Put simply, online reputation management is about understanding and managing what people are saying about you or your brand online. So just why has it become so important?

Let’s first consider the sheet volume of blogs and forums online. There are more than 150 million blogs globally and this is a number that is growing quickly. The estimations indicate that 1 new blog is created every single second. What does this mean for businesses? Well, blogs and forums are basically a free-for-all in terms of what can be said. Put bluntly, it means that anybody can write absolutely anything on any topic and make it visible to a potentially massive global audience. So if you have dissatisfied customers of disgruntled former members of staff, they could write negative material about you and that may damage your reputation

Add that to the fact that we have something of a love affair with the search engine and you really have a problem. Search engines are great. We can find information on pretty much anything we like in the click of a mouse thanks to Google and its smaller counterparts. But what this also means is that people can find information about you quickly. People who are considering using your company to purchase a product or service from are likely to search your business name. In doing so, they might well come across your site as the top result. But what about the rest of them? There are 10 results by default on each search engine results page. What do the other 9 say?

It’s a real possibility that they hold a mixture of both positive and negative forum conversations or blog posts about your company or its products and services. What online reputation management is designed to do, is to help you to understand what’s being said, respond to it where necessary and build up a positive reputation within digital media.

In an age where consumers have so much choice in almost every market, they can afford to be picky. This in turn means they’re more likely to do their research, which ultimately means you cannot afford to ignore your digital reputation.

Find out more about Online Reputation Management.