How Do You Create a Digital Reputation?

Create a digital reputation with our comprehensive guide below.

Everyone in the digital world has an online reputation. In one way or another, netizens associate certain things with your online presence.

Your digital reputation may affect your relationships, your ability to grow your business, and even employment opportunities. Depending on the kind of reputation that you have and the type of digital footprint you leave behind, the effects could be positive or negative.

The kind of picture painted about you does matter. In the digital age, you cannot turn a blind eye to the importance of having a good image in the online space.

How exactly is a digital reputation formed, though? Before looking into its formation and the factors that affect a digital reputation, let’s first dive into what online reputation is and some online reputation facts.

What Is Digital Reputation?

Digital reputation (or online reputation or internet reputation) refers to the perception of netizens towards a person, brand, or company. It largely depends on the company or brand’s online presence through social media, search results, blog content, reviews, and other online channels.

Why Does A Good Digital Reputation Matter?

When it comes to doing business in the online world, it’s important not just to have an established online reputation but to have a good digital reputation.

With a good reputation, brands and businesses may reap the following benefits:

• Access growth opportunities
• Stay ahead of others
• Stand out among competitors
• Encourage customers to repeat orders
• Gain new customers
• Manage the damages of negative reviews
• Foster resilience
• Build credibility
• Increase sales

Overall, it is important to have a positive reputation because this can directly affect how others perceive you. If you’re curious about how your business is performing in terms of online reputation, you can also check out your reputation score, a metric calculated based on your business’s performance across all metrics such as reviews and social media sentiment.

Your Digital Reputation Affects How Customers Respond To You

If you offer goods and services yet your reputation is quite bad, potential customers may skip your business without any second thought. Even though they haven’t tried out your goods and services, your online reputation gives them an idea of what they can get from you. Thus, if your digital reputation is negative, they may think that what you can offer them will be less than satisfactory.

A negative reputation may make you lose customers altogether and make it hard for you to build your business. If you cannot afford the costs of a negative digital reputation, you should intentionally pursue a positive one. A positive internet reputation can most definitely lead to business and individual success.

Individual Perceptions Based on Digital Reputations

Individuals are also at mercy of public perceptions on the web. If you have a great online reputation, you have the potential to achieve your personal and professional goals.

If you have a bad reputation, on the other hand, you may miss out on new opportunities, including:

• Entering into a new relationship with someone you meet on a dating site.
• Getting accepted into the school of your choice.
• Securing a home or vehicle loan.
• Landing that dream job.

With these considerations in mind, it is essential that you create and maintain a positive online reputation. Without a strong reputation, you may miss out on exciting new opportunities.

What Factors Affect Your Digital Reputation?

To build a good online reputation, you must understand the factors that affect an online reputation:

Search Results

People can easily search for almost anything on the web using online search engines. What they find will directly influence their next course of action.

Positive information in search results establishes some level of trust as people begin to gauge who you are and what you stand for. The quality of these search results communicates that you have a good digital reputation; they might choose your services or keep you in mind for their plans.

On the other hand, if all they can see are negative comments or negative feedback in search results, they would likely skip you and opt for something or someone else. Search engines can be your best friend if you are able to optimize the search results.

Social Media Presence

These days, social media has become a hotspot for traffic. Billions of people flock to social media channels every day, making it an ideal place for businesses and brands to meet their target audience.

Because of the massive amount of potential traffic from social media sites, visibility in the social media space can also affect one’s digital reputation. Posts, engagements, replies, and comments or mentions that others may see in your social media profiles can affect your brand image and digital reputation.

Thus, brands and businesses need to keep the content of their social media accounts in check.

Press Releases

Public relations techniques, such as a press release, could be helpful when it comes to building an online reputation. What news and media outlets say about you can also affect your online reputation.

While a good press release may build your online reputation, brand, and credibility, a negative one may cause grave damage. This reality shows that such releases indeed affect one’s online reputation.

While all of these aspects matter, one factor, in particular, plays a central role in building or breaking an online reputation—online reviews.

Online Reviews Make Or Break Your Digital Reputation

Online reviews show up almost anywhere on the internet. They can take the form of comments on a particular social media platform or a direct review made on Google or any number of specialized review sites.

Aside from increasing your visibility, customer feedback and reviews can directly impact your digital reputation in a good or bad way. This reality is because internet users generally trust online reviews. Here are some digital reputation facts: as many as 93% of consumers trust online reviews as much or more than word-of-mouth recommendations. 90% of consumers read through online reviews before patronizing a business.

