How to Manage the Online Reputation of a Service Business

Gauri Sachan |Updated on: January 4, 2024

Online reputation management, as the name indicates, involves managing the online presence and brand image of a business. With more and more people looking at online reviews before choosing a business, enhancing the online presence of your business has become crucial.

Online reputation for a service business is like its spine. The reviews and remarks on the web have a huge impact on the business. This is why managing online reputation has become one of the priorities for all businesses, especially those offering services.

Managing online reputation not only improves the visibility of your business but also helps understand what your customers think of your services. As a result, you can improve your services to meet their requirements, thereby getting good returns on your investment.

 If you are looking for some effective tips for managing the online reputation of service-providing business, keep reading:

4 Online reputation management strategies every business should know

Why is it important for all businesses, especially those in the service sector, to appoint an online reputation management or ORM strategy expert? When these experts join your business, they work to improve the search result ranking of your business when customers search for keywords related to your business on Google or other search engines.

ORM experts implement search engine optimization, online engagement, social media marketing and other such techniques to improve your overall brand image across the web.

Here are some ways that will make managing your business’s online reputation easier and more effective than before:

• Know what kind of online presence you want

Before you hire an ORM strategy expert to help you with online reputation management, you should first know what to expect. What kind of brand image do you want to build online? Do you want to be a market leader? Do you want to stand out with your excellent online engagement with your target audiences? Do you want to improve your visibility across various social media platforms? These are some questions that you should consider to follow the online reputation management technique that suits your business.

• Know your current standing

Online reputation for service businesses can work wonders if appropriate tools are used to measure their existing online presence. How many comments or reviews does your business currently get online? How many times does your business pop up on Google search pages, when customers search for an appropriate keyword related to your business?

Using Google Analytics tools and other online reputation management tools, you can answer these questions to assess your current online presence and gauge where you stand when pitted against your competitors. This will help you pick the right ORM strategy.

• Managing social media content properly

Social media plays a big part in the online reputation management of any business today. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 68% of users follow brands on social media to stay informed about their new products or services. So, it is only right that you plan your content well for different social media channels.

What type of content do you plan to post and how frequently? Do you want to improve visibility or increase followers for your brand? Do you plan to include detailed video tutorials on social media about your services? While thinking more about these questions, you can also deep dive into your competitors’ social media channels to check their engagement and online reputation levels. If you have mastered the art of social media content management, you can easily succeed in your goal of managing your online reputation.

• Tracking online reputation management

One of the key aspects of managing online reputation is to monitor these strategies using relevant metrics. This way, you can know if an ORM Strategy has resulted in increased followers, improved online presence, increased sales, or any of your other goals.

Tools like Google Alerts and Mention, for example, provide you with notifications when keywords related to your niche, your business or your competitor’s business get a mention online. Using review management tools like Trustpilot is a good strategy for managing the online reputation of service business providers. These tools help businesses analyse customer reviews and respond to positive and negative reviews appropriately and promptly.

These are only basic online reputation management strategies that service businesses can consider to improve their online presence and brand value. Whether you choose these techniques or some of the more detailed techniques that your ORM strategy consultant recommends, you can employ them through either of these 4 channels:

• Owned Media (websites or blogs that you own)
• Paid Media (external websites that you pay to get your business featured)
• Earned Media (external websites that talk about your services based on customer feedback, even when you don’t pay for it)
• Social Media (social media channels where you can promote your services and engage with customers quickly and efficiently)

Bottom Line

Managing online reputation is not an easy task; however, when you use the right tools and and techniques, you can master this art quickly. It is very important to invest considerable effort, time and money in this task, as online reputation management representation is a perfect representation of how your customers perceive your business, and whether they consider you trustworthy or not.