Table Of Content
- What is an Online Reputation Score?
- Reinforcing Factors to Increase Your Online Reputation Score
- Why Does It Really Matter to Scale Your Reputation Score Up?
- How is Your Personal Reputation Score Calculated?
- What is The Ideal Reputation Score?
- Who Should Focus on Enhancing Their Online Reputation Score?
- What Are the Things That Hurt Your Reputation Score?
- Conclusion
Can you deny that nobody is watching you online? Even if you are an ordinary individual, people still stalk your Facebook profile to keep up with the things going on in your life, isn’t it?
Research states that 65% of customers trust search engine results the most. So, being a business owner or eminent individual it’s important to manage a decent online reputation score to make the best first impression on others.
A high reputation score dictates the strength of your online presence. So, the stronger it is the more difficult it becomes for others to crumble it.
Else, a single negative PR holds the power to tarnish your reputation within the blink of your eyes.
As billionaire Warren Buffett says, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Now, let’s dig a bit deeper into the realm of online reputation score to comprehend it in a detailed manner.
What is an Online Reputation Score?
The reputation score is the statistical number that helps to evaluate a person or brand’s reliability in the digital world. The higher your score is, the more trustworthy you will be. The reputation score ranges from 0 to 1000 points, where 1000 indicates the strongest.
This score is much like your credit score. The credit score evaluates the financial trustworthiness of a person whereas the reputation score determines the online trustworthiness of an individual or brand.
With the increasing number of consumers turning to Google to research a product before making the purchasing decision, your reputation score enables you to have an edge over your competitors.
The value of your reputation depends on multiple factors including the overall positive, negative and neutral presence on the web world. The overall performance of your brand on reviews, social platforms, surveys, and the number of visibility determines the range of score you hold.
Let’s move forward to check the determining factors to evaluate your online reputation score.
Increase Your Online Reputation Score: Reinforcing Factors to Check
The reputation score is not something that soars up overnight. You have to actively build your brand in order to escalate the score. The phase of striving for a decent net reputation score looks like the following,
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Draft a Plan to Get Rid of the Negativity
Any sort of negativity can quickly bring the downfall in your online reputation score. So, it’s important to craft a strategy that would help you restrain from all the negativity out there in the web world.
But, the online world is too delicate to handle.
Even a single comment can cause you trouble and hurt your reputation. So, a lot of eminent brand owners prefer to hand this intricate task over to online reputation management experts to avoid any sort of slip-ups. However, let’s take a look at how you will manage to get rid of the negativity on the internet,
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Avoid Lashing Out on Reviews
This is one of the crucial factors to implement if you want to restrain your brand from the negativity out there. The way you respond to reviews mostly determines the kind of digital footprint you have.
So, even if the customer is submitting misleading information or using strong abusive language, don’t lash out and reply in the same manner. Else you will lose your own respect too.
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Avoid Indulging in Trolls
After thorough research and analysis, we have found out that indulging in trolls brings in the most negative impact rather than avoiding it. Because troll doesn’t contain any genuine query of a customer.
So, it’s better to avoid indulging in trolls to save your reputation and prevent yourself from the negativity.
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Frequently Post Authenticate Updates
If your website or blog or whatever the source of prime information you own doesn’t contain any recent updates, then it opens the doorway for others to spread falsified information.
This is where the negativity begins. So, update your website or blog on a frequent basis to keep your audience up-to-date on the latest happenings.
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Amplify Your Professional Image
An unprofessional communication with your customers creates the worst first impression on you and your brand. Adding to this, if you calculate your online reputation score, an unprofessional behavior would give you a red flag. That means you won’t hold a decent score due to your unprofessionalism.
By professionalism, here we mean the language. As it’s the only and effective source of communication with your online consumers.
So, choose a language that sounds professional at first and then check for its grammatical & spelling errors. Let’s take a look at the best practices to amplify your professional image,
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Use Appropriate Language
The professional communications over the internetwork as a facet of your persona. The way you are replying to your customers or the way you treat your customer’s breaks or makes your professional image.
So, use appropriate language to make the best impression. For example, if the reviewer states a review like this,
Then, in this case, you can craft your responses like,
“We are extremely sorry that you have faced such experience. Our services strive for providing you the best experience. Kindly let us know which areas you found unsatisfactory so that we can improve our services in the future.”
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Use Professional Images
Any sort of content in the form of images, videos, text, etc., can be destructive to your online reputation score. The images connected to you should not look awkward. So, you can implement the best practices of google image removal in case you come across any sort of awkward images.
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Leverage The Power of Tools
The number of online activities occurring in a second is unimaginable. Hence, you can’t manage it on your own unless you leverage the power of reputation management tools.
Through these tools, you can understand the areas you are lacking, the kind of response you are generating, the type of your audience’s sentiments, etc. Henceforth, you can improve your service areas based on this which further drives a hike in your reputation score.
Let’s quickly have a look at the activities you can do to wield the utmost benefits of tools,
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Monitor Online Activities
There is no better approach to find out the accurate and real-time information about your brand than using a tool. Some of the tools like Brand24, Socialmention show you the exact information on your brand. So, you can monitor the activities and make changes accordingly to increase your online reputation score.
