{"id":82564,"date":"2011-01-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-27T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/online-reputation-management-how-it-works\/"},"modified":"2011-01-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T22:00:00","slug":"online-reputation-management-how-it-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/online-reputation-management-how-it-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Online reputation management: how it works"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article was originally published in Dutch in 2011 and has been translated and updated in October 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

Online reputation management (ORM) is fast becoming an important branding tool for marketers, now that people spend so much more of their time on the internet. Branding is still a large part of traditional marketing, but with so much business now being done online, it is essential that we take branding to the next level as well. What is being said about you? How can you keep track of what people are saying about your organisation? How do you engage with your audience, and how can you influence your brand in a positive way? These are all questions that, as a marketer, you need to be able to answer today.<\/p>\n

What is online reputation management?<\/h2>\n

Online reputation management is the process of proactively monitoring and maintaining your brand, your organisation and your online identity. That also means you have to deal with negative feedback. Whether you sell a product or a service, or simply run a blog, you always need to take your online reputation into account. Through all kinds of new social media, people have gained access to distribution platforms where they can leave their (unvarnished) opinions. Here they can share the positive and negative experiences they have had with your product or service, online but certainly offline too, with the rest of the world. With online reputation management, you are ready to take advantage of these conversations and promote your brand.<\/p>\n

How do you approach online reputation management?<\/h2>\n

Online reputation management is a process. Around the time of writing, I published an article on content marketing in which I explained how you can convert better in four steps. The first step was listening, and that step comes back in ORM as well.<\/p>\n

1. Monitor<\/h3>\n

In online reputation management, you also start by listening. Monitor what is being said about your brand online. To keep track of everything, you can make use of social media monitoring tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Evaluate and assess<\/h3>\n

Now that you can see all sorts of things being said about your brand online, it is time to evaluate and assess the impact these conversations have on your brand. It is often impossible, and unnecessary, to respond to everything, so decide where your priorities lie.<\/p>\n

3. Respond and engage<\/h3>\n

Once you have decided what you do and do not want to respond to, it is time to take action. By taking part in both positive and negative conversations, you can engage with the customer.<\/p>\n

Make it structural<\/h2>\n

Online reputation management is an ongoing activity. Make sure ORM becomes a structural part of your organisation. If your organisation is not yet working on step 1, I can guarantee that you are missing out on opportunities.<\/p>\n

How do I start monitoring?<\/h2>\n

As I mentioned, there are various tools for monitoring your online reputation. For a quick start, you can begin with Google Alerts, which lets you set up notifications for specific keywords and receive an email whenever new results for those terms appear in Google Search. In 2011, when this article was first written, Alerts could be used to follow not only websites and blogs but also what was being said on Twitter, and Social Mention was a handy free monitoring tool. If you wanted a more professional approach at the time, you had to look at paid tools such as Radian6 or Buzzcapture. The market has changed a lot since then: Buzzcapture, for example, became part of Spotler, whose Engage product now continues under the name OBI4wan<\/a>. So check which tools are currently available before you choose one.<\/p>\n

Evaluate and assess<\/h2>\n

Receiving positive feedback is nice, but remember that you can learn the most from negative feedback. Use negative feedback to make your organisation better. You can then show that you take your customers seriously by letting them see that you genuinely act on their feedback. In this way, you can turn negativity into positivity.<\/p>\n

Respond and engage<\/h2>\n

You can turn negativity into positivity by responding to the conversations. Engage with customers by actively taking part in conversations, or by starting your own. Make sure you choose an honest and transparent approach. People appreciate it when you pay attention to them and join the discussion. Always be ready to take part in discussions. Once negative PR emerges, things can move quickly. So even if you are not active every day, you must be able to respond immediately when needed.<\/p>\n

Stay informed<\/h2>\n

By monitoring, you stay up to date with the latest developments around your organisation or brand. Use monitoring to gather customer insights and learn from them. The benefits you will get from this are more than worth the effort!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in Dutch in 2011 and has been translated and updated in October 2026. Online reputation management (ORM) is fast becoming an important branding tool for marketers, now that people spend so much more of their time on the internet. Branding is still a large part of traditional marketing, but with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":43842,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2877],"tags":[],"article-type":[],"trends":[],"class_list":["post-82564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82564"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-type?post=82564"},{"taxonomy":"trends","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/trends?post=82564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}