Online reputation is an asset that we all, you know individuals and brands, need to pay attention to. The web acts as a huge virtual memory that keeps track of all the information about us. It can be photos, videos, social media posts, interviews, blog articles, and all that content that can be associated with our digital identity.
Managing one’s online reputation is a skill that everyone needs to master, not only to improve the way others see us but also so that we never have to later regret what we decide or allow to be posted online.
What is digital reputation
Digital reputation is the set of conversations and elements that affect a given individual and influence how he or she is judged by other people. Search engines and social networks store content that is posted and that remains available to all who use it.
From such elements, a judgment (sentiment) is then formed around the people and brands in question that can influence their ability to operate online and can also have repercussions in the physical world. Think, for example, of reputational crises that arise on the web from scandals or inappropriate statements by representatives of certain companies, leading to mass consumer movements to boycott their business activities.
What elements affect digital reputation?
Digital identity is a component of our overall reputation, and it is affected both by the activities that we ourselves carry out online and those that are carried out by other parties.
Many types of content can be posted on the net, which-unless removed-remains potentially forever available to those who wish to search for it.
This may be, for example:
- photos uploaded by us or taken by other people (even without our knowledge)
- posts posted on social networks
- online discussions
- pages on other websites
- reviews on MyBusiness pages, social pages, Tripadvisor or similar platforms
How to monitor reputation
Defending our online reputation presupposes periodic monitoring of the conversations that affect our brand to quickly intercept the elements that threaten to undermine it. Here are some tools we can use to check the tenor of online conversations that affect us and to find out which content is the most successful.
Google Alert
Google Alert is a platform that allows us to periodically check what is being produced online around a particular topic. We can set up an alert that sends an email to our address at regular intervals as soon as online content related to certain keywords is published. It constitutes a useful tool for discovering, for example, new web pages in which we are mentioned.
Manual search
Google and Youtube are search engines that constitute huge databases of content. We can check what information is present about our brand by manually searching our name and evaluating the tenor of the content present.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker is a tool that allows us to monitor user behavior online. It allows us to find out in seconds what the sentiment of online conversations is around the brand and to track posts that mention the brand of interest. It allows you to set up an alert that informs you in a timely manner when content is posted that contains the keywords you set. Talkwalker is a paid tool that allows you to extrapolate all conversions around a brand to assess its sentiment.
Brand Mention
Brand Mention is a social monitoring tool that allows you to track the success of social media marketing strategies. It allows you to identify and measure what people are saying about a given brand, in real time. It allows you to prevent reputation crises through 24H/24 monitoring of online conversations.
How to defend our online reputation?
A person’s online reputation is so important that it can suffer real theft: malicious parties can perpetrate scams or other deceptions by taking advantage of the reputation stolen from others and the qualities it embodies. Original and valuable content allows users to stimulate word of mouth, obtain links from themed sites, and create signals that can enhance reputation in the eyes of search engines.
Creating quality content
If there is content online that makes us look bad, we can, for example, engage in making our own elements that, as more authoritative and up-to-date, overshadow the pre-existing ones.
Content marketing is a discipline of creating content for various platforms in order to increase the perceived value of the brand and gain business leads through the usefulness of resources.
We can create content for our website, YouTube videos, posts for our social accounts, give interviews, in order to make others’ unflattering content drop in the serp. Google also tends to consider the recentness of content for ranking purposes, and therefore they are bound to become less visible as they are replaced.
Promoting public relations
Public relations encompass a range of activities aimed at forging links with your target audience and prominent people in your industry to increase the visibility of your brand and improve your audience’s opinion of it.
They may include, for example:
- sponsorships
- participation in industry events
- interviews
- collaborations with colleagues
- advertising through industry influencers
- taking care of social media presence
and all activities that increase positive external signals.
Encourage online reviews
Reviews found online are crucial elements in improving one’s visibility and increasing the chances of doing business. Potential customers assess brand reliability through the opinions provided by other individuals, so it is important to remove false negative reviews and encourage positive ones.
It is not a matter of deleting negative reviews justified by a real experience, as this would implicitly lead to admitting one’s own shortcomings and damaging the relationship with one’s audience. Instead, one must do away with fake reviews that damage one’s reputation unjustifiably, at the limit even proceeding through legal means.
Through public relations activities we can entice our customers to leave reviews that can increase the perceived value of our online business.
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