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How online reputation affects your company?

In News

Date 12/02/2017

What is open source hardware you may ask?

Reputation is considered to be by experts the most important intangible asset you own and the one most businesses take for granted.

Reputational damage impacts on a company value, customer goodwill, investor confidence and ultimately reduces income and profitability. This asset affects the domestic and international performance for both types of companies, large and SMEs.

A firm’s reputation is “a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describe the firm’s overall appeal to all its key constituents when compared to other leading rivals” as Fombrun explains in his book (Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image, 1996, p. 38).

The positive or negative individuals’ opinion about a company or brand defines its reputation. On the Internet and social networks, comments about a brand, or the activity of a person, are relayed much faster and exponentially with the immediacy of these media. Internet became a truly archive room. Thus, it becomes more than essential for a company or for a person to watch and worry about its image. Brands can no longer remain passive in view of this digitization. Consumers before engaging with a company tend to search for information about it on the web.

We chose this topic because online reputation already transformed the way we understand and feel each other, our community, the way we make business, and we find a job, and that is why we want to be able to understand correctly how it works.

E-reputation as a competitive advantage: E-reputation can influence the value of the company?

A good reputation should build a relationship with key stakeholders (e.g. owners, employees, partners, customers, suppliers, etc.) and have them behave toward your organization in desirable ways. A positive reputation should help to attract and keep the best talent, it should increase the number of customers, it should attract investors, and it should make it safe for government officials to support company actions. A good reputation, then, should help differentiate from competitors in the eyes of key stakeholders.

Companies with higher reputations tend to do better financially, but the financial success comes because a company meets the needs and interests of its stakeholders better than do others in the competitive set. Certainly, companies that desire a good reputation also need to be concerned with how they are viewed by their communities and others, and social responsibility is an important part of a reputation program.

According to BusinessWeek, “Sure it looks great to tell the world about your innovative culture or that you are the greenest company, but does this really move the needle with your target customers and investors?” How does reputation effect the bottom-line? The Reputation Institute of Singapore, has found that a 5% positive change in reputation translates into a 3-5% change in market capitalization. Indeed, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer quality, customer service and strong financial performance drove trust. The top drivers for company trust in 2015 are transparency, honest practices, interaction with potential prospects, bio and eco activities and high quality products.

Sustainability is key across the triple bottom line – people, planet and profit.  Now if sustainability is important it means that experiential gains from employees, and their interactions with customers, become the means by which input costs are kept low and where one facilitates a premium on pricing.

Good e-reputation: consequences on the company

According to SearchEngineLand.com, 72% of consumers trust online reviews the same as personal recommendations from friends and family. This means that if someone had a bad experience and wrote a negative review, 72% percent of your prospective customers would turn to a competitor if it has better online reviews. That’s almost 3/4 of business lost! If you have negative online reviews your online reputation management campaign should work to rectify this matter. If you have positive reviews, you should still include a review building component in your online reputation management campaign so you strengthen your online ratings and protect yourself from one negative review ruining your average star rating.

Bad e-reputation: consequences on the company

A bad online reputation can create a lot of troubles in personal and professional relationships. Business and brands will lose prospective partnerships and deals. Negative Online Reputation will also create doubts about your company, products and services, and will often lead to lose of potential customers and business. The effects of online reputation for a company are not only damaging when a new product is released, a bad reputation usually implies that the user will look to the competitor. The bad opinions will put the company’s credibility questioned, carrying with it big financial complications, sometimes so big that the financial sustainability will be affected heavily involving the company’s disappearance.

Digital Life Reflects Company Success

Not being part of social media and owning a website is bad for business. Unless you have online presence, there cannot be an eReputation. Therefore, it is important to own a website, especially website adaptive (responsive) to any mobile devices and interact through social media channels. Use digital technology to stay current and “sophisticated”. This improves communication to a great extent. Make use of mobile devices because communication is the key to success through social media and internet networking.

How to spread and control your company’s eReputation: Mass-media, Internet, Social Communities, etc.?

Own a Website

Transparency is the key to winning the trust of potential clients and customers. The “About Us” page tells a lot about the person with whom clients will be dealing with. Before vendors decide on whether they can hire your services they will need to know whether your company really exists. Besides, they will have questions they may need answers to. Therefore, it is important that you own a website well designed and made thus as to provide a good user friendly (UI) and user experience (UX) feeling.

Blogs, Press Releases and Articles

The more information is available, the better for your e-Reputation. Write blogs and articles to keep your followers up-to-date. Provide visitors to your website with informative and well researched articles and blogs. Publish online press releases that will reflect the progress, meaning improved services/products or developed new services/products and achievements of the company. Don’t forget to give something back and to have social activities.

Use Latest Online Tools and Mobile Gadgets

Put photos, videos and audio multimedia. Be trendy and current with technology that supports sharing and downloading information from your website.

Get on Social Media Networks

Online businesses need to socialize in order to provide potential customers or clients with transparent information. It has become a best practice for vendors to go know about the company’s reputation before finalizing their deals. Social media allows business people to create a good e-Reputation online through long-term business relations. Through direct communication using feedbacks and comments, companies earn a good reputation very quickly. There are a number of social media websites where the presence of your company will be beneficial. For example, LinkedIn is a business social media website.

Similarly, Twitter and Facebook is where most businesses share information. Often, through social media interaction new business partnerships have been formed.

Search Engine Optimization (Link building)

Imagine tons of link backs to your site on these online review sites. Your website would not only rank higher in Google, but it also receives more traffic from all these review sites. When searching a specific type of product or service, your reviews would populate the search results, thus driving prospective customers to your website. These review sites will greatly help online reputation management campaign by promoting your product or service on your first page of search engine results, pushing away any negative links or articles.

Boost Your Internet Marketing!!!

Reviews would also eventually become their own online marketing campaign and could redirect your competitors’ traffic to your site. First, if you have the highest rating for a certain product or service, consumers would be more likely to choose you over a competitor. Second, your customers would constantly be generating new content for you, making your company look current and fresh. Last, these reviews will act as mini-advertisements for you that will literally keep giving back to you as they constantly generate traffic to your site.

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