How To Build Your Reputation: A Complete Guide for Effective Online Reputation Management

This article goes over various aspects of how to build your reputation so you can create the digital presence and positive relationships you deserve.

We live in a digital world, and your online reputation is crucial because it has a direct impact on your business’ success, your personal life and your professional future. There’s so much information about individuals and brands available all the time, accessible in numerous ways and through various digital tools:

• Data broker websites
• Online review platforms
• Search engines
• Social media

Your online presence impacts how the public perceives you and determines whether you have a good reputation or a poor reputation.

With a positive online reputation, you’ll be able to attract personal connections, customers and opportunities into your life. However, with a negative online reputation, you’ll face fewer sales, a lack of credibility, missed opportunities and possibly even legal issues.

The good news is that it’s possible to manage and build a solid online presence and a positive reputation. By taking stock of what’s being said about you online, proactively addressing issues, and consistently working to maintain a trustworthy reputation, you’ll end up in the driver’s seat of your personal or business’s reputation.

Collectively, these efforts are called “online reputation management,” or ORM for short. You can do much of this on your own, and there are also service providers who can help you through the process of creating a positive reputation.

To speak with an ORM expert today about building or repairing your professional reputation, give us a call at 941-259-4554 for a free consultation.

Understanding Your Online Reputation

According to Webopedia, online reputation is “the consensus public opinion of an individual or organization based on their online presence.” Furthermore, your professional reputation is “dependent of both [your] behavior and the subjective thoughts of observers or customers.”

There are a number of factors that shape a personal online reputation or your business’s reputation online:

• Online Content: Content that’s either controlled by you (blog posts on your website, for example) or someone else (news coverage, for example)
• Ratings and Reviews: Customer feedback on review platforms and your responses
• Search Engine Results: The first page of search results when someone looks up your name or brand name
• Social Media: Engagements and posts on social media platforms

These elements and more influence the public perception by building trust or creating doubt, showcasing credibility or demonstrating untrustworthiness, etc. Ultimately, every aspect of your online presence will elevate or damage a good reputation.

Read on to learn how to make a great first impression, take back control of your digital presence and achieve a great reputation.

Do you want to speak with an expert in reputation management? Give us a call at 941-259-4554 for a free consultation about your company’s reputation.

Perform an Online Reputation Audit

Before you can manage your online reputation, you need to assess where you currently stand. Here’s how to conduct an online reputation audit.

1. Search for your name or brand on Google

Plug your name and variations of your name into Google and other search engines. Then, analyze the results, focusing on the first page. Assess what content appears in the top results, including the articles, blog posts, reviews, social profiles and websites that show up.

Do the search results reflect a positive reputation or a poor reputation?

Look specifically for negative content, including:

• Controversial stories
• Misleading information
• Negative reviews

It’s also helpful to take note of the positive content that’s online about you, including who posted it and where it’s posted. By noting positive content, you’ll be able to maximize it and strengthen your positive reputation.

Moving forward, social listening tools can stay on top of online mentions for you. This makes it easier to address negative experiences as they arise, answer questions your customers ask and stay in control of your company’s reputation.

2. Assess your social media profiles

Go through all of your social media profiles. Examine your own posts, your comments on other posts and all other types of engagement you’ve taken part in. Don’t forget to include forums like Quora and Reddit.

The point of this is to make sure that your social media presence is reflective of how you want to be perceived online. Everything you post on social media should contribute to your positive image. Remove anything that could work against you and a great reputation.

Consistency is also important, especially if you’re managing a brand’s reputation. Maintaining a consistent message and brand voice makes your business more recognizable to the public, and it also instills trust.

Lastly, look at your privacy settings to ensure your private data remains protected. Depending on what you’re using social media for, you may want to exercise more caution when it comes to who can see what you post online.

3. Look at your online ratings and reviews

If you’re auditing a brand reputation, look at popular review sites like Google, Trustpilot and Yelp. Assess how many ratings and reviews you have, your star ratings, and what people are saying about your brand.

The most beneficial reviews are the ones that repeat what others are saying. Recurring positive or negative feedback can provide the best insight into what you’re doing right or wrong. These highlight what you need to do more of and where you need to make improvements.

Respond to all types of feedback, too, paying extra attention to recent negative reviews that need to be addressed. Responding professionally and kindly to negative reviews can have a positive impact on your business’s reputation, even if the review itself isn’t flattering.

This is also a good time to create a system for monitoring and responding to your reviews online. Review management is an ongoing process that every business owner should take seriously.

More Steps for an Online Reputation Audit

While the above steps are the most important factors of an online reputation audit, also consider these suggestions:

• Content Removal: Certain types of negative content that are particularly harmful to your online reputation should be removed right away. Contact web owners to request the removal of damaging online content to protect your positive reputation.
• Social Sentiment: What others post about you on social media is as important as what you post. Sentiment analysis tools can help you stay on top of conversations that are happening on social platforms and determine if you have a good reputation at the moment.
• Website Evaluation: Assess your website and its content, paying attention to SEO issues, how your content reflects on you, and engagement metrics.

