Online Reputation: Definition, Examples, and How to Solve a Crisis

Has anyone ever spoken badly about your brand, product, or service?

It’s something that happens daily, even among the best brands.

Any news related to your business can turn into a scandal and negatively impact your sales.

Do you want to learn more about what online reputation is and what you can do to improve it?

Come, come, I’ll explain it with some examples.

What is Online Reputation

“Opinion, idea, or concept that people have about a person or thing.”

That’s the definition of “reputation” that we all know.

And what happens when we talk about online reputation?

Well, we can use exactly the same definition of the term “reputation”:

Online reputation is the opinion or concept that users and internet users have about your brand, product, or service.

What happens?

Just like with “word of mouth,” the information and negative opinions of your online consumers can spread very quickly through the Internet.

And that, whether you like it or not, is not 100% controllable by you, although in this article we will give you some ideas to resolve online reputation crises as quickly as possible.

But online reputation is not just the set of opinions created by other people or companies about your brand or product; it will also include the information that you yourself display about your company.

Note: We should not confuse online reputation with brand image since the latter is 100% controllable by you through advertising.

Another related concept is digital identity, which is the set of data that has been published on the Internet and that aggregates personal data, images, news, comments, and more. It is basically the opinion that others have of you, so we could say it is an influential part of online reputation.

So, we have that the factors that depend on online reputation would be:

• The actions you take, whether as a company or as an individual (press releases, social media, blog articles, etc.)
• And the opinions of other people (forums, directories, comments, social media, news…)

Why is it Important to Have a Good Reputation?

The image your company or e-commerce has online will directly influence the orders you receive.

In fact, if you are a regular online buyer, you probably know that we like to collect opinions and reviews about the products we are going to buy before doing so.

What happens if most of the opinions about that product in question, which is the one you sell, are negative?

Sales will not occur, or they will happen in less proportion than they should.

Note: It won’t help to have the best product on the market if there are negative news or opinions that undermine it. Sometimes it’s the competition itself that spreads false information to harm you and try to increase their sales.

And news already forms part of the SERPs, and it’s very easy that when you type the name of your store, brand, or company, the first thing the user sees is that negative news.

So, what do you think if we look at some popular reputation crisis examples and some ideas to try to solve them?

Online Reputation Crisis: Ideas for Managing It

Managing an online reputation crisis involves knowing how to act when negative comments or news arise around your brand, product, or service.

Now that we have clarified the definition of online reputation and why it is important to keep it “in check,” we can move on to see some very notable cases of brand and company reputation crises and how they can be resolved or at least reduce the monetary damage they can cause.

Cases of Online Reputation Crises and Examples

What would be the strategy to follow to reduce the visibility of all these news items that negatively influence your brand or company's online reputation?

You cannot control the positioning of those negative news and comments, but you can try to position the results you want above them.

Therefore, the strategy to follow must be the selection of what we want the SERPs to show on the first page and invest in SEO to achieve it.

A good way to achieve this is by publishing press releases in local and national online newspapers and giving them authority with a link-building strategy that takes them to the top positions for your brand name, company, or product. You can acquire this type of sponsored news in any of the media available on the Unancor platform.

It won’t be easy, nor will it be quick, but it’s better than sitting with your arms crossed.

We have several ways to appear on the first page of Google:

• Organic results.
• Information snippets.
• Adwords.
• Images.
• Reviews and testimonials from influencers and bloggers.
• Social links.
• Free authority links (Youtube, vimeo, soundcloud, ello.co, about.me, apps…)
• News or press releases.

Do you remember the social wheel?

Well, it’s a good time to apply it when it comes to improving online reputation.

By intertwining the different profiles and social networks, we can give them enough strength to rank our company name on the first page. It’s a matter of time and employing a good link-building strategy that, mixed with a press release or somewhat viral content, can make a significant difference.

Thus, by positioning these domains for your brand name, you will be able to push the negative results to the second page of Google:

What do you think? Does it seem feasible?

Well, you can start to position your social networks, press releases, blogs, and videos with Unancor links and natural links from forums, comments, directories, and profiles.

Remember that you should not point to your main domain, but to your social networks and domains you want to position on the first page of Google for your brand name.

Remember to improve the CTR of your results to receive more traffic with the tricks we already explained in the blog.

Still not clear? Contact the Unancor team, and we will help you assess and define a online reputation strategy.