What Is Digital Reputation And How To Manage It [GUIDE 2024]

Read the new ReputationUP guide and find out what the digital reputation of a person or a company is, how to manage it, to avoid a crisis.

What is digital reputation

Digital reputation is the perception that others have of your or your brand. 

The online reputation of a company or service is built thanks to the experience of the user, and therefore it may or may not affect the purchase decision. 

A bad digital reputation can influence not only your company, brand or service, but also in the worst case, your friendships, family and close circle.  

Therefore, digital reputation management assumes its significant value for business success. 

A study by the World Economic Forum estimated that reputation accounts for more than 25% of a company’s market value.

Identity and digital reputation 

To get to this step, it is necessary to know what digital identity is. 

Digital identity is based on all the information that people find about you throughout the web.  

For this reason, these two concepts go hand in hand, since your digital reputation depends on the identity that you establish. 

How to improve your digital reputation

As previously mentioned, digital reputation is of utmost importance. 

It is not built just by you or your brand, but most of it is built by outsiders, that is, the online consumers. 

Building a good corporate image can take years even, while a negative image can happen at the speed of light. 

Therefore, a bad image can notably affect your brand in the business sector and its financial reputation.  

When faced with a crisis management, we advise you to take into account:

• Know your audience: find your name or that of your business on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. 

There you will find all the information, it can be comments on social media, forums, and so on;  

•  Monitor: social networks are the main source of opinions, you will be able to know if you have a positive image and how it evolves

Being aware of these platforms allows you to prevent potential reputational crises.

• Define a strategy. The next step after analysing the search engines and social networks, is to draw up an action plan; 
• Create content: improving the SEO positioning with positive content or positive reviews is a fundamental strategy for a good reputation on the web. 

To achieve this, you must have professionals such as ReputationUP, which removes any negative content on the Web and protects the online reputation of companies, entrepreneurs, etc.  

How to take care of our digital reputation 

On the internet the exact same thing happens, the only difference is that it never forgets. 

An example can be a bad experience or action that you have had in your past, and that affects your present work or personal life. 

That is why you must bear in mind that you can exercise the Right to be Forgotten. 

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) states that: 

“The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay”.

A respectable digital reputation is not only evident in the present, but in the acts of the past, therefore taking care of it is a priority.  

There are different ways to take care of it: 

• The most effective way to have a good digital reputation, is to lean on experts.

Andrea Baggio, CEO of ReputationUP Europe, affirms that:

“Your brand is at risk of losing 22% of its income if the potential customers find just one negative link on the first Google page”. 

• Checking the reputation of your phone number has become an important factor in digital reputation. 

• Maintaining good content generates a relationship of trust with the user, for this reason it is best to use official sources, data, statistics, etc; 
• Respond as soon as possible to negative comments from a user regarding your product or service, in order to solve any situation. 

• Having a plan helps that reputation management to meet the objectives set.  

• Improving your reputation on social networks is a primary process, since most users use them to generate reviews.

How to assess the digital reputation of a candidate 

Assessing a candidate’s digital reputation requires two main points: 

• What does Google say about the candidate?
• What do users on social networks think?

Let’s go through both of them, step by step.

What does Google say about the candidate? 

We start from the most visited search engine in the world, in order to know not only the information, but also its positioning in the search engine. 

We can learn a lot about a candidate in the top positionings in Google. 

Digital reputation is measured by the type of information that is reproduced on the web.

When it is bad, it can not only affect an electoral campaign, it can also do it on a personal and family level.

One of the consequences of being a publicly recognised figure, is that you can be a victim of online defamation. 

If a person was defamed a hundred years ago, they ran the risk that the news could reach different places. Whereas in this digital era it takes just a few minutes to spread information globally. 

A clear example is that of the Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, who is in the media spotlight due to the leaking of several private videos, at a party with friends.

Thus, the importance of taking care of one’s image on the internet is part of one of the first steps when it comes to winning an electoral campaign. 

