Online Reputation Management: Do it Yourself or Get Professional Help?

Online Reputation Management firm

Do you need to revamp or protect your online reputation?

If the answer is yes, there are two ways to go about it: do it yourself, or find online reputation management experts for your online reputation management (ORM) situation.

Which method is best will depend on your reputation situation and the time and energy you are able to dedicate.

When to do Online Reputation Management by yourself

Doing it yourself is the right approach if:

  • You can carve out time each day to perform necessary work.
  • Required content writing can be written well and you can do this on a regular basis.
  • You are able and willing to learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This field is changing constantly, so you will need to be continually learning.
  • Are digitally savvy.
  • Are attempting to fix a relatively small reputation problem, such as some bad comments or unwanted images appearing on social networks.

The strategy for managing you or your brand’s online reputation is to send down or bury negative content visible on the first page of search results, so that the damaging content is not visible to most people. To accomplish this, you need to do five things:

  • Assess the status of your online reputation: Find out how the public sees you online. Google several variants of your name, business, or brand, including your name together with your location or occupation. The results on top in the search results effectively define your online reputation.
  • Constantly scan the internet to quickly address new reputation threats as they emerge: You can use social monitoring tools such as Google Alerts, for example, to notify you when your name appears in any comments, reviews, news or blog articles, or social media posts.
  • Diminish the consequences of content that makes you look bad: do this by removing harmful content (if applicable), and flooding the internet and search results with positive content.
  • Understand when to respond to negative information being created about you. Sometimes responding to damaging comments or posts will only serve to draw fresh attention from Google back to the destructive post or page. This may send the unwanted content back up to the top of search result pages.
  • Create a strong online presence that represents the way you want to be seen: An effective way to push down negative search results is to create and publish content which Google attaches importance to. This means building web properties such as social media profiles and active blog sites well optimized for SEO.

Undertaking ORM yourself is a great way to save money. However, these savings are often made at the expense of valuable free time or other obligations. Achieving the results you want may be a challenging and lengthy process.

When to hire an ORM Company

Consider seeking professional help if:

  • There is insufficient time on your schedule to do the work involved
  • It involves a high-profile business or individual
  • You have little or no knowledge of SEO or digital skill sets
  • You are not a capable writer
  • You cannot promise to write blog articles and create content regularly
  • You are under reputational attack.
  • You do not already have a significant amount of content online representing your name or brand

The difference is that a reputation management firm such as The Avita Group has a team of capable professionals who do all the work for you and will guide you through the process. We know what works and what doesn’t work through our cooperation with other clients and years of industry experience. If you do decide to hire a firm, take the necessary steps to make sure your online reputation services firm is working for you.

Engaging a company or agency to perform online reputation management also means that you have access to:

  • Experienced professionals with years of practical experience and knowledge of cutting-edge industry trends.
  • Devoted customer support that can help answer your questions and concerns, and guide you throughout the reputation management process.
  • Engineered solutions specifically developed to improve your online presence and image.
  • Resources, from monitoring for your brand, to helping protect privacy, link building, creating and publishing content, review management, and SEO.
  • Looking for tips or guidance on your online reputation issues? Set up a free ORM consultation. Let’s take control of your reputation problems.

The process for helping each client starts by conducting a layered reputation audit to build a clear understanding of the breadth and severity of the customer’s reputation problem.

This enables us to create a custom strategy that includes how much content to publish, what kind of content to make, where to publish it, and how to do it and through what platforms.

At the Avita Group we will develop an expert strategy to monitor each customer’s online reputation in order to be proactive within the changing digital landscape, to help you respond to new problems as they emerge and to provide analysis to keep you aware of how your reputation has changed over time.

With all of this put together, we will help you achieve online reputation management success.