E-reputation — also called online reputation, digital reputation or cyber reputation — corresponds to the image conveyed or experienced by a company or brand online on various media and channels, such as social networks, search engines, review platforms, digital word-of-mouth, etc.
Recent statistics and studies show that web reputation has become a critical factor in e-commerce, especially online reviews, which greatly influence consumers’ purchasing decisions.
We’ll go over everything you need to know about online reputation in this guide and see how it can affect your reputation online.
But before that, let’s start with the basics and try to give a clear and straightforward definition of E-reputation.
What is e-reputation?
As we said in the preamble, E-reputation corresponds to the reputation of a company, a brand, any entity, a product or service, and even an individual on the Internet.
E-reputation is the public image or perception of a company or brand on the web, which is formed mainly from the content available on the Internet and the feedback that users generate based on their experiences.
This image can be positive or negative.
Remember to distinguish a company’s or web reputation’s E-reputation from digital identity and brand image.
Digital identity corresponds to the image companies voluntarily or involuntarily let appear on the web, whether it is videos, publications on social networks, press releases, content on their websites, etc. .). E-reputation, unlike digital identity, does not only depend on what the company decides to publish, it must indeed be added what Internet users publish about brands and companies, such as publications on social networks, blog posts, reviews and comments on Google, etc.
To sum up, digital identity can be the manageable aspect of your online image, while E-reputation has several facets that escape you.
We are now confronting E-reputation with brand image.
As we have seen, you will be able to manage your E-reputation but only partially control it. But, on the other hand, you retain all the levers that will allow you to build a brand image.
Branding is a more tangible concept that incorporates elements such as your logo, graphic charter, slogans, communication, etc., whose realization remains in your hands.
The brand image can be defined as the set of affective representations that a person has of a brand, and only you build it.
But back to our subject.
We know that today almost three quarters of consumers go to Google to find a wealth of information and information before buying a product or service online, and more than half of consumers consult the opinions Internet users give before making a purchase.
Interestingly, over the past few years, an overwhelming majority of consumers have trusted unknown individuals — Internet users — more than brand advertising campaigns.
For this reason, E-reputation is a significant issue for brands and companies with a strong presence on the web.
The big brands make every effort to ensure optimal management of their reputation on the web because if a good E-reputation is synonymous with increased sales and rising turnover, a bad “buzz” can have catastrophic consequences. And hard to catch.
In 2022, E-reputation comes to life in the space of a few on social networks, review platforms, and search engines, not to mention local SEO, and everyone can give their opinion on your business.
Therefore, the challenge for companies consists in controlling as much as possible what is happening and what is said on these different channels to create a genuine bond of trust with their audience and customers and to manage their image optimally.
It is now time to discuss in detail where E-reputation comes from and to see which actors are talking about your brand positively or negatively.
Who makes — or breaks — your E-reputation?
Several different actors come into play when it comes to weighing on the online reputation of companies, whether it is positive or negative feedback.
Here are the main protagonists that can make and break the reputation of a brand internally:
Internet users
It is by exchanging on social networks, sharing information, practising digital word-of-mouth and giving their opinion on Google that Internet users have become brand makers, and it must be admitted that they today play a crucial role in how the general public perceives companies.
All it takes is a like, a retweet, or a response that may seem harmless to boost the popularity of a product or, on the contrary, to put its future at risk. With the advent of mobile, online communication has exploded over the past ten years and it is therefore essential for your company to constantly monitor your audience, especially on the main social networks.
The company and its employees:
As curious as it may seem, companies themselves, through their communication, can impact their image and their E-reputation. When it comes to a message that the general public receives positively, no worries. On the other hand, when a brand makes communication errors, for example by disseminating information that should have been kept confidential, or by publishing messages that are in bad taste, deploying a poor marketing campaign, or launching a defective product, it can damage its online image and scuttle its E-reputation.
To manage their E-reputation, brands must start sweeping in front of their door and be irreproachable in communication.
On an individual level, your employees can also damage your company’s online reputation, especially if they need to be sufficiently aware of the use of social media in the context of their professional activity.
We see many examples of corporate community managers who make significant blunders, such as spreading information that shouldn’t have come out or using disastrous communication and language that can dramatically impact results and the turnover of their business.
Influencers:
If you are active in digital marketing, you must have observed the meteoric rise of influencers.
