How to Manage and Improve Your Brand’s E-Reputation?

In recent years, e-reputation has become an increasingly important concept following the rapid growth of the digital era. As such, the presence of companies on the Internet is highly recommended as it helps to improve and/or optimize their brand image.

Indeed, it no longer depends solely on what the company strategically wishes to communicate. The brand’s reputation also depends on the word-of-mouth freely spread by internet users, which often has a much stronger impact.

For these reasons, it is essential to integrate e-reputation into your marketing and commercial strategy. But how can you manage your e-reputation on the Internet?

Discover in this article how to master and improve your brand’s e-reputation.

E-reputation: What Is It?

E-reputation is, by definition, the image you project on the Internet. This applies to individuals, legal entities, and brands alike.

This digital image is built from the data that can be found online, but also and especially through the opinions of brand users, which can be posted on blogs, online media, social networks, or discussion forums.

These data are elements that are difficult for your company to control because they are on different distribution channels, and often come from consumers or influencers themselves.

Note that your brand’s digital identity has the power to favorably – or conversely – unfavorably influence an opinion. As a result, reputation is quickly impacted, since the flow of information published online is incessant, and some can escape brands’ notice. E-reputation can be seen as word-of-mouth 2.0.

E-reputation: An Important Issue for Your Brand

When we want to learn about a company, searching on the Internet has become a natural reflex. It is through this means that we find a maximum of data and remarks about the company or brands in question. Following this, we form an idea of its digital reputation; thus we are generally influenced in a positive… or negative way.

This is why ensuring a company’s e-reputation is crucial for your business. Having a good or bad digital image has an influence on consumers’ purchasing decisions, conversion rates, and therefore, on companies’ sales volumes.

It is therefore of great importance to take your e-reputation into account and check it regularly to better understand it, in order to improve your communication with customers. It is equally important to monitor what your competitors are doing in order to understand what works in your sector, and how to adapt your marketing strategy.

What Are the Risks Associated with a Lack of E-reputation Control?

What are the risks of not monitoring your e-reputation on the Web? It is possible that your brand may be criticized or even discredited by internet users or websites, through articles or consumer reviews.

Potential consumers wishing to learn about your company can easily come across this unflattering – and perhaps even false – information that conveys a bad image of your brand and has a negative influence.

As a result, your company’s reputation can be impacted and the consequences can be very negative: negative customer opinions, negative reviews, and, consequently, a decrease in online or offline sales.

What Are the Vectors of E-reputation?

E-reputation, a true digital word-of-mouth, is built online through numerous increasingly varied levers and tools.

Search Engines

Google, Ecosia, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo… There are many search engines. According to the Blog du Modérateur, “more than 90% of Internet search traffic in France comes from Google”. Globally, this represents 80,000 queries every second, or 6.9 billion per day! Therefore, we recommend basing your positioning on that of Google, which remains the number 1 search engine.

The sites referenced on the first page benefit from increased visibility and are most often those that have a solid reputation: this is why improving your e-reputation on Google is essential.

It’s also important to know that internet users rarely go beyond the first page of Google and click on the first links that appear there: an additional reason to monitor the top 5 results corresponding to your brand.
It is therefore essential to improve the natural referencing of your website on the Internet (via SEO), by researching the most impactful keywords in your sector and optimizing your content. We will see a little later how to maximize your chances of ranking higher on Google.

Social networks/influencers

Social networks have become essential communication tools for businesses. A community manager establishes a marketing strategy to reach new targets, but also to retain internet users who are already consumers through various and varied publications (photos, videos, Instagram stories…) on social networks.

Whether it’s on Instagram or TikTok, the presence of brands on social networks is now essential. It allows you to engage your community and help introduce it to new consumers.

The Trustt software also allows you to reuse the UGC collected during your ambassador campaigns to showcase them on your social network. This constitutes great social proof that helps gain the trust of internet users, especially if you benefit from the audience of influencers.

As LinkedIn is a professional social network, it can also be a good vector for enhancing your e-reputation. It is therefore interesting to regularly post about your company’s behind-the-scenes, your progress, and your values, in order to gain visibility while improving your notoriety.

YouTubers

With influencer marketing being at the heart of today’s marketing, we cannot deny the impact that YouTubers have on clients, as well as on potential consumers.

Many of them testify to their purchasing experiences and the quality of products that a brand offers.

The most striking example is that of beauty YouTubers, with their “unboxing” or “favorites” videos. These are opportunities for them to talk about the skincare and cosmetics they’ve tested, what they thought of them, and most importantly, if they plan to repurchase them in the future.

Partnerships with influencers present on YouTube are a good way to gain visibility and have an impact on your popularity.

Forums and blogs

Although less numerous than a few years ago, forums and blogs remain a lever for your e-reputation that should not be neglected in your marketing strategy.

This digital format encourages free and direct discussions between internet users, about a purchasing experience or the quality of a product. They can react, share their experience, advise other consumers, and potentially contribute to your e-reputation.

This “is why it” is essential to monitor what is being said about it in forums and on blogs. The Mediatoolkit website is a search engine that allows you to check your popularity on blogs, news media, or forums. You just have to “enter your keyword (name, brand, company name). This tool brings up all the publications with this term. You also receive real-time alerts and can identify viral posts or analyze the overall sentiment about your brand. This kind of” management tool will also allow you to monitor “the” activity of your competitors.

Review sites

These are specialized platforms that allow consumers to find all the data they need to know before making a purchase.

