Reputation management refers to influencing how and what people think of an organization or brand when they view them online. To put it plainly, a brand’s character is what the brand is, but a brand’s reputation is what other people think the brand is. In today’s digital world, the reputation of a person or organization is mainly based on what Google and other artificial intelligence systems portray about the person or organization instead of a first-person experience of the subject.
Reputation management is also referred to by many other names such as brand perception, impression management, online reputation management, brand reputation management, etc. Irrespective of what a brand chooses to call it, it has the same goal: to shape people’s perception of a business or person.
There Are Three Main Tactics Used in Reputation Management
- Repair: if there’s damage to an organization’s reputation, the first thing to do is repair this damage or some of it. This must be handled in a thoughtful and concerted yet aggressive manner.
- Rebuild: after the initial fires dampen, then you start rebuilding the reputation and grow it through different public relations means such as blogs, social media, press releases, etc.
- Recuperate: this last step seeks to bury all negatives. Businesses and brands have to optimize their reputation and digital properties through SEO, constant monitoring, and regular response.
