You’re busy building your brand and improving your online presence. You work hard to create a compelling social media profile, publish blogs, and a professional website to give your audience an amazing experience. But what does your audience think about your brand? What’s your online reputation score? Why does it even matter?
Your brand reputation is your most valuable asset. An online reputation score measures how a brand is perceived online. It determines your trust and authority with your audience, as well as your credibility and other factors. If you’re neglecting this factor, then it’s time to consider checking your reputation score seriously.
By monitoring and managing it, you can achieve the goal of building a successful brand. This article will dive deeper into reputation scores, their importance, how to improve them, and much more.
Your future success is directly proportional to reputation tour building right now. So keep reading.
What Is A Reputation Score?
A reputation score is a metric used to evaluate the trustworthiness or credibility of a company or an individual. It is based on various factors such as behavior, performance, and feedback from others. Where is it used?
It’s often in online communities, blogs, social media platforms, and business contexts. It helps in accessing reliability and competence.
Often, companies new to reputation management get confused about reputation scores. Reputation scores are numerical values that show the overall health of your online reputation. It’s not just a score from A to Z. It’s more than that, formulated by examining different elements of your online presence.
Let’s understand it better with an example.
Social media presence and online visibility of a company are unquantifiable measures. So, the ideal way to calculate them is through reputation management.
If you’re selling on an e-commerce platform like Amazon, your reputation depends on factors such as positive reviews, timeliness of your deliveries, and accuracy of your product description. If a large number of customers are happy with you, then your reputation score will be high.
High reputation score = You’re a trustworthy seller with a lot of satisfied customers.
Low reputation score = Issues With your product and overall service quality
Now, which seller would you prefer?
The one with a high rotation score.
Step-by-step Process To Calculate Reputation Score
Tracking reputation scores can be extremely difficult. If you don’t know anything about the process, then this is the perfect step-by-step guide. Follow this to calculate your reputation score.
Step 1: Measure All Metrics
The first thing you need to do is determine the key factors contributing to your reputation. You should first make a list of the metrics crucial in your specific context. Here are some of the metrics to consider.
- Customer reviews and ratings
- Quality of products or services
- Feedback from peers or colleagues
- Response time to queries or requests
- Compliance with regulations or standards
- Adherence to deadlines or commitments
- Frequency and severity of complaints or disputes
Step 2: Assign Weight To Metrics
Now that you know what metrics you need to consider, you can proceed to the next step. But do the metrics hold the same weight?
No.
That’s why you should assign weight to each metric based on its relative significance within your specific context.
Customer satisfaction might be deemed more critical than response time to queries. If you’re still confused, then you should consult stakeholders or conduct surveys to determine the relative importance of each metric.
Step 3: Collect And Organize Data
After identifying metrics, it’s time to collect the data. Gather all the data from different sources such as surveys, reviews, records, and assessments. Make sure to do sentiment analysis and figure out the overall sentiment concerning the brand. You can do sentiment analysis with the help of tools such as Luminoso.
Engage on social media and make your users feel connected to the brand. Use social listening and monitoring tools to track comments, tags, and mentions.
Step 4: Calculate Scores
Now, apply weights to normalized data and calculate a score for each metric. You should incorporate various methods to calculate it. The average score is computed across relevant data points for each metric.
Another method for this is scoring algorithms or models. Develop algorithms or models customized according to specific metrics to compute scores based on predefined criteria or thresholds.
Now, combine individual scores into an overall reputation score. For this, you should use simple summation and weighted aggregation.
In simple summation, individual scores for every metric are added. Meanwhile, in weighted aggregation, each metric score is multiplied by its assigned weight, helping to obtain a total reputation score.
Step 5: Make Updates Accordingly
Consider any additional factors or adjustments necessary to accurately reflect reputation. Make considerations and textual adjustments whenever needed.
But is that all?
No.
Update and monitor reputation scores regularly to reflect behavior, performance, or circumstances changes over time. This will help you develop a robust reputation scoring system.
What Factors Impact Reputation Score?
It is important to know the elements that shape your reputation score. Let’s examine some factors you should know about reputation scores.
Online Reviews
Your reputation begins with online reviews. A large number of positive reviews boosts your reputation score. According to stats, over 80% of customers check a brand’s online reviews before purchasing. But you might wonder what would happen if you have no reviews.
If you have zero reviews, there’s an 80% chance that customers will abandon their carts. You don’t want that to happen, right?
Then, you should provide better service to your customers. If there are five or more reviews, the chances of purchase increase by up to 270%.
The high number of reviews = Higher revenues
Listings
Often, brands ignore business listings, but listings have a major impact on your reputation score. A high star rating makes customers confident about the purchase. The key to success isn’t perfection; it is authenticity.
What if you see a brand that has a 5-star rating?
A perfect rating may seem too good to be true. That’s why your aim should be to achieve at least a 4-star rating. It allows customers to see an authentic yet positive view of your business.
Quality of Products or Services
If your service quality is good, your customers will automatically regard your brand highly. You should check customer service and know what type of issues customers are facing.
It indicates a high satisfaction rate among customers. Consistently delivering high-quality products and services is likely to result in a higher reputation score.
Social Media Presence
Social media presence is important for every brand. With the right approach, you can ensure that your social media contributes to improving your reputation score. According to statistics, 59% of the world’s population is using social media, and the number is increasing daily.
However, you should first do research. Analyze which platform your audience uses. Is it Instagram? Facebook? Or any other platform?
Create a social media strategy to enhance brand awareness and customer engagement. Don’t treat social media as a means to send promotional messages; instead, treat it as a space to build long-term relationships with customers.
Cyber Attacks
Cyber attacks are increasing daily. They have severe repercussions for a company’s reputation. Security breaches and data compromises can threaten sensitive information. They also erode customers’ trust and make them skeptical about the company.
Suppose a brand fails to protect systems and customers’ data, ruining its reputation. Transparency in dealing with these issues is important. Take proactive measures to rectify the situation and then prevent any future attacks.
How Can You Improve Your Reputation Score?
Improving your reputation score is a strategic approach. It’s an ongoing process that requires your effort. Here are some tips for improving your reputation score.
- Regularly monitor your online presence: Ignoring your social media accounts, search engine results, and reviews will do more harm than good. It is crucial to be aware of your brand’s online reputation.
- Make positive content: Make sure you publish positive content on online platforms. The goal is to improve your online presence and remove negative search results.
- Don’t blatantly ignore negative comments: Always respond to the negative reviews. Avoid being rude and react in a professional tone. Being respectful shows that you bake feedback from your customers.
- Partner with a reputation management company: You don’t have to do all the work alone. Many reputation management companies use tools to take your reputation score to the next level.
Why Do You Need a High Score in Reputation?
Now that you know about reputation scores, you might wonder why you need a high reputation score. Isn’t any score just fine as long as you’re getting customers?
The truth is NO.
Having a high customer score leads to positive visibility and customers. The scores aren’t just mere metrics; instead, they are values that tell you how you can improve your business. They make you stand out in the pool of competitors. It’s a major differentiator in the market. High reputation scores make people trust you, so they are more likely to purchase from you.
To Sum Up
The competition is becoming extremely fierce. That means to stand out, you need to have an exceptional online reputation. Your online reputation score includes reviews, listings, social media profiles, and much more. It impacts your search rankings and how potential customers view your brand.
A good reputation means better chances of building a business that wins your audience’s heart. With the right tools and resources, you can improve your online reputation, too. If you want to navigate this, then there’s someone who can help you.
It’s Luminoso.
With Luminoso, you can transform your online reputation and gain better insights into how your customers perceive you. Contact us now for more details.
