Your business’s reputation, authority, and credibility are everything in today’s interconnected world. But how do you make your business standout over your competitors as cheaply and efficiently as possible?

The answer is simple: you use online reputation management software to effortlessly connect with potential and returning customers, humanize your business, and promote brand recognition across all of your business’s social media accounts.

In this blog post, we’ll explain what online reputation management is and why it is crucial to your business’s success. We’ll even outline a few benefits of a well-maintained online presence.

We will then tell you how HowdWeDo can help you save time, money, and effort while maximizing your online reputation.

What is Online Reputation Management, and Why is it Important? 

Online reputation management is how brands build recognition, establish authority, connect with their clientele, and provide real-time customer service.

Managing your business’s online reputation is not an option. Over 90% of consumers read at least one review before choosing a company; over 50% read more than four reviews.

By promptly interacting with all your reviewers—both positive and negative—you create an aura of trust, responsibility, and relatability that will help boost your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking, provide exceptional customer service, promote brand recognition, and increase sales.

1. Build Trust

While around 50% of local businesses respond to most of their positive reviews, few respond to any negative reviews. This makes sense; people like it when they—or their business—are praised. They don’t like criticism. But ignoring negative feedback doesn’t build trust with customers.

Over 94% of consumers report avoiding a business because of a bad review.

But quickly responding to positive and negative reviews—accepting both praise and criticism—has been shown to increase customer loyalty, build rapport, and rein in more customers.

For example, according to a 2022 study, responding to customer complaints and attempting to resolve them can increase brand loyalty by 83%. If you’re hesitant to tackle negative feedback, don’t sweat! Contact us at HowdWeDo or check out this page for further information.

2. Promote Consumer Engagement

It’s no longer enough to log in to your company’s Facebook once a month, write a post in five minutes, and respond to one or two positive reviews with a simple “Thanks!” Your users want—and expect—more.

Over 90% of customers expect an “immediate” response when they have a customer service question. And a staggering 60% of customers define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less.

Ten minutes!

Obviously, this won’t always be possible. That’s why at HowdWeDo, we recommend checking your account at least once a day to respond to positive and negative reviews.

But you shouldn’t just reply to clients; you should make engaging social media posts to humanize your business, generate likes, comments, shares, and connect with clients.

Humanizing your business is especially important. As more and more businesses turn to artificial intelligence and automatic responses to interact with their clients, let your company standout by, well, being human.

Let your personality shine through on social media. Have emotions. Use humor. Take a stand on an issue or advocate for a non-controversial cause, like a local animal shelter.

This isn’t to say artificial intelligence or automation has no purpose—but they shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all when it comes to brand interaction.

You don’t need to be a social media savant, or a member of Gen-Z, to run an effective social media campaign or have an engaging online presence. Just be yourself.

3. Build Brand Recognition

Social media is another way to build brand recognition. While this topic is far too large to cover here, we’ll give you a few snippets to get started.

Understanding Your Audience: To connect with your audience, you need to know who they are and what social media platforms they use. For example, 73% of people aged 50-64 have a Facebook account; only 29% and 15% of those aged 50-64 have Instagram and Twitter, respectively. So, if you have an elderly clientele, Facebook should be the nexus of your online marketing campaign, but don’t neglect other platforms, either. In short: always do your research.

Create Engaging, Informative Content: Content is king. You need high-quality content that will resonate with your viewers; try using social media trends, current events, or some other angle to engage with your wider audience, spark discussion, draw views, and generate shares.

Collaborate With Other Businesses: While we’re not saying you should create content with your competitors, collaborating with a related company can be helpful to generate cross-brand awareness and expand your overall visibility. It’ll also help cement your business as trustworthy.

Host Giveaways, Contests, or Fundraisers: We’ve all seen companies hold fundraisers, offer giveaways, or host contests. While this can be cliche to younger audiences, these activities generate buzz that get people talking about your business and what you’re doing.

Use Images and Videos: People love images and videos. They’re colorful, engaging, informative, and, if done right, unique. Take the time to use original footage/images/charts rather than stock images—going this extra mile will leave a favorable impression on potential clients.

Now that you’ve got a handle on some basic online reputation management skills, you might wonder: do I really need online reputation management software?

Well, yes, you do! A cost-effective online reputation management software allows you to manage all your social media accounts in one place, effortlessly coordinate multiple social media campaigns, engage with your customers, and make your brand standout among the competition.

At HowdWeDo, we go the extra mile, offering optional integrated AI-generated responses to customer feedback, unlimited SMS and email communication, the ability to create video testimonials for your website, a custom QR code, and much more.

If you want to get HowdWeDo today or book a free demo, please contact us, and we’ll get back to you right away.