When it comes to finding a personal reputation management service, you need to be careful. If you don’t fully understand how online reputation management works, then you risk getting taken advantage of by reputation management companies that rely on fear tactics to get customers. With that being said, here are some statistics to show how your online reputation matters to your bottom line:
- 97 percent of consumers search for local businesses online
- 85 percent of consumers trust online reviews and testimonials as much as a recommendation from a friend
- Customers read an average of 7 reviews before they trust a company
Managing your online reputation is a serious matter, but it doesn’t have to be stressful. Once you understand how an online reputation management service uses search engine optimization techniques to build your brand, we’ll discuss how to choose the right ORM service.
How an Online Reputation Management Service Works
An online reputation management service treats your name as if it was the brand name in a standard search engine optimization and management strategy. The first thing they do is an SEO audit of your first and last name.
If there are no bad results on the first page, their SEO experts start working on a strategy to amplify your personal brand and establish you as an authority in your niche. If there is something negative on the first results page, they focus on a content strategy to specifically counter the bad press or review.
The rest of a personal reputation management strategy follows the same process as a search engine optimization strategy:
- Create a Website
- Do Keyword Research to see what topics your customers are searching
- Create content on a consistent basis featuring these keywords
- Link to high-authority sites within your content, as well as other relevant internal pages
- Get backlinks through guest posting and getting influencers to share your content
- Conduct an SEO audit at least every 30 days and tweak your strategy based on results
The perception created by search engine results pages determines how many customers your business can attract. You need to take control of your digital reputation to protect yourself and your career.
An efficient personal reputation management service helps you clean up your image and highlight your positive attributes. But how do you choose the best personal reputation management service for you?
How to Choose the Right ORM Service
There are four critical components of an online reputation management service that you should consider when making your decision:
- Experience
- Strategy
- Transparency
- Ethics
Let’s look at each of these in more detail.
1. Experience
The first thing you need to check is if the agency has successful experience with personal online reputation repair. Do they have testimonials of success from people like you? You need a reputation management service that handles situations similar to yours.
If you a business owner, executive or entrepreneur, for example, you want to choose a personal reputation management service with relevant experience.
2. Strategy
What sort of strategy does your chosen online reputation management service implement?
At Titanium Marketing, we follow a five-step personal online reputation management strategy based on the five “D’s” of personal reputation management:
- Desire
- Define
- Design
- Deploy
- Discover
Do a Google search of your name. What are the good search results you can work to amplify? What are the bad results you need to bury?
Desire
What is the emotional component of your online reputation? How do you want to feel when people search your name? What can you do to make sure the information on the results pages inspires this feeling?
Define
What is the goal of your personal online reputation repair efforts? Are you trying to attract more customers or show off your best traits to prospective employers? Define your target audience.
Design
In the design phase, you use the answers to the questions in the previous three steps to create a brand image that will appeal to your target audience.
Deploy
Once you nail down your personal brand, you’re ready to deploy your marketing strategy. Consider the following distribution channels:
- Personal blog
- Well-known blogs in your industry
- A Wikipedia page
- Medium
The right strategy makes all the difference. Trust your personal reputation management to a company with a transparent strategy that is proven to get results.
3. Transparency
Transparency is vital when choosing your preferred personal reputation management service. Pick one that has clear policies. How do they go about launching their plan? What are their SEO practices and PR strategies?
Letting “the professionals” do their work without analyzing their methods is a costly mistake. The stakes are high in digital reputation management. The internet never forgets, so one blunder may haunt you the rest of your life.
4. Ethics
The use of black-hat practices may promise to provide you with quick results, but they cause more harm than good in the long-term. Avoid reputation management companies that practice black-hat techniques such as:
- Shady SEO and backlinking
- Bullying webmasters
- Blackmail
- Paying to publish false reviews about your personal brand
People are ruthless and smarter than you think. You will eventually be exposed and damage your reputation worse than before.
Using these 4 areas as a checklist when finding a personal reputation management service is the first step towards turning your personal brand into a revenue generation machine.
Brand Building With a Reputation Management Service
A good personal reputation management service does more than bury negative search results. They use proven brand building techniques to establish you as a go-to expert in your field.
Anyone who provides reputation management services should protect and promote your brand using effective and ethical strategies with long-term impact. The service should add visibility and value to your brand, while also preventing your identity from being used by others.
If you’re ready to get serious about personal reputation management, check out our services.
Sources:
70 Percent of Employers are Snooping Candidates’ Social Media Profiles