ORM stands for Online Reputation Monitoring or Online
Reputation Management. ORM is the practice of consistent research
and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry
reputation as represented by the content across all types of online
media. (See wikipedia entry ORM started by VSONA, Inc.)
ORM is a relatively new industry but has been brought to the
forefront of professionals’ consciousness due to the overwhelming and
many times unpredictable nature of both professional journalistic and
user-generated content. The type of online content monitored spans
professional journalism sponsored by traditional news & media giants
as well as user-generated blogs, ratings and comments.
In the News – ORM in Action back to top
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“The Masses on Yelp Eat and Tell”, NY TImes.com, November 4, 2008.
According to this recent article Yelp has counted more than 4 million reviews written and over 15 million unique visitors to its site.
Read the full article here.
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“Online Reviews Decide the Fate of Companies”, BigMouthMedia.com, October 28, 2008.
According to a recent report published by Rubicon Consulting, Word of mouth aside, reviews on the internet are seen as most influential when deciding on a purchase. Read the full article here.
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“Businesses Turn Online To Online Reviews to Grow Clientele”, USA Today, May 20, 2008.
“Mike Dorausch is always on the lookout for new chiropractic clients in Los Angeles. "Online reviews is how people find us," Dorausch says. About 80% of his new business stems from customers finding online reviews about him and booking appointments, he says.” Read the full article here.
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“Using the Web to Draw in Crowds”, NY Times.com, May 21, 2008.
“Business owners are learning how to leverage Yelp in their sales efforts, Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with Forrester Research, said in an e-mail message that smart business owners would “get involved in Yelp, listening, responding and being an active part of the dialogue, some going so far as to place signs on their physical doors requesting reviews.” Read the full article here.
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“It’s not just a search engine, it’s a reputation engine”, from Lee Odden’s Top Rank Online Marketing Blog, November 12, 2008.
“Your brand influencers and those influenced by your brand live online; your customers, prospects, competitors, etc. What is being said about your brand online can have a huge impact both positive and negative, on your business.” Read the full article here.
What types of online media are monitored in ORM? back to top
Specifically, the online media that is monitored in ORM is:
- Traditional / mainstream websites
- Social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo)
- Social news / bookmarking sites
- Forums / discussion boards
- User-generated content (UGC)
- Blogs
- Microblogs (e.g. Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk)
- Tags
- Images
- Video
Why is my online reputation important? back to top
According to a recent survey in Pulse, the nation’s largest
magazine for doctors, 90% of physicians and hospital doctors stated
they were very concerned about people being able to rate and
comment about them online.
Online reputation monitoring services and technology will grow
by around 30% in 2008 in the UK, to an estimated value of 60 million pounds (approx. $107 million US)
dollars (source: E-consultancy, 2008). Although the market for this type of service is still relatively
small, there is an underlying current of concern by professionals and
businesses alike to understand and make sense of the positives and
pitfalls of your online reputation. The market for ORM is expected to
grow by over 600% in United States in the next 3 years.
Companies are striving to understand both the greater visibility
afforded by the Internet, which can offer tremendousgrowth benefits
but can also have potentially damaging long-term consequences for
their reputation.
Traditionally, companies have always had to monitor their online
reputation. However, the sheer quantity of information combined
with the increasingly diverse range of media channels means that it is
no longer feasible to monitor online reputation just manually.
What is the difference between Reactive and Proactive ORM? back to top
Reactive ORM defines many of the providers in the industry
today. Reactive ORM is essentially a service that monitors the
Internet as whole for your key words and sends you the results,
regardless of relevancy or importance or influence of the origin of
those keywords.
Proactive ORM is a new industry standard, where the provider
claims or reclaims your profile in the most relevant and influential
sites where the vast majority of traffic occurs, provides alerts and
analyzes those results to make further improvements and adjust your
profile accordingly.
Can’t I monitor my own online reputation? back to top
There are freely available tools online where you can search for
key words to discover bits of information about you and / or your
company. The most obvious example is Google’s Alerts tool.
Additionally, there are other free tools that focus on specific types of
media such as Technorati, with blogs and Yahoo! Pipes, with news
and blogs.
An individual or company must consider that while information is
easily gathered, you will then need to understand this information.
How does it compare to what else is being said about my
competition? How do the ratings on one site compare with all the
other sites?
The rise of social media means that companies desperately need to
understand the word-of-mouth conversations, ratings and comments
that permeate much of the Internet today. There are dozens, if not
literally hundreds of websites that currently (or potentially) have your
name and / or business name already in them.
In general, there are two facets of ORM: gathering the
information and understanding and learning from the information.
With the ever-increasing volumes of data to process from online
sources, the people-solution to ORM simply will not scale.
Technology, backed by top-notch service, easy to understand analysis
and clear next steps will prevail and propel the ORM industry
forward.
When considering to work on ORM yourself or using company
resources, one must consider the upkeep, effort and knowledge to do
so and whether or not this effort is worth the time and investment
required.
How does ORM affect my bottom line? back to top
- Improve customer satisfaction by gaining insights from
consumers about what is good and bad about their product or
services.
- Increase perceptions of brand by creating opportunities to
listen to and engage consumers.
- Gain insights about competitors and their customers’
perceptions about their products and services.
- Maintain shareholder value by mitigating risk by having ears
close to the ground where opinions about a business are being
formed and propagated.
- Engage in more effective PR by understanding who the real
influencers are.
- Gain understanding of the relationship between user--
generated content and traditional forms of online media, e.g.
news, print, etc.
- Provide early warning systems for reactive and defensive PR.
- Reduce marketing spend by learning how to reach out to
customers more cheaply.
- Reduce internal costs by employing services which save time
and effort.
- Help identify gaps for products and services which can be
developed for profitable niche markets.
- Gain insight into online networks and key phrases found in
user- generated content can aid attempts to bolster natural
search.
Is ORM right for my business? back to top
Whether a small business, sole proprietor, or International
Corporation, people understand that what is said, both positively and
negatively, about their personal and professional reputations matters.
Many monitoring companies target large, international
corporations, but not those businesses and medical practices on a tight
budget. Small businesses and professionals need to monitor their
online reputation just as much as the large companies – if not more
so.
What do I learn from the information gathered by ORM? back to top
In general, obtaining a one-time sample of information about you
or your business is easy. However, the challenge with ORM lies in
maintaining a sustained ORM campaign, alerting your self or your
company to new content and analyzing and learning from that
content.
A good ORM program will allow you to not only view actual
client or patient comments, gathered from a non-threatening,
unsolicited environment, but to also pick up on the trends, tastes, likes
and dislikes from actual consumers about your products and services.
ORM should provide you with in-depth, yet easy to understand
analysis of the most important content online. A quality ORM service
will focus on the online locations that matter – not just provide an
advanced “keyword” search.
Quality ORM will give you key insight into the unvarnished truth,
both positive and negative about your online reputation. With this
quantitative data you can obtain one of the most valuable assets a
company can have: what your patients, clients, customers think of you
and or your business and whether or not they like your products and
services.
Once you begin to understand these trends and data, key decisions
can be made to leave or enter new markets, enhance products or cease
to offer specific under-performing services.
Getting into the mind of your consumers can and should be very,
very valuable to you and your business.