It can be difficult to get website owners to comply with content removal requests. If you’re having trouble getting negative content taken down from websites, give us a call today at 941-259-4554 to discuss our services.

Strengthen Your Digital Presence

Between your personal or business website, your social media profiles, and industry-specific spaces, there are a lot of ways that you can take back control of your digital presence and ensure you have a good reputation online.

1. Optimize your website

One of the best tools you have to control your online reputation is your website. Your website can be used to post neutral and positive content that will suppress negative information while building a strong online reputation.

Here’s how to optimize it so that your content has a better chance of ranking highly:

• Keyword Research: Find words and phrases that are relevant to your brand and match what your target audience is searching for online.
• Create Relevant Content: Create engaging, informative, valuable, well-written content centered around those keywords. Also, make sure to answer questions your audience is asking.
• Structure Your Content: Headers of different sizes, short paragraphs, lists and other structural elements improve readability, which makes users and search engines happy.
• Add Backend Content Elements: Filling in metadata, including title tags and meta descriptions, helps search engines understand what your content is about.
• Update Old Content: Google likes fresh content, so regularly update older content to add new information, media and links.
• Enhance the User Experience: Quality UX design makes it easy for the user to navigate your website and encourages them to stay on your website instead of going elsewhere.
• Optimize for Mobile: Today, there’s no excuse not to have a mobile-optimized site, considering how many people use their mobile devices to read online content. Plus, Google prioritizes mobile-optimized sites.

Other SEO strategies, like improving page load speed, adding alt text to images, and including internal and external links in your content, all contribute to a well-optimized website. And if you can start getting high-quality backlinks to your content from authoritative websites, you’ll be in an even better position to rank highly.

2. Refine your social media profiles

When enhancing and refining social media profiles to protect your good reputation, keep these tips in mind:

• Choose the Best Platforms: You want to prioritize the platforms that will resonate most with your audience. It may not be worth your time or energy to have profiles on platforms where your audience isn’t spending their time, as posting content there won’t help your business’s reputation.
• Use Consistent Branding: Whether you’re using social media for personal or business branding, be consistent. Your profile picture, cover image, brand colors and even font should be the same across all platforms.
• Write a Clear and Engaging Bio: Briefly summarize who you are and/or what your brand does. Include keywords to increase discoverability, and add a CTA so visitors know what to do next.
• Fill Out Your Entire Profile: Fill in any fields available, including your contact details, industry, location, links, etc. Update your profile info regularly so it’s always current.
• Utilize the Platform’s Features: Whether it’s pinned posts, Stories, Reels or other features, use what the platform offers to broaden your reach.

Now that you’ve got the basics covered, think about the type of content you want to post, including customer testimonials, business reviews, images, videos, infographics, etc.

Whatever you choose to post, make sure your posting schedule is strategic and consistent. By planning your content ahead of time, you’ll be able to stay present on social and keep your audience engaged.

Lastly, don’t just post to your social profiles — engage with your audience, too. Respond to messages, comments and mentions ASAP to show that you’re actively using your accounts. Also, chatting with others online will make you seem approachable and can improve your company’s reputation.

3. Generate positive content about yourself or your brand

Content creation is such an important part of ORM because it gives you control over the narrative. You’ll have the chance to show your expertise in a way that best suits you, and you can engage with your audience on your own terms.

The main types of content that you can create yourself are:

• Blog posts
• Case studies
• Social media content
• Thought leadership pieces
• Videos

Additionally, you can also leverage collaborations, customer feedback and media coverage in your own content. 

Content Marketing to Establish Authority and Trust

Creating content is just the start. You also have to know how to market that content so it reaches your audience and cements you as an authoritative and trustworthy member of the community.

Use multiple channels to share your content, such as:

• Blogging platforms
• Email newsletters
• Online communities
• Podcasting platforms
• Social media
• Video platforms

This may mean repurposing content so it best fits where you’ll post it. For example, you can turn a blog post into a YouTube video, an infographic to post on Pinterest, and a newsletter to send straight to your subscribers.

Also, make sure to track metrics so you know how your content is performing. On a regular basis — like monthly or quarterly, for example — assess your performance and refine your content marketing strategy to try to achieve better results.

Actively Manage Your Ratings and Reviews

We touched on this topic earlier, but let’s dive into it more since it’s such an important component of ORM.

Let’s start by understanding why reviews are such an essential component of your digital presence:

• Online reviews shape the public’s perception of your brand and, in effect, influence the decisions that your customers make.
• Positive reviews build your credibility and make people trust your products or services.
• Negative reviews damage your online reputation, especially if you don’t address them in the correct way.
• When you engage with reviews, you show your audience that you’re paying attention and that you care about the customer experience.
• Your responses to reviews, rather than the reviews themselves, will have the greatest impact on your online reputation.

Next, let’s discuss different review strategies to encourage more positive reviews and ensure your customers remain happy.