Positive Experience

Happy customers could become your brand ambassadors. When customers have a good experience with your brand, chances are that they leave positive reviews on a particular review site. These good reviews can, in turn, impact the decision-making and impression of those who have yet to try your goods or services.

Simply stated, there is a clear and assumed correlation between customer feedback and digital reputation. With positive feedback, you can foster a positive reputation.

Thus, when building a good online reputation, it is important to have an online review strategy to gain positive reviews and feedback.

Negative Reviews

Adverse effects can be expected from negative reviews. A negative digital reputation is created when certain review sites, social media channels, or search results are filled with more negative reviews. Such reviews may keep customers away from your brand and business.

Just one negative review is bound to damage a brand or company. This case is especially true if the company does not have an established positive online image. However, if a company has an established positive digital reputation, the company is more able to handle the damages that a negative comment or bad review can bring.

Considering the effects of a single bad review, one can imagine how a series of bad reviews can tarnish the business name and business reputation. This damage could be disastrous, especially if the company is a small business or startup. Recovery can be extremely difficult. Do a simple Google search of the worst-reviewed places and look through the Google search results; chances are these businesses are not faring well at all.

You Create a Digital Reputation The Moment You Enter The Digital Space

That being said, though all of these factors influence one’s digital reputation, the truth is that a digital reputation is created the moment a person, brand, or business enters the digital marketing world.

Hence, no one is exempted from the need to build a positive online reputation.

How To Create a Good Online Reputation

Now that you know what a good digital reputation is and what affects it, the next question is how to achieve a positive one.

This concern is what online reputation management addresses. Brands and businesses have to exert active effort to manage their online reputation.

Here are some tips that your company or brand can try out.

• Maintain transparency
• Make yourself visible on a review site or two
• Give room for customers to leave feedback
• Respond to each review
• Maximize and be active on your social media profiles
• Enhance customer experience
• Compensate and respond professionally to customers with a bad experience
• Present your brand in the best light
• Boost your company blog
• Post good blog content

While your business and brand may try out all these strategies on your own, another option you can go for is to opt for online reputation management services from an ORM firm.

Opt For Online Reputation Management (ORM) Services

Instead of going through the tedious process of monitoring and managing your online reputation, entrust the task to an ORM firm.

Such an ORM firm can help you with the following tasks:

Digital Marketing

Though the digital marketing landscape is a space of its own, it plays a vital role in reputation management. Content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization can be cost-effective, driving business to your business location.

An ORM firm can help you develop a blog post, contribute guest posts, or do other forms of content marketing to help build your reputation. These tasks are especially necessary if reviews and other factors form a bad image of your brand. In such a case, posting strategically positive content is essential to restore the brand image.

An ORM firm can also help you manage your social media profiles, which is vital to doing business today. The firm may also help you boost your company blog and leave a strong impression from the first page.

Lastly, because the search engine results significantly impact business reputation, an ORM can also help boost your positive content and even remove negative content from the results. Carrying this out may be difficult to do for a business that is unfamiliar with ORM.

Reputation Repair

Aside from helping out with digital marketing, an ORM firm can also help repair a tarnished image. If your business or brand is left with a damaged reputation and bad feedback, it may be hard to recover and regain people’s trust. An ORM firm can step into such a situation.

Because negative content and feedback play a huge role in fostering a negative reputation, an ORM firm may suppress or even remove such content to restore the business or brand’s name. While removing negative content, the firm will also release positive content for the brand.

This way, your business can catch up and have a restored reputation. You can also work on fixing your market one customer at a time.

Reputation Monitoring

The ORM firm can go the extra mile by not just repairing the image but also monitoring it. Reputation monitoring is important because businesses shouldn’t just achieve a good image; they must maintain it. Reputation monitoring allows you to spot problems before they can cause damage to your reputation. Think of this service as a proactive approach to defending your reputation against emerging threats.

Managing Your Online Reputation Does Not Have To Be Hard

Though ORM may seem overwhelming, it does not have to be hard or complicated. For many individuals and business owners, you can opt for ORM services to boost your brand reputation. ORM service professionals have the tools, the strategies, and the expertise to create and repair your digital reputation.

Contact InternetReputation Today

You don’t have to manage your online reputation on your own. To learn more about online reputation management services and what a reputation management firm can do to help you, call InternetReputation today at 941-259-4554, or check out our blog for details.