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Dubai Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Are you curious if your customers are talking about you and your brand? Whether their feedback is glorifying to your business or has a stint of malicious intent to ruin your name, you’ll definitely want to hear what the public has to say about your brand.

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Let’s talk about Numbers:

According to a survey by RatePoint conducted in 2009:

  1. 24% of small businesses declared that an online review had a positive impact
  2. 4% of small and medium sized businesses reported a negative impact from an online review
  3. Of the 30% of small business retailers who had integrated product reviews into their Web sites, 43% said reviews had resulted in more sales, while 28 percent indicated reviews had resulted in more traffic.

According to a white paper (2009) by Weber Shandwick and Online-Reputations.Com

  1. Nearly all executives surveyed – 98% – “use” the Internet to evaluate company reputation.
  2. According to 99% of executives surveyed, the leading source for company information, regardless of region, is the corporate Web site.
  3. Executives’ next two highest ranked reputation safeguards are examining comments made about their companies in the traditional media (42%) and using information generated by search engines or social media monitoring tools (38%)
  4. Nearly 6 out of 10 global executives say their companies are now rigorous about online reputation management (59%) and expect to be more rigorous three years from now (58%).

So what is Online Reputation & Brand Management (ORM)?

“The practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media. It is also sometimes referred to as online reputation monitoring.” – Wikipedia

So why would YOU care?

There are a hundred reasons why you should be concern with your online reputation but in my experience here are some of the maj

  1. Positive Reinforcement – It’s always good to hear praises from people particularly from your targeted customers. It does not only give you the bragging rights, but it also gives you the inspiration to do better and the conclusion that your company heading the right direction and doing the right things in your overall business now that your people are generously giving out positive feedback online.
  2. Discover Opportunities – A huge part of online reputation management is listening / monitoring. If you’re conscious about your online reputation, you’ll know that customers use online reviews, forum discussions, and website testimonials to determine which brands / companies are leading in the respective products / services that they’re looking for.
  3. Defend Your Name – In my experience in managing online reputation for clients, defending your brand against online attacks and malicious comments is like curing a malignant disease. I’ve seen ex-employees tarnish a companies name due to unjust termination, customers who made baseless accusations just to get their money back, and even people who just ride the waves of irate discussions for the sake of it. Learning how to prevent this kind of disease will always be better than curing a stained online reputation.

We’ll discuss more on what’s and the how’s of online reputation management here at SaktoSEO. Just like SEO, ORM obtains costs in terms of planning and execution. But in the same way, ORM can give you a good ROI when done properly.

to be updated soon…