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Repair Your Online Reputation
A wretched reputation doesn’t only bring in a poor net reputation score, but also it damages your visibility. So, with the help of tools, you can repair your wretched reputation and increase the chances of ending up with a decent reputation score.
Why Does It Really Matter to Scale Your Reputation Score Up?
Irrespective of the type of business you hold, a majority of people have turned their searches online. And, depending on your web activity and presence, people will be making judgments about your brand and character.
So, what shows up in your reputation score discernibly matters as it plays the role of an online asset
When you implement the best practices to escalate your reputation score, it makes you capable to wield some of the benefits of a good online reputation score. Let’s take a look at the myriad benefits at a glance,
- In online searches, people can find you or your brand more easily.
- You can reach out to your potential customer without much bragging.
- People are likely to perceive you as more trustworthy than ever.
How is Your Personal Reputation Score Calculated?
As we have stated before, that online reputation score is evaluated based on the extent and quality of your online presence. Some of the sites like MyLife highly impact your net score. So, the information out there on these sites should be accurate and authoritative.
You can check out how to remove information from MyLife to wipe out redundant information from the site and improve your reputation score.
Let’s take a look at the determining factors of your overall online reputation score,
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Strong Social Media Management
A strong social media presence indicates a rise in your reputation score. The way you handle your social accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, determines the strength of your online persona. So, while calculating your net reputation score, this becomes one of the determining factors.
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Flattering Online Reviews
When people are extremely flattered by the kind of service you are providing and the review sites are filled with positive comments, good ratings – your reputation score is bound to increase. So, if you have gathered a number of positive reviews, then undoubtedly you will notice a hike in your reputation.
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Positive PR
If the media is talking about all the positive things about you, then definitely you don’t need to worry about your reputation score. It’s quite obvious that top-rated news channels who have acquired a huge number of influencers around the globe, hold the power to improve your reputation score even with a single post. As well, if you have negative reviews posted on a top PR site, it will surely damage your online reputation score.
What is The Ideal Reputation Score?
The data gathered from social media sites, reviews, surveys, and the number of website traffic determines the overall online reputation score of a brand or individual.
An ideal reputation score depends on the sites or tools you are using to analyze your reputation. But more or less in every tool, the higher the number is the stronger your reputation is and the lower the number goes, the lesser impact your reputation has.
For example: in MyLife, the reputation score counts between the scale of 0-5. So, if you have 4.3 on MyLife, it means you have a good score. Whereas in another site a score of 600 indicates a robust presence.
So, the ideal way to find out the strength of your reputation is to analyze your website’s visibility and rankings on Google. If you are ranking on the top of the brand-related search query, then you should not worry more.
Who Should Focus on Enhancing Their Online Reputation Score?
Oftentimes, a majority of people deny the need for an online reputation score. Even research says that over half of the small business owners have not yet realized the power of having a website.
But, a good reputation score is undoubtedly beneficial to all, be it an employee, customer, or college applicants.
Let’s dig a bit deeper,
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Students Who’re Applying to Prestigious College/University
Some of the prestigious colleges involve the scrutiny process where they check the candidate’s background. If you hold a poor reputation score, then you will lose the chances of getting enlisted in such universities.
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Business Owners
For business owners, reputation score plays a decisive role to make or break your online strength. So, it’s of prime importance for them to increase their reputation score.
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Job Seekers
Presently most of the employers or hiring managers screen the social media presence of a candidate to understand his or her persona. So, a decent reputation score enables you to have an edge over the competition.
What are the Things that Hurt your Reputation Score?
As we mentioned earlier that online reputation score determines the strength of your presence. But, there are some of the obstacles that slow down the hike in your score. Without being aware of these obstacles, you can’t help yourself to scale up the score, right? So, let’s take a look,
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Unprofessionalism
Unprofessional behavior can seriously hamper your reputation score. That is the reason why every online reputation builder expert advises you to respond professionally rather than hastily. Adding to this poor communication skills, another role player is poor grammar. So, make sure your word doesn’t become a meme due to major grammar issues.
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Criminal Activities
Any sort of criminal behavior is unacceptable from anyone to be its business owner, employer, employee, student, or so on. So, avoid posting or making comments that involve any sort of illegal behavior. Even if you avoid expressing your frustration explicitly but still there are tools that can perform in-depth scrutiny of your online presence. This can seriously damage your reputation score, so avoid indulging in such activities.
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Creating Violence
While you are applying for a job, it’s a notable fact for you that employers always prefer cultivating a safer environment for work. In most companies, there is a “zero-tolerance policy” which forces the employer to take an instant action in case someone felt bullied or violated. So, if you are looking for a job but have a poor score in your online reputation, then it can be destructive for your career growth.
Conclusion
So, undoubtedly we can say that online reputation score plays an important role in terms of deciding the strength of your online persona.
We have elaborated on all the steps and best practices to help you come out with the best possible score. So, implement the above-mentioned steps on your reputation management strategy and flaunt others with your reputation score. However, if you are unable to increase your reputation score, it’s always the best idea to consult with an online reputation repair expert.
If you have any sort of questions or queries, don’t mind dropping us your thoughts.