Assessing and Measuring Online Reputation ??A Tactical View
Understanding how to assess this reputation is one of the first steps toward a strong and positive online brand. This article explores key components involved in evaluating online reputation, including online sentiment, SWOT analysis, search engine results, social media presence, and analyzing online reviews and feedback.
Understanding How Online Sentiment Affects Reputation
Online sentiment is the collective attitude of consumers towards your brand based on digital conversations. This sentiment can powerfully impact your brand’s online reputation, influencing how potential customers perceive your business long before they even reach out to you.
Online sentiment analysis uses natural language processing (NLP) and AI to identify and extract subjective information from source materials (usually text). The output of sentiment analysis can be used to measure public opinion as positive, negative, or neutral, providing brands with valuable insight into how customers react to products and services.
Further reading: Reputation and sentiment analysis.
SWOT Analysis for Online Brands
A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) offers a structured approach to understanding the internal and external factors impacting your brand’s online reputation.
- Strengths: Identifies what your brand does well online, like high engagement rates, great customer reviews, or a strong and positive social media following.
- Weaknesses: Determine areas where your brand’s online reputation could use some improvement. This could include negative reviews, a lack of social media presence, or poor search engine rankings in comparison with competitors.
- Opportunities: This could be leveraging a popular social media platform, collaborating with influencers, building out new products or services, or improving customer service.
- Threats: Identify potential threats to your online reputation. This could be negative publicity, competitor activities, or changing consumer behaviors.
Implementing a SWOT analysis can help brands understand their current online reputation and create a strategic plan to enhance it.
Further reading: SWOT analysis for brands.
Understanding Search Engine Results
Search engine results have changed dramatically since the first search engine (Archie) was created. Today, search engine results can impact a brand’s bottom line enormously. The fact is, when consumers look for information about your brand, the first page of search engine results will likely form their initial impressions.
A positive search engine results page (SERP) filled with relevant content, positive reviews, and your website can create a positive first impression. Negative content, like bad reviews or damaging news articles, could harm your reputation.
One of the first steps to understanding how your brand is seen online is to know how search engines work, and how information about your brand is portrayed in carousels, search results, knowledge panels, Wikipedia, reviews, and much more.
Further reading: Understanding modern search results.
Reputation and Social Media Presence
Social media has become a powerful tool for shaping a brand’s reputation or reacting to a crisis. A strong social media presence can bolster a positive online reputation, while negative interactions or lack of presence can harm it.
Learn more about how social media presence, monitoring, and nurturing can affect the online reputation of a brand.
Further reading: Reputation and social media presence.
Analyzing Online Reviews and Feedback
Customer reviews and feedback are one of the first things prospective customers look at when considering a buying decision. Positive reviews can help build trust and credibility, while negative ones can torpedo your brand’s image – and sales.
Learn more about how to analyze and understand online reviews and feedback in order to take control of how your brand is seen by prospects and other stakeholders.
Further reading: Analyzing reviews and feedback.
