Online reputation management-Changing the consumer mindset

Online reputation management entails a transitional shift from the bad to the good. Let us understand from the perspective of the consumer how online reputation management (ORM) can affect his decision making process. A consumer who is searching for buying something online or wants to read a review before making a purchase at a nearby store will log on to the net and check for some information.

Quite reflexively, I must say, many latch onto Google or Yahoo to type in a few key terms or key phrases that give information about a product. A website gives only limited amount of reviews. So in order to make the most of information intake, the consumer goes to a search engine and puts the name of a particular brand, product or service to find relevant information in the form of reviews, blogs or forum sites. The consumer is most likely (84 percent to be on the safe side of percentages) to look at the first two pages of a search engine. Can you imagine, if the search engine results on the very first page gives not so flattering views and reviews about a product or service. The very first page of Google or such other search engine will have done the damage and the consumer will change his mind and go to some other product or service, mostly the one belonging to the competitor.

Online reputation management is an exercise to make sure such negative things about your product or service does not crop up in the first two search results pages of Google or any other search engine. While doing so, the online reputation management team uses the best optimization skills at their disposal to make sure that only good and positive information about your product or service appears in the first two pages of a search engine. Imagine if the same customer who uses the same key terms for a product or service finds relevant, useful, positive information about your product or service, what will his line of thought be? Will he go ahead and buy the product/service? Of course he will. Will he recommend about your product or service to others? Of course, he will. This proves that online reputation management is quite crucial for your business to grow exponentially and also to make sure that your business enjoys a substantial amount of goodwill in the market.