Now indispensable and ubiquitous on video and streaming platforms (YouTube, Twitch, etc.), social networks (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.), and blogs, influencers are the precursors of tomorrow’s fashions and have great authority over their audience who follow their advice in just about every area of daily life: food, fashion, sport, entertainment, gaming, travel, technology, health and beauty, etc.
The importance of influencers in the online reputation of brands is fundamental and must be taken into account by your company, especially if your target audience is mainly young.
Some influencers reach millions of people and generate an unprecedented number of new customers for your business through simple product placement.
On the other hand, some influencers show no mercy when they test a new product or service, and their reviews can be difficult for the targeted brands to take.
It is therefore essential to integrate the “influencers” factor into your marketing strategy and to contact the best talents to promote your products and boost your E-reputation.
The media:
The media is also a player that weighs companies’ online reputations. Whether it’s web blogs, the press or television, the investigations and articles of their journalists can quickly end up on the first pages of the results of the main search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
The major media, thanks to their large audience, are capable of causing actual earthquakes whose shock waves can harm your E-reputation.
Your competitors
Finally, don’t underestimate your competitors’ ability to harm you. It is tempting for the competition to try to weaken you and break your E-reputation by using dubious methods, such as posting negative comments on social networks and fake reviews on Google and forums. Whether unfounded or not, these rumours can damage your online reputation and image.
Your company must therefore be on the lookout and react immediately if the competition launches an offensive to tarnish your E-reputation.
After seeing actors who build or destroy online reputations, it is time to discuss the main channels through which E-reputation is generated.
What are the main channels that serve E-reputation?
Reputations are built and spread through various online channels, and we’ll sift through the main ones, starting with social media.
Social networks
Social networks are an essential channel today to establish brand awareness and a positive E-reputation, and the online reputation of companies will be mainly played on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in 2022.
In France, of the more than 53 million Internet users, nearly 50 million use at least one social network daily, and Facebook attracts 25 million visitors daily. The fact that these social networks, such as Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest are increasingly used has considerably increased the power of influence (or nuisance) of Internet users, and it is clear that in 2022, the E-reputation of companies is mainly played on these Social Media platforms. The least we can say is that information spreads incredibly via sharing.
Therefore, it is not surprising to see the growing share that digital marketers give to social networks, and your company must imperatively adopt a content marketing strategy likely to achieve your business objectives and E -reputation.
These platforms allow companies to create their community and play an essential part in creating a brand’s identity and image comparable to what television advertising once represented.
It is also via social networks that brands mainly communicate with their audience, but companies must consider that Internet users can also communicate with each other about their products, services, image, etc.
Search engines
To get information about a product, service or company, most people search online and use a search engine.
The most used search engine by far, with nearly 92% of the French market share, is Google.
After entering your search terms, Google provides you with a list of websites, classified by it on the first page, a second, and so on. Since you are an Internet user, you know that in general, we only bother to go further than the first 3 or 4 results of the first page provided by Google. Suffice it to say that the following pages are rarely read.
And this is where search engines like Bing, Yahoo and Google represent a virtual channel for the E-reputation of companies. However, as an entrepreneur, you should be aware that Google does not highlight the most recent content but the best referenced content.
If your company made headlines a few years ago for some controversy, the American search engine might display press articles about this unfortunate event on the first page of search results, even if even that is an ancient story.
Therefore, your intelligence team must verify that the results associated with your brand provided by Google on its first page are positive.
A tip, if you want to “purify” your first page and benefit from an E-reputation above all suspicion, is to create content regularly to “bury” your unwanted content.
Another essential point with Google is that you necessarily know if you have a business, even a small one and that you use the “Google My Business” tool is the possibility given to users by Google to leave a comment or a comment about any company or service.
This tool represents an excellent opportunity to make yourself known, especially in association with Google Maps. Still, it can also damage your online reputation in less time than it takes to say it, which you have surely noticed if you read the comments about a particular restaurant, service or business in your area.
As we said above, consumer opinions significantly impact Internet users’ decision-making.
Tons of positive comments, and that’s good luck for your business, but otherwise, even if it’s difficult to measure the consequences of several malicious comments, you can be worried.
For this reason, your watch unit must remain alert and monitor the words, comments and information about it on Google daily, and put in place various communication strategies to preserve its E-reputation.
online review platforms
Consumers of 2022 are strongly influenced by online comments and reviews left by Internet users, which has given rise to specialized platforms, such as Trustpilot, Verified Reviews, TripAdvisor, Trusted and, of course, Google My Business (Google Business Profile), that we mentioned in the previous section on search engines.
