They say the best defense is a great offense. The same goes for when you are dealing in the world of online reputation management. In other words, if you are not already actively managing your brand’s image, then you are already three steps behind the other guys.

Reputation issues can quickly turn the story of your brand into one of terror. Even the best brands are only one misguided tweet or critical assessment away from a terrible review. Creating a proactive plan for reputation management before a crisis occurs will save you valuable time, minimize tension, and rescue your brand before it completely ruins its reputation.

While reputation management methods are becoming increasingly common, it is still not a high priority for many businesses. The reality is that if and when it happens, working on the credibility of your organization early, will put you in a better position to manage a crisis. In the long run, investing early on to build and sustain the right image pays for itself.

I will first explain the difference between proactive and reactive reputation management. Then I will share some tips and tricks, no matter where your brand is in growth, to proactively manage your credibility. In the end, I will put a nice bow on top of this blog by presenting you with reasons that proactive reputation management is the optimal way to do business.

Fast Facts About Reputation Management

• 58% of executives agree that it is crucial to fix online reputation management, but only 15 percent do something about it.
• About 25% of the market value of a company is directly due to its credibility.
• 41% of businesses experiencing a negative reputation occurrence reported a loss of brand equity and sales.
• Firms with better ratings and feedback will see 86% of people pay more for their product or service.

Proactive vs. Reactive Reputation Management

Proactive reputation management occurs when you begin to handle your company’s reputation early, long before any reputational risks arise. Building a fabulous online reputation instead of scrambling to repair a ruined one is considerably cheaper, faster, and a generally more friendly experience.

Reputation management is characterized as attempting to control what and how individuals think of a brand or entity. To preserve an excellent online image, there are a lot of tactics you can employ. Here are a few strategies for effective reputation management:

• Review management
• Sentiment analysis
• Creating positive content
• Improving customer service 
• Wikipedia page development
• Social media monitoring

There is reactive reputation management on the other side of the spectrum. Reactive control of reputations is simply crisis management. This means reacting to a reputational threat that has already happened. Although crisis management is often inevitable, it can help the brand survive the storm with a good reputation.

You have a massive supply of positive information that you can exploit and use to your benefit by starting early and building a positive online reputation. This is a powerful instrument to have. If you do not lay the groundwork for your credibility and instead wait until anything terrible happens, it may take months to build and restore your brand’s reputation.

For instance, take a look at Apple. Apple is a corporation that, over the past few years, has endured repeated reputational blows. Apple has faced challenges that could have put a smaller corporation out of business, including admitting to slowing down old iPhones to quality management failures. Yet iPhones are still being bought by everyone. But why? Since Apple has established such strong brand loyalty that brand ambassadors and evangelists have become their customers.

How to Do Proactive Reputation Management

The best time to start focusing on your corporate image is now, whether you are running a Fortune 500 business or have just launched a start-up. For a brand that already has a good or neutral image, the following tips work best. Check out this page for credibility restoration info if you are dealing with a crisis situation.

Step 1: Google Your Company

Many individuals will base their view of your business on what they see in search engine results, so it’s best to start there. Google the name of your business. Google the keywords or search phrases that could be used by others to locate a business like yours. Take stock with everything in your business that already exists.

Not only does it give you insight into what people are thinking about your business online, but it also ensures that you can be the first to know when adverse material begins to rank so that you can take immediate action to suppress it.

Step 2: Track Brand Mentions

Although it is an excellent first move for reputation management to google your business name, there are plenty of analytical tools that provide a less cavalier approach to monitoring and tracking your brand mentions. These are a few of my favorites:

• SEMRush
• Birdeye
• Google Alerts
• ReviewTrackers
• Mention 
• Review Push
• Buzzsumo

Step 3: Manage Online Reviews

Consistently monitoring your online reviews will improve your online reputation and mitigate the impact of adverse negative reviews. Everyone reads online reviews, and Moz’s research shows that a company will lose 21.9% of its customers if a customer sees a negative review of a company on the first page of a search engine results page.

It can feel like a monumental challenge to handle online reviews, but there are a few easy things that you can do now to encourage constructive reviews and work through any negative ones.

• Create a stellar experience. This is truly the secret. If your company offers impressive goods and/or services, individuals are more likely to leave favorable feedback.
• Ask for reviews. Although I don’t condone paying for feedback, a great way to bulk up the review pages is to invite customers to leave a review. If you ask them to, 66% of consumers will happily leave a review.
• Respond to reviews. Yes, the negative ones are included in this! When researching online reviews, consumers will take the business’s response into consideration, so reacting to both positive and negative reviews is your opportunity to persuade people to choose you over your rivals.
• Make your business easy to find online. Growing the general popularity of your company is one of the easiest ways to get more feedback. They’re not going to review you if customers can’t find you.

Conclusion

In the world of online reputation management, it is better to be proactive rather than reactive. If there is only one thing you take away from this blog, it would be that bit of information. By the time you are reactive, you are already suffering losses of both customers and profits.