Reputation Management: Why Online Reviews Are Needed and What is SERM

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Online reputation is influenced by any mention: advertising, social networks, media articles and, of course, reviews from customers, employees and partners. The better the image, the more people trust the organization and want to cooperate with it. In this article, we explain why customer reviews are so important and why SERM is needed.

What is SERM
When people choose products, they most often read information about it online. According to a study by the NAFI analytical center, 71% of buyers look at reviews before buying in an online store, and 81% of them completely trust what they read.

SERM is search engine reputation management. The main social media marketing service task is to ensure that users find more positive and a minimum of negative information online. To do this, the first places in the search engine are displayed for pages that the company can manage: a website, social networks, a blog, a section with reviews, and other resources.


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How to use SERM to improve your reputation
They analyze the organization's status on the Internet. Using key queries about the organization, they look at which sites are in the top 20 search engine results. The resources found are studied and the number of good, negative and neutral reviews is noted.
Develop a strategy. When it becomes clear what kind of information about the organization is more - positive, negative or neutral, they move on to creating a strategy. If the reputation is good, they try to maintain it and gradually improve it. If it is at a bad level, then the SEO specialist selects queries and looks for platforms for promotion. Then they place special publications there that help improve the brand image.
Monitoring search results. In order to find out how well the chosen strategy works, periodically look at search results for key queries and note progress.
Optimization of results. Building a positive reputation with SERM is a long process, and the first significant changes can be seen after 3 months. An Internet marketer or SEO specialist observes how search results have changed and how this has affected users' attitudes toward the organization: whether new positive reviews are written, and in what places are sites with negative information now located. If the situation has not changed, then they look for the reasons. Most likely, an error was made in selecting queries for promotion or the content was posted on the wrong sites.
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