If your company or your e-commerce is mentioned on these platforms, your E-reputation will inevitably suffer, depending on the opinions that will be issued about it.
Reviews can build your reputation, support your business’s marketing efforts, influence your campaigns, and play a massive role in your overall success. Therefore, it is essential to be present on the various review platforms and monitor what is said, thereby setting up a strategic watch to react quickly to negative comments or bogus reviews.
digital word of mouth
Finally, digital word-of-mouth is the last channel that can serve or harm your E-reputation.
It is based on the same principle as traditional word of mouth, but it occurs online in social media threads, forums, blogs, messengers, and emails. -mails that are exchanged between individuals.
Digital word-of-mouth is powerful, and depending on what people are saying about your brand, it can boost your popularity in a day or damage your online reputation instantly. This is called the “buzz”.
How to manage your E-reputation?
First of all, you must think about monitoring your E-reputation.
The first thing to do as part of a strategic watch aimed at monitoring your company’s reputation on the Internet is to identify and map the places where people are talking about you on the web, whether professional or not, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, video platforms, such as TikTok and YouTube, professional forums, specialized blogs, etc.
Once you have listed these websites and social networks, you will be able to perform continuous monitoring to find out what is being said about your brand.
It would help if you prioritized the channels where you see the most interactions and mentions related to your brand. For example, focusing your monitoring efforts on critical social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, seems more appropriate, especially if you have a large community on these platforms. On the other hand, if your brand or one of your products is mentioned from time to time on a forum with low visibility, this should be fine for you.
Concretely, if you want to do practical monitoring work for your E-reputation, you will have to read the publications, posts, tweets and comments of users and Internet users and try to obtain all the information on the web in connection with your company or your brand.
Depending on the size of your business, this can become a full-time job, which you can delegate to one person or even to a dedicated team.
Once you have identified specific problems, you must consider your customers’ positive or negative comments and put in place a strategy that aims to provide quick answers with a style that corresponds to your image of Mark.
We see, for example, brands that choose community managers who are adept at punchlines and sometimes daring humour, while older or traditional companies opt for more classic communication.
Either way, E-reputation monitoring, even for small businesses, cannot be considered without the help of technological support, and it is imperative to use one or more tools – free or paid — to ensure your E-reputation monitoring efficiently without wasting too much time.
The tools to know to monitor your E-reputation
With technology, it is possible for a single person, and even for an entire team, to ensure effective E-reputation monitoring. In addition, the web is saturated with comments and mentions from various channels — search engines, blogs, social media, etc.
To facilitate the work of your teams, prevent them from wasting time, and optimize your online monitoring action, there are, fortunately, many tools currently available on the market, free or paid.
Free tools
The tools that we will see below have the merit of being free, and their level of performance may be sufficient, depending on your needs, to monitor your reputation on the web:
Google Alerts: This is undoubtedly the best-known monitoring tool on the market. It is easy to set up, and it sends you an email each time a mention of your brand appears on the web, but not only that, you can create different alerts on your products, your last name, etc.
The only flaw with this tool is that it only monitors websites and blogs, so anything said about your brand on social media won’t be reported to you.
Social Mention: This tool monitors over 80 social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. It displays results that include several relevant pieces of information (the strength of your brand online, the ratio of positive and negative mentions, etc.) to help you measure, monitor and improve your brand reputation online.
SentiOne: This is a tool that can help you track what your customers or anyone on the web are saying about your brand.
SentiOne not only gives you access to real-time data but also to statistics over time.
With this free solution, you can track mentions of your brand anywhere on the web, including on social networks, and configure your searches according to keywords.
Paid tools
If you want to benefit from a quick follow-up of your E-surveillance and have a budget to devote to this effect, it is better to turn to a paid tool. However, paid does not necessarily mean expensive because most E-reputation monitoring tools offer packages between 20 and 100 euros, depending on the size of your company and its needs.
Synthesio: a French E-reputation tool that lets you capture all the web results mentioning your brand on one or more given keywords. You can be alerted in real-time that content mentions your brand or company on social networks, forums, blogs or any website. It even offers results from those from foreign social networks like Weibo, VKontakte, etc.
