In this age, all your digital identity is public and visible. A plethora of information floats across the internet and tries to control who posts what feels like boiling the ocean. To make matters worse, it takes a long time to build a brand online reputation and only a bad time to tarnish it.
All of these claims ring true, but it’s amazing how many marketers and entrepreneurs misjudge their implications. Their struggles often stem from common myths that distort perception and lead to tragic mistakes. So here are the most notorious of all, fallacies that must be debunked forever. An online reputation management firm helps you manage your online identity so as to ensure your digital well being.
Myth 1: You Can’t Control a Person’s Online Reputation
While trying to stop people from writing reviews is futile, you can react to them in a certain way. For example, a timely and appropriate response to a bad review or comment has been shown countless times to mitigate the damage it causes.
That is, brands with fast response rates and feedback sensitivity will always have an advantage. Like it or not, ignoring the problem only makes things worse. Customers are always right, so it is best to attend to their wants and needs and value their opinion.
Myth 2: No Reputation is Better than a Bad Reputation
At first glance, this statement seems intuitively correct. Sadly, the lack of testimonials and reviews only raises suspicion and suggests that you are unworthy, too new, or a shady company.
Modern consumers hold the opinion of their peers in the highest regard and when it’s nowhere to be found, it can’t be a good thing, right? Negative reviews may do more harm than good, but they are at least an indication of the legitimacy of your business.
Myth 3: A Solid & Effective Plan Solves All Problems
Detailed plans are not worth the paper they are written on unless you do everything in your power to implement them. Actual management takes place at the level of business practices and processes. Therefore, a thorough daily brand online reputation management plan is highly recommended.
You should understand what the pain points are and address them. Feel free to contact the best outsourcing companies money can buy for CRM and damage control. It would be a pretty wise investment in the long term. You just need to make sure you go through a list of outsourcing companies before choosing the one that is perfect for your brand.
Myth 4: I just need to delete all the bad reviews in online channels
For better or for worse, once posted, online reviews are permanent. The confusion about this has been caused by the proliferation of services that offer help to end bad reviews. This is a suspicious matter, to say the least. Valid reviews, in the vast majority of cases, cannot be removed because they serve as reliable signals for people.
The only way to revoke a review is to show that it is false, full of false claims, or written by your competition. Faced with such an imminent shadow of a doubt, the review platform should be forced to take another look.
Myth 5: Reputation and Customer Service Are Separate
When it comes to digital plans, customer service and reputation management must go hand in hand. Not understanding this creates a lot of problems and prevents collaboration between departments.
In other words, without impeccable customer service, you can’t keep the flood of negative comments and reviews at bay. You also waive the ability for people to modify your reviews. Brands like Zappos are well aware of this and do wonders with their integrated digital strategies.
Myth 6: Brand Online Reputation Management is a Resource-intensive Hassle
Yes, pointing out the poor comments and then manually replying to each customer would consume a ton of time. However, as technology advances by leaps and bounds, we have increasingly sophisticated tools at our disposal.
Take the example of Revinate Reputation, a platform that brings together all online reviews in one central dashboard. It also sends notifications the moment a new review appears. As you can see, optimizing reputation management is more than doable.
Myth 7: It’s Hard to Get People to Write Reviews
Okay, no one is too eager to spend time writing a review, even if it takes a few minutes. However, it is often enough to ask, especially if you ask right after a successful interaction. Once again, modern technology plays in your favor: You can use automated post-survey solutions to send email requests in a pleasant and easy way. So take action now to directly affect the number and timeliness of reviews. Positive and detailed reviews are very helpful, even when they are few and far between.
Let’s Wrap Up:
It may not seem like it at first, but you are in control of your reputation. Negative reviews do not spell doom for your brand online reputation, even though they are visible to every internet user on the face of the earth. To get rolling, come up with a plan on how to avoid reputation nightmares. Keep in mind that your reputation is never set in stone or defined by your strategic documents. If you are facing any difficulty in ORM of your digital identity, you can contact a reputation management company in India and the USA, having expertise managing the brand online reputation.