How a Blog Can Aid in Better Online Reputation Management

Being online is becoming increasingly more important to business success through brand marketing. Also equally important, is the management of the reputation of a business, which is also known as Online Reputation Management (ORM).

The presence of social media platforms has made being online surprisingly easy. Now anyone can create a business page on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, etc.

These avenues make social networking very easy as you can engage with fans by asking them questions, answering theirs, and getting feedback from what they have to say. Your fans get complete freedom to express their views and in many ways this enhances brand development – especially when you wisely use the feedback. But this also means your reputation is at the risk of being tarnished.

As you enjoy thinking about how much freedom your fans have and the engagement this will drive, you must also think about one important fact – You can’t please everyone. And those who you don’t please will sure leverage the freedom to come at you!

To help keep your reputation in check, the world has given you blogging.

The following points show you how you can use blogging for brand development through online reputation management.

1. Understand the Risks
   A blog is a huge business investment. And just like any other investment you have made, this one will come with its own set of risks.
   The most risky aspect is that you will need to give freedom to the readers of your blog. They will be free to comment and say anything they like at the end of any post – which is good. However, just like a social media page, a blog’s commenting section is a great path for people to reach to you through negative feedback. This could tarnish your reputation.
2. Know How to Deal with Negative Comments/Feedback
   Luckily, the risky part of the blog can be effectively dealt with by understanding how to appropriately deal with the comments section.
   You can choose to respond to the negative comments. This is if and only if the claims or complaints are well founded. Otherwise, responding could lead to more negativity towards your brand.
   Another way to respond to negative feedback is not to respond at all. When a comment is just not founded and you figure other readers are just going to ignore it, don’t respond. This will save you the attention and brand embarrassment.
   The third way to deal with a negative comment is to remove it. Especially if the comment is just geared to your downfall. For all you know, it could be one of your competitors’ doing. However, you have to be very selective of the comments you remove. You don’t want to seem overly sensitive as this could ruin your online reputation.
3. Schedule What You Post
   Brand marketing through blogging is about using content to promote your business. This content needs to be as fresh, relevant, and timely as possible. You want to post something beneficial to your audience and not something they will easily forget.
   One of the most effective ways to do this is by having a posting plan. By scheduling your posts, you make sure you don’t re-post content (unless when necessary) and that get maximum engagement.
4. Know Your Audience
   This is vital! Why are you blogging in the first place? And why is it called social networking? Is it not because it’s about interacting with people?
   It’s always about the person on the other end. That person is very important to your brand. You can only know what’s relevant by understanding your audience first. A blog will provide a nice communication channel for you to get to know your everyday audience.

Here are other ways that you can benefit from blogging:

• Through reference to relevant pages. For instance, pages on your website.
• By integrating the blog with social media. This increases the engagement, website visitor count, and eventually sales.

Your online reputation is crucial to your business. Therefore, you must guard it with an effective ORM strategy. Helping you understand your audience, delivering what your customers need, and controlling how much freedom they have are all reasons why your business blog is one tool you can’t stop using on a daily basis. Just make sure the blog is well managed because poor management could prove to be more detrimental than the complete absence of a blog!