What To Expect When Repairing Your Online Reputation

Reputational damage can devastate your business performance and sustainability, leading to a loss in revenue over time. Yet it’s easy for many businesses, owing to a lack of information and guidance, to be blind-sided by short-term profits and overlook the lasting ramifications of reputational risks and a poorly managed online presence.

In this blog, you will learn the importance of addressing bad online reputational damage and ways to stay proactive about reputation management. This blog will focus on:

• Why You Need To Repair Online Reputation
• Strategy for Repairing Online Reputation 
• More Online Reputation Management Tips

But first, let’s look at why repairing your online reputation damage is crucial to business.

Why You Need To Repair Online Reputation

An unfavorable or bad online reputation can stem from a number of factors. 

When worse comes to worst, reputation damage can lead the company to go out of business. In this case, online reputation repair services are not optional but rather necessary to save and repair your online reputation.

• Product or service failures. False advertising is something that could highly ruin your brand. Apart from failing to meet your claims, product or service losses can be due to poor quality control, design flaws or manufacturing defects.
• Customer service issues. Customer experience issues can happen for various reasons, such as long wait times, rude or unhelpful employees, or a lack of resolution to customer problems. Make sure to invest in high-quality customer service to avoid issues.
• Employee misconduct. When employees engage in misconduct, such as fraud, discrimination, or harassment, it can damage the company’s reputation. Remember that employees are often seen as representing the company, so their actions can reflect poorly on the company as a whole.
• Environmental scandals. When a company is involved in an environmental scandal, such as an oil spill or a chemical leak, its reputation is ultimately at risk. Environmental issues are deeply frowned upon by the public, so companies that are seen as harming the environment can lose the trust of customers and investors.
• Regulatory violations. Regulations are designed to protect the public, so companies disregarding laws and industry standards can be seen as putting the public at risk. Don’t put your reputation on the line by violating regulations.
• CEO or other high-profile employee misconduct. When a company’s CEO or other high-profile employee engages in misconduct, such as fraud, discrimination, or harassment, you can be certain the company will bear the damages. High-profile employees are often seen as the frontliners of a company’s brand.
• Cybersecurity breaches. A data breach is one of the top risks to your reputation. Hackers can steal sensitive customer data, such as credit cards or Social Security numbers. This can lead to customers losing trust in the company and taking their business elsewhere.

Related read: Can a data breach affect your brand reputation?

So what are some steps you can take to repair your online reputation?

Strategy for Repairing Online Reputation

To rebuild and protect your reputation, here are online reputation management tips to keep in mind:

• Keep an eye on your online presence. What are people saying about you online? Are they saying positive things about your brand? Negative comments? Are they saying anything at all? It’s crucial to stay up-to-date on your online reputation, so you can address any negative issues before they get out of hand.
• Respond to feedback quickly and professionally. When someone takes the time to leave feedback, whether it’s good or bad, it’s essential to respond promptly and professionally. Thank your supporters and address your critics’ issues politely and respectfully. This way, you show that you’re listening to your customers and care about their opinions.
• Remove unwanted content if possible. If you find something harmful or inaccurate about you online, such as fake reviews, you can try to contact the source and ask them to take it down or correct it. However, it’s important to note that you may not always be successful in removing unwanted content.
• Create positive content that showcases your brand value and expertise. Another way to fix online reputation is to create positive content that showcases your brand value and expertise. This could include blog posts, articles, videos, social media posts or anything else you think would be valuable to your target audience. The more positive content you create, the better you can recover.
• Get more reviews from your satisfied customers. Reviews are among the most influential factors in online reputation, as they show how others perceive your brand and its value. Through proper review management, you can ask your customers for reviews while on the job, after you deliver services, or through email and SMS. You can also add a reviews widget to your website to showcase positive reviews.
• Partner with influencers who can vouch for your brand and amplify your message. Influencers have a large and loyal online following and can influence their audience’s opinions and behaviors. You can collaborate with influencers who are relevant to your industry and target market and ask them to promote your brand, products, or services to their followers. This is a great way to reach a wider audience.
• Optimize your search engine presence to rank higher for relevant keywords and phrases. Search engine optimization (SEO) improves your website’s visibility and relevance on search engines like Google. You can use SEO techniques like keyword research, content optimization, link building and local SEO to improve your website’s ranking and drive more organic traffic. This will help you reach a wider audience and improve online reputation.
• Hire an online reputation repair services company for expertise. It’s almost impossible for busy business owners to monitor their reputation across every platform and channel at the height of a brand crisis. Online reputation repair services companies can offer solutions like crisis management, reputation analysis, content creation, SEO, social media management, review management and influencer marketing.

More Online Reputation Management Tips

We have more general tips on how to mitigate risks and fix online reputation. 

Here are necessary measures to maintain a solid standing and repair your online reputation if faced with a crisis:

• Having a strong corporate governance structure. A strong corporate governance structure can help to prevent fraud, corruption and other forms of misconduct.
• Being transparent with the public. Companies should be transparent about their operations and their activities. Transparency builds trust with the public and makes it less likely that the company will be involved in a scandal.
• Having a strong ethics program. An ethics program can help to create a culture of ethical behavior within the company.
• Responding quickly and appropriately to negative events. When an adverse event does occur, companies should respond quickly and appropriately. Proactivity can help to minimize the damage to the company’s brand image and fix online reputation.
• Having a strong risk management program. A risk management program helps identify and mitigate potential risks to the company’s reputation. Work with business reputation management and reputation repair online specialists to map out a plan for you.

Entrust Your Business Reputation Management To Rize Reviews Experts

You can’t afford toignore bad online reputational damage or risk if you wish to avoid a drop in sales, customer loyalty, talent acquisition capabilities and regulatory penalties. Instead, you must take proactive steps to monitor, protect and repair online reputation.

But if you’re struggling to recover from reputation damage and improve your online reputation on your own, we can help.

Rize Reviews’ reputation repair online experts are here to help you. Apart from repairing online reputation of our clients, we also strategically improve online reputation moving forward so you’re shielded from risks.

For any questions, you can send us a message or call 866-908-4748 for immediate assistance.