This is a question often asked by the senior management team of a company, as they sags their heads in disbelief at the effects negative reviews, comments or articles are having on customers and employees despite the hard work that has gone to improve the product or service and train employees to deal with customer complaints better. The good news is that Online Reputation Management is a science. You can change your online reputation over time to better represent the positive perception your best and loyal customers have about your brand.

How is Online Reputation Management done?

First step in improving your online reputation is of course to address the issues raised by the negative comments and reviews. At the core of their complaints about your product or service, what are the real issues that you can fix today?

The second step is to hire an Online Reputation Management Agency. These specialise in Online Reputation Management and will work constantly over a long period of time to ensure that whenever someone searches for your product, service, brand or company name they see positive comments, reviews, and social media posts. They will work to drown out the negative noise about your brand and strategically place positive reputation-enhancing comments, articles and reviews at the top of Google searches.

A third move in addressing your online reputation is to promote to your most loyal customers the opportunity to provide an online review, or to share their experience on social media. Because most reviews and social media posts are sorted by date with most recent appearing first, this is an effective way to ensure that the reviews, comments and posts people see first are those written by your biggest fans.

How long will it take to repair a damaged online reputation?

There’s no immediate fix to repair a damaged online reputation unfortunately. It might be that you’ve made a mistake, the product really is faulty, or your customer-facing employees aren’t as well trained as they should be. So while you’re fixing the core problems, it is likely necessary to utilise the services of an Online Reputation Management Agency. They will use software and analysis tools to understand where they can have the first and most powerful impact on rebuilding your reputation, and then they will over a longer period of time turnaround your online reputation so that it is very positive.

The period of time to turnaround a negative reputation could be anywhere from six months to a year. However, any company that has experienced such impactful damage to their reputation will realise the value an Online Reputation Management Agency can add over the long term, often hiring them on a retainer basis to work in the background to get them to the top of Google rankings for the majority of their key word searches. This is how companies who take a big hit to their reputation often bounce back to become best in industry. They suddenly appreciate the value of reputation and work hard to change that reputation.