What do social network users think?

Without a doubt, social networks can contribute to a good reputation, or on the contrary, destroy your political career. 

An example of this is the case study of Iván Duque, who despite not being a candidate, saw his digital reputation significantly affected after the implementation of the tax reform.  

Being successful on social media does not guarantee a 100% winning outcome, but it can help to estimate the results. 

It can even persuade opinions, make the candidate lose followers and votes.

The statistics show the percentage of people’s opinion regarding the importance of social networks in politics in the European Union in 2018.  

About 60% of European population participating in the study fully agreed that social networks can get people interested in political issues. 

How to make a digital reputation plan

Carrying out a digital reputation plan requires time and dedication, but above all, professionalism. 

Hence the importance of having specialists like ReputationUP.

A trained team is the first step to digital success.

It deals with all the phases of online reputation management: cleaning, monitoring, protection and improvement.

A good reputation plan is handled in the following order:

• Clean up online reputation: it begins with eliminating any defamatory content from the entire network;
• Reputation monitoring: through the ReputationUP software, you can control what is said about you or your brand on the web; 
• Reputation improvement: the aim is to create content that gives strength to your brand, meaning positive and official content to generate traffic and be in the top positions of Google.  

The digital reputation of a company generates the trust of network users. 

In other words, if a company has a bad reputation, it risks losing sales and even going bankrupt. 

You just have to put yourself in the position of a future customer. The first thing you do before buying anything is checking what people think of the product or service.  

Thus, you go to Google and if it has a negative review, it is likely that it generates little reliability and you decide not to buy it.  

How many negative reviews does the customer need to decide not to purchase that product or service? 

Companies risk losing up to 22% of customers because they are not willing to buy a product if they find a negative review on Google’s first page. 

If three negative reviews appear in a search query, the potential for customer loss increases to 59,2%. 

How to manage a brand’s digital reputation from the start

Corporate identity is the beginning of digital reputation, working on the brand image is the first step for network users to identify you. 

The mission, vision and values are the basic philosophy of corporate reputation. 

Once the identity is known, the next step is the management of the digital reputation. 

We know that reputation comes from third parties, that is, from what others say about us or our brand.

So basically, digital reputation management is knowing how the public relates to your product or service and making a strategy. 

A good management plan has three important steps: listening, chatting and measuring. 

• Listening: who is talking about my brand, why and on what platforms. 

• Chat: is the planning stage of the web presence.

That is, chatting does not only mean a synchronous interaction, it also means asynchronous, namely articles of interests, blogs, etc.

Social networks are the main door to digital traffic, they generate interrelation through the opinions of users. 

Which means that any person can talk about our brand, consequently, constant monitoring must be carried out to know the activity on digital platforms. 

• Monitoring: once the management plan has been implemented, one might think that the digital reputation work has been completed.

ReputationUP monitors in real time what is said online about your personal brand or your company, calculates the sentiment of conversations and intercepts any reputational crisis.

Ballantine’s

This case shows that the new way of promoting under influencers can significantly damage your reputation. 

This famous brand announced that it would be the sponsor of “Los 40 Principales”, a show in Spain, in December. 

It was all good, until a famous youtuber, faced with questions from the public about who could get tickets to the event, responded chaotically. 

He claimed that they would only be given to real artists, which caused great commotion.

What did Ballantine’s do? A smart reputation strategy, introducing inclusion into the campaign.

They created the hashtag #ElQueValeVale for social media. This method reflected an effective advertising strategy, successfully leading the event.  

AirEuropa 

With the previous example, we can see that exclusion is punished by users of social networks. 

This is the case of Mara Zabala, who reported on her twitter account the reasons why she was not allowed to enter the plane. 

An event that generated a great reputational crisis for the airline, attacks by users on all social networks, decreasing its sales and even generating the cancellation of tickets already purchased. 

AirEuropa’s response? The company only presented itself with an emoji, without an explanation on what happened.

