Leveraging Social Media For Online Reputation Management
One of the main pillars of successful Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the strategy of pushing down negative search results through creating new content. A potent but sometimes overlooked method of building this pillar is through the leveraging of social media platforms.
To better illustrate this: If you search for your name or brand in Google and negative sites or links appear on the top of search results, a method is needed to push those negative sites down to where most people will never see them. In ORM we create positive sites which will, over time, climb to the top of the rankings and populate those top results instead.
Creating Content to Push down Negative Results
Often reputation management firms aim to accomplish this through creating new blog sites, press releases, and other online properties. Using these types of websites can be effective, and should be pursued for a client.
The problem is that Google will see newly created websites as “unimportant”. New blog sites and over time press releases can be categorized by Google in this way, and will be relegated to obscurity (the bottom of search results) unless they become better known and “important.”
Social Media Pages Have a Head-Start
A simple way to create online content that will rank higher in Google’s search results quicky is through leveraging social media platforms. This includes sites such as:
- Youtube
- Medium
Pages or profiles created on established and popular platforms such as these are seen by Google as important and more credible than a newly created blog site or similarly unestablished website.
If you create your own page or profile on one of these platforms, your page will inherit some of this “importance” and credibility from the platform. By creating a page representing yourself or your brand on one of these social media platforms, you are in effect giving your page a head start in ranking in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Half the Battle
Creating pages on the different social media platforms alone probably won’t be enough to achieve the results you are looking for. In order to get your pages to start climbing to the top of search results, it will take some work and consistency. Here are some tasks that will need to be performed regularly to get results:
- Update each page or profile with a new posting at least once every two weeks. The more often the better.
- Flush out your profile or page with complete and thorough information, to include keywords that people may use to search for you or your brand using Google.
- On each platform, create links in your profile that go to your other social media pages.
- Expand your network: grow your number of followers or friends.
- Find non-social media websites to link to your newly created profiles. This could include your business’s website, a Wikipedia page, or other websites.
- Content: If a given platform (such as Medium.com) allows you to create long-form posts or articles, try to create posts that are at least 500 words, this will increase its “importance” to Google.
Consistency and Long-Term Online Reputation Management
Unless there is not much else out there on the internet mentioning your name or your brand, it will take a lot of work and consistency to get your social media pages to rank high in Google’s search results. Posting often and regularly will be very important.
However, by leveraging social media, your pages which portray you in a positive light can rank more quickly than other types of sites. This will have the desired effect of pushing down and burying those slanderous and inaccurate websites that may be occupying the top of Google’s search results right now.
For your ORM problem, you might be considering if you should do it yourself or get professional help. If your problem consists of only a few negative reviews or mentions, you may be able to handle the situation yourself. But if your problem is larger, you may want to consider hiring professional help.
An online reputation management firm such as The Avita Group can handle this process for you. The Avita Group will combine the use of social media with other effective strategies to help recover your online reputation.
The Avita Group is based in Southern California and helps clients with reputation management services nationally. The Avita Group also focuses on Los Angeles reputation management and Ventura reputation management. With over 15 years of experience and industry knowledge in online reputation management and digital marketing, The Avita Group is ready to provide you with your solution.