How To Encourage Positive Reviews

There are a number of ways to encourage customers to leave positive reviews:

• Ask for a Review: This is the simplest option, but it can be very effective. After you have a positive interaction with a customer, ask them to leave a review on a public platform.
• Incentivize Reviews: While you can’t specifically ask for — and pay for — a positive review, you can offer an incentive to customers who leave an honest review. Offer a coupon or entry into a contest to each customer who leaves feedback, positive or negative.
• Show Your Appreciation: Customers like to be noticed. By showing your appreciation for positive reviews, you’ll encourage those customers and others to continue leaving feedback.

It’s also important to keep the process simple. It’s best to provide customers with a direct link to your business profile on the review platform so they don’t have to go looking for it. The fewer steps they have to take, the more likely it is that they’ll follow through.

How To Professionally Respond to Reviews

Whether you’re responding to a negative review or a positive one, it’s crucial that you do so professionally. Keep these best practices in mind.

When responding to positive reviews:

• Thank the customer for their feedback.
• Personally address the reviewer by name whenever possible.
• Specifically reference a positive detail or two from their review to reinforce it.
• Invite them to try out a different product or service they’ll like.

When responding to negative reviews:

• Remain calm and professional even if the customer is agitated and insulting.
• Acknowledge the problem the customer is facing, even if you don’t agree with it.
• Offer a sincere apology either for a mistake your company made or for the customer’s experience in general.
• Try to take the conversation offline so you can resolve the matter in private.
• Offer a solution by explaining how you’ll address the issue now and prevent it in the future.

Lastly, make sure to respond to all types of reviews in a timely manner. Waiting to reply could leave a bad impression on your customers, and it could escalate a problem to the point where it’s impossible to resolve.

To speak with an expert in review management, give us a call at 941-259-4554 today.

Address Harmful Content

Possibly, the most challenging aspect of managing your online reputation is handling harmful content. From submitting removal requests to suppressing negative content, there’s so much to know about dealing with negative information online.

In this section, we’ll go over the strategies for cleaning up your online reputation by removing negative content. You can also speak with an expert today by calling 941-259-4554 if you’re in immediate need of reputation repair.

Submitting Removal Requests

When harmful or sensitive content about you or your business is posted online, the first step is to submit removal requests to website owners.

If a website owner agrees to take down the information, the road ahead will be much easier. However, most website owners will need a compelling reason to remove the information in order to comply, so keep that in mind as you submit your requests.

There are a number of steps that may be involved with removal requests depending on the specific situation, such as:

• Learning about the platform’s policies to determine if posting information about you violates any of their terms.
• Filing a report with the website owner or author that clearly explains why the content is harmful and should be removed. 
• Hiring a legal professional if the content is defamatory or unlawful.

For some platforms, like data broker sites, there will be a clear removal request process to follow. Unfortunately, for many other sites, it will be a lot more difficult to get in touch with someone and have them agree to remove the information.

Suppressing Negative Content

When content removal doesn’t work, the next best option is often content suppression. This is the process of creating so much neutral and positive SEO content that it pushes the negative content down in search results so far that users are unlikely to ever see it.

Content suppression involves a number of strategies, including:

• Search Engine Optimization: High-quality content must be created and optimized in order to rank highly in search results.
• PR Campaigns: Public relations professionals can create content that highlights your or your brand’s strengths in an effort to create a positive presence that outweighs any negative content.
• Social Media: By regularly posting positive, engaging content, your audience may shift their focus to your recent contributions instead of negative coverage online.

While you can try to handle content suppression on your own, it requires a lot of work and expertise. It may be in your best interest to hire ORM professionals who know exactly what, how and where to post content for the purpose of negative content suppression.

Speak with one of our ORM and SEO strategists by calling 941-259-4554 today.

Monitor Your Reputation

Cleaning up your digital presence one time isn’t enough to ensure a positive online reputation moving forward. Ongoing monitoring and maintenance are required for long-term reputation building.

Professional ORM teams know exactly how to keep an eye on your online reputation and use tactics such as:

• Setting up alerts for mentions of you the moment they appear online
• Following brand-related keywords to understand the context of conversations around your online presence
• Tracking reviews on various platforms and responding professionally on your behalf (or coaching business owners on the best ways to respond)
• Tracking metrics to determine which strategies are and are not working
• Analyzing sentiment to determine how the public perceives you or your business
• Tweaking reputation-building campaigns for better results

Additionally, ORM companies will often compare your online reputation with that of your competitors to ultimately give you an advantage.

Should You Hire an ORM Service?

By hiring reputation management professionals, you can streamline and optimize your ORM efforts. This can mean creating a positive reputation far sooner than if you were to tackle it on your own.

ORM professionals can strategize, implement efforts, monitor results and maintain your reputation long-term. They can also assist with crisis management in the event that a major event happens and causes serious damage to your digital reputation.

If you’d like to hear more about our reputation repair and reputation-building services, call us at 941-259-4554 for a free consultation with an expert.