial may affect the overall reputation of your business. A low-star rating may even make your business look inferior to your competitors. This may intrude on the success of your business and may as well stop you from achieving all your goals.
Proper online reputation management may help you take care of all these elements, especially the little factors that are usually overseen by the businesses. Thus, before these little things become big and pose serious damage to your business, online reputation management tackles, and combat the same.
The concept of ORM is equally important to help any online business maintain its transparency. Transparency is an important ingredient of brand loyalty and it must be preserved by all means.
The Relevance of Online Reviews for Local Businesses
A majority of local businesses have set themselves online social and business profiles intending to gain recognition and earn huge success by marketing their products or services. Any sort of criticism may affect your business to a great extent. Today, online reviews play a major role in making or breaking the overall reputation of an online business.
According to a study, almost 8 out of 10 consumers go through online reviews as well as feedback posted by past customers to check the reputation, quality, and service of any business. Even if an individual is looking forward to doing business with an online company, he would check the online reviews before sealing his deal with the same.
Online Reviews Are Everywhere
As soon as you start exploring online businesses, you would realize that online reviews are everywhere. From websites such as e-commerce to the landing pages, affiliate services, and other parts – reviews are everywhere. Reviews have grown in terms of prominence as well.
Even the social media platforms such as Facebook have started soliciting reviews of certain services where the customers and consumers could share their opinions about your company. If you have established your business, know that you can never run away from these reviews.
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Online Reviews Boost Your SEO and Improve your Rankings
The rule is simple – if the positive reviews about your business are high in number when compared to negative, you would go ahead in terms of ranking, thereby beating all your competitors in the cut-throat competition and establishing yourself successfully on the various online platforms. Online reviews and testimonials help to improve your ranking on Google as well.
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Gain more clicks from Google My Business Profile
Many consumers have faith in the concept of online reviews. According to a survey, over 80% of customers look for a 3.5 to 5-star rating before using any local service or business. If your business is unable to achieve a rating of a minimum 3.5-star or is not achieving the reviews actively, your potential customers would not show a great interest in your business’s activities and they would simply lose business to your competitors.
Interestingly, if your business has no reviews or only a handful number of reviews (1-2 reviews), your customers will not connect either and will look for businesses with more reviews.
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Reviews Play the Role of a Social Proof
Today, social media has become an integral part of consumers’ purchase process. With so many business’ social pages index highly in Google for the business name because of which it has become very easy for any shopper to turn to these social media to seek more information about a particular business. So, the reviews posted on social media can impact the purchase decisions and serve as proof of the overall reputation of the business.
Alongside this, social commerce is also gaining popularity. A review posted on social media could have an impact on the purchase decisions in many other ways. Social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have become primary influencers on purchases made by social media users. This means that great reviews posted on social media may have a positive impact on the bottom line of any local or small business.
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Reviews Could Be Used as Trust Signals to Increase Conversions
The reputation of your business is one of the most important assets for your business. It is established that all your potential customers come online and check the reviews posted to further decide between buying or ditching. As a majority of customers rely on the reviews and ratings posted by your past customers, excellent reviews on your site would emit a strong trust signal to these potential customers, thereby confirming their decision to do business with you.
Customers have started taking the game of reviews very seriously. Depending on the service or product, users read from 3-10 reviews posted on online platforms such as Facebook, Yelp, Open Care, Clutch, etc. before finalizing the purchase decision. Easy access to rave reviews on your website may lead to higher conversions, thereby benefitting your business.
Maintaining a decent reputation for your business has become crucial in the present time. You must learn the concept of online reputation management and follow the same for the recognition and growth of your business. So, if you are looking to build or repair or help with your online reputation management, contact the ORM experts at Arete Software Inc.