The Trustt software allows brands to generate qualified reviews from consumers in your target audience following a product campaign. Ambassadors are selected according to the criteria you have established (age, skin type, hair type, etc.). You can easily integrate these reviews on your website and reseller sites, thus increasing trust in your company.

Sites containing numerous reviews are appreciated by consumers because they allow gathering a maximum of opinions on the product’s effectiveness, its value for money, the impact after several days/weeks of use, etc.

According to a study by BazaarVoice, just 50 reviews on a website are enough to increase the conversion rate by 30%. Customer feedback is therefore essential for your company’s reputation.

The Trustt software allows your brand to collect authentic reviews from consumers engaged with your brand through ambassador campaigns. You then collect this data to use as reassurance information. After each campaign, the ambassadors answer a usage test that allows you to gather proven effectiveness data such as “90% of customers declare that the product is effective”. This data can be used on your packaging, product sheets, or landing pages: it is valuable information to increase your company’s popularity online.

How to Improve Your Company’s Online Reputation?

Understanding Your Digital Image

While it’s relatively easy to manage what the brand publishes itself on the Internet and social media, it’s much more complex to control what customers might publish.

To manage your popularity, there are companies and/or agencies specializing in this field, but at a rather high price.

To avoid resorting to such an agency and costly tools, it is entirely possible to establish, in advance, a complete diagnosis of your reputation in order to define an appropriate strategy.

You can proceed manually by typing your company name into Google. You will get a “summary image” of your popularity, including outgoing articles, recent news from media mentioning your brand, or images associated with your company.

Other management tools exist to know in real-time the publications produced on the Web about your brand. This monitoring should be an integral part of your marketing strategy.

Mastering and Improving Your Online Reputation

Being Aware of the Laws

When it comes to old publications deemed obsolete or not very flattering that are posted, it is possible to remove them.

Indeed, there is the outdated content removal tool on Google. This is relevant in cases where you are not the owner of this content and the page or image no longer exists on the Web, or has changed significantly since its creation. You can then ask Google to re-explore or hide it.

The “outdated content removal tool requires” indicating the “concerned URL. Additional information will be requested to validate the request. If the request is approved and the page no” longer exists, it stops appearing in search results. If it is still available, but has been modified, the excerpt as well as the cached result will be removed from search results and updated the next time Google’s robot crawls the page.

It’s important to know that laws exist in France to fight against defamation on online media. If you believe you are a victim of unfounded public defamatory statements, know that they are punishable under Articles 32 and 33 of the law of July 29, 1881.

This is just one example among many, but insults on forums are just as punishable as public defamation. The reputation of the company’s leader and employees is just as important as the digital image of the company. It is therefore necessary to control the publications posted and produced by them, regardless of the media: photos, videos, blogs, social networks (Instagram, TikTok, etc.).

We can take the example of the bad buzz that affected Le Slip Français at the beginning of 2020, following racist content posted by some employees in their free time, which cast doubt on their values. This post damaged the online reputation of the French underwear brand. It is therefore essential to continuously monitor what is being said about your company to avoid damaging your popularity on the Web.

Educating Your Employees

To avoid these misunderstandings, it is essential to maintain dialogue and communication with your employees, but also to work on your employer brand.

Employees are indeed both actors and spectators. Thus, they must be able to recognize themselves in the company’s values and have a real sense of belonging.

Responding to Negative Content

When customers leave a review of your brand, it’s important to respond, whether it’s positive or negative feedback! Why? Because communication with consumers is essential for your brand image.

In case of negative feedback, it can sometimes be difficult to know how to react. This is why it’s essential to prepare an action plan for this type of situation and, above all, to respond to it.

This shows that you have a genuine interest in this bad experience. And above all, it shows that you are trying to understand the reason for your interlocutor’s disappointment in order to find a solution. Whether it’s an unsuitable product, poor reception, or an error: you must show your understanding for the customer.

Ignoring the message is not recommended: you risk coming across as a company that doesn’t care about its customers’ impressions. A company must be able to respond to any comment, even negative feedback.

It’s also important not to delete negative feedback, but instead, learn to bounce back from it to show your willingness to improve.

In case of bad publicity, you can implement this 5-step action plan:

Dealing with this kind of crisis: 5 tips to limit the damage:

• Don’t react too quickly: keep calm and take the time to read all the messages or comments addressed by internet users in order to understand their points of attack;
• Don’t delete anything: hiding comments you deem inappropriate is not beneficial, and may in fact be detrimental to you;
• Apologize: if customers have been disappointed, you must show that you are sincerely sorry, whether via social media, your website, or in a press release;
• Keep your cool: you must show that you are able to keep your head high without being overwhelmed by anger or sadness;
• Communicate about the actions you have taken to resolve this crisis: this message, addressed to consumers, allows them to realize that their feedback matters!

Improve Your SEO

In order to maintain control over the pages that appear on the first page of Google, it’s important to have an effective SEO strategy. It’s essential to optimize navigation on your site by providing key information and writing SEO-optimized articles.

Still to improve SEO, it’s essential to allow internet users to leave reviews. Why? Because Web searches on a brand are often associated with the term “reviews”. Thus, the more reviews you have, the greater your chances of rising in Google rankings.

The Trustt software allows brands to generate qualified feedback from selected ambassadors during product campaigns. Brands can sort applications according to people’s profiles: age, skin type, purchasing habits, etc. Then, ambassadors are invited to leave comprehensive feedback that you can integrate into your product pages or reuse on your social networks!