Mismanagement is evident in the face of the digital reputation crisis. 

Although it was an event that occurred in 2013, it is still talked about on social media. 

KitchenAid

In this case, the company did not cause a stir with advertising, but its community managed did.

What happened? The person in charge of the company’s social networks published, by mistake, a personal political opinion, thinking that it was their own personal account. 

“Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president #nbcpolitics.”

Despite the fact that this post was removed after a few seconds, it has been present online over the years.

This mistake produced a reputational crisis for KitchenAid, despite the community manager’s apology.  

“Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion #nbcpolitics”.

Faced with this reputational crisis, the brand had no choice but to respond in such a way as to make it clear that said comments had nothing to do with them.

To overcome any type of reputational crisis, it is very important to have a strategic plan, to know what to do, when and where.

One of the reasons why a brand may have a bad reputation, is the existence of negative reviews. 

How to have a good digital reputation 

Having a good digital reputation is the secret to success of any company or business. 

For this reason, knowing how to act in a moment of crisis, is a task that requires intelligence and tact.

Therefore, you must work on it every day.

We give you five tips that we consider a priority so that you can enjoy a good digital reputation. 

• Being careful of your website content not only means that you follow the steps for an impeccable SEO, but also that you update those who follow you;  
• Use several information channels: this will help you increase the trustworthiness of your brand;
• Measure your reputation: it is important that you know what people think of your service or product;
• Delete or deindex Google any url that could harm you: this is a process that can only be in the hands of professionals like ReputationUP;
• Monitor the networks and the website in general, with the aim of responding in time in a moment of crisis.

Consequences of having a bad digital reputation

There are many factors that risk the digital reputation of a company. 

If we take the path of a bad reputation for reasons external to the company such as identity theft, the National Crime Agency (NCA) finds that: 

“The impact of fraud and related offences such as market abuse and counterfeiting, can be devastating,”

Which can generate confusion for the users of the original websites, getting their identity and personal data stolen in exchange for financial gain. 

This can cause a financial crisis, due to possible loss of customers and sales, for fear of being scammed. 

As we have mentioned throughout the article, social networks are a tool that can help achieve fame and success, but also rejection and complaints. 

For this reason, its misuse can lead to a brand failure. 

A consequence of this is that the negative reviews of your product or service from different users can generate a bad reputation and significantly lower your sales.  

If there is a bad review on the search engine, you lose credibility. 

If you don’t generate trustworthiness, then you will lose potential clients and, sadly, those who have already been loyal. 

Digital reputational crisis 

Faced with a digital reputational crisis, we must be a step ahead, meaning that we need to know what to do in the face of any negative review or action that can harm us.

In order to manage it in the best way possible, you can count on professionals like ReputationUP, since it has all the methods for improving digital reputation. 

To achieve this, it takes the following steps: 

• Perform a reputational risk analysis: to find out about the risks associated with personal and business initiatives in advance. 

How does it work? The ReputationUP Monitoring Tool measures, on a scale of 1 to a 100, your current or future reputational risk in relation to a personal or business initiative. 

• Develop a plan: always think about the best strategy so that you do not lose customers or sales.

• Create content: with the aim that the negative comments are not relevant, just the positive ones;
• Remove harmful content: in many cases, there are negative reviews that can bankrupt your business or create a major libel problem; 
• Monitor the web: by using software ReputationUP can analyse keywords, hashtags, social networks, competitors, influencers and buyers linked to your name or brand. 

Conclusions 

Through this article, we have learned what digital reputation is, and its importance. Therefore, we can conclude that: 

• Digital reputation is the perception that others have of you or your brand; 
• A good management assumes significant value for a company to be successful;
• Building a good corporate image can take years, while a negative image can be produced at the speed of light; 
• Social networks can contribute to a good reputation or on the contrary, destroy it;
• The digital reputation of a company causes the users to trust it.  

ReputationUP has all the tools necessary to improve your digital reputation.