Webmin: WebMii is a perfect tool for TEPs, freelancers and freelancers who want to monitor their E-reputation. This real search engine can indicate your visibility score on the web according to your presence on social networks and everywhere on the Internet.
This tool also offers original features and can, for example, extract photos associated with your brand to check that no negative images are attached to your name.
Netvibes: it is a complete solution for your E-reputation problems, presenting a dashboard and easy to handle features. This tool will allow you to monitor your business and competitors across the entire web, including social networks. It also offers advanced analyzes that can link your e-reputation and the performance of your website (traffic, conversion rate, etc.).
How to measure the E-reputation of your brand?
To have a precise idea of your online reputation, monitor its evolution and take the resulting measures, you must base yourself on performance indicators, such as KPIs, which will make your assessment work more methodical.
Among the KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) most used for E-reputation, we note the number of mentions of your brand on social networks. Still, you can also consider your average rating of customer reviews on Google My Business or any other customer review platform and the negative keywords of your brand position on search engine results.
But before choosing these key performance indicators, it is essential to target the channels you will monitor because it seems illusory to want to watch the entire Internet. As we specified above, it may be relevant to monitor specific social networks only if your brand’s presence is essential there or specific forums or blogs, as the case may be.
How do you monitor your brand reputation online?
Firstly, and we have already mentioned this question, it seems useless to want to completely control the E-reputation of your company on the web because a large part of what is said online about your brand escapes you, such as the social mentions.
But, if it is impossible to perfectly control what is said about your company on social networks and opinion platforms, you can nevertheless influence things, for example, by adopting a coherent communication and marketing strategy on your various digital media to reflect a professional brand image, and also by regularly publishing quality content, optimized for natural referencing.
Now let’s talk about the thorny issue of managing negative reviews and fake reviews online:
Management of negative reviews
Nobody likes to receive criticism online, whether it is justified or not. That said, when you come across an opinion or a comment that seems unfair and unfounded, avoid responding immediately in an aggressive manner, as this sends back a highly negative image of your business and your person, and this type of reaction does not can only make your case worse.
You – or the person in charge of this task within your company – must remain calm and relaxed in all circumstances and respond with diplomacy, even humour, if the comment seems exaggerated.
In the case of abusive comments, it is best not to respond.
What we observe, in all cases, is that Internet users appreciate the responses of companies that are calm, constructive, and courteous, which take comments into account to improve things.
And it is indeed the safest communication strategy to adopt if you want to convey the image of a professional company that is sure of its strength.
Management of fake reviews
Today, it is possible to call on companies specializing in publishing fake reviews on Google or the online review platforms we have already mentioned, whether to boost the E-reputation of your company with positive comments or, on the contrary, try to weaken your competitors with opposing opinions.
These fake reviews can have disastrous consequences for your business since Internet users can hardly distinguish the real from the fake and decide not to buy your products after reading a fake review.
To contain this type of problem, you can first report the reviews that appear to you to be inauthentic to the people responsible for the sites on which they are published, this is called “curing”.
However, only expect to see these reviews deleted after some time because it is sometimes difficult for moderators to do their job efficiently and quickly.
Another solution is to drown out false negative reviews with an avalanche of genuine positive reviews, called “flooding”.
Collecting tons of positive reviews organically can take time and effort. Still, fortunately, some companies specialize in customer review management and can collect as many positive reviews as possible for you, but also report fake reviews to restore your image and keep your E-reputation afloat.
Conclusion
A strong web presence can be ambivalent for your business. This is an essential condition in 2022 for its success and expansion, but also a permanent danger if you cannot control your E-reputation.
Today’s world moves fast, and the same is valid on the Internet, where thousands of clicks triggered in a few minutes or hours can have dramatic consequences for your business, and even lead to its loss.
For this reason, no business is immune to negative reviews posted on the web, and no one can afford to neglect their online reputation, even global companies.
To summarize what has been said throughout this guide, it is possible to improve your E-reputation by adopting a few simple, but effective measures and actions.
Here are a few :
- Produce quality content for social networks and search engines
- Create a graphic charter to provide consistency across all your web and print visual media
- Adopt a coherent marketing strategy on all your different communication channels
- Choose a monitoring device to follow the evolution of your E-reputation from day to day to be able to react quickly before the situation degenerates
- Stand out on Google My Business by adding relevant photos and information about your business to your business listing.
- Please consider your customers’ negative opinions and respond respectfully to all their remarks to try to improve your services.