The Filipino Brands' Ultimate Guide to Online Reputation Management in 2024

The Filipino Brands’ Ultimate Guide to Online Reputation Management in 2024

By Joshua Pielago, Managing Partner - Lokal

Last updated July 1, 2024

The Filipino Brands’ Ultimate Guide to a Online Reputation Management in 2019
Over 60% of the Philippine market are active users of the internet as compared to the global average. Filipino companies are more exposed to online harassment and negative feedback to their reputation. With more and more Filipinos becoming heavily reliant on the internet to find products and services to use, it has even become more important for businesses to protect their online reputation and manage any online mention or feedback so that they can present their best to the world. 

Just like being armed for battle, sufficient knowledge, tools and experience are needed to tackle the most crucial aspect of every business—it’s image towards its own market. Here is a comprehensive guide on what you can do to get started in claiming your online reputation, and protecting your brand online.

First Step, Look Up Your Business Online

First Step, Look Up Your Business Online
Search engines gather information about your business from directory listings, to your website, social media accounts and reviews from customers. Behavior of customers have changed, and continues to change. Most of the online audience use search engines to shop online, plan for their next travel and do a product or service research which could benefit your company image and sales. 
Your future customers are looking up your business online, and so should you. Here are the questions you need to ask:
  • When you search your brand name (example, Jollibee), is your website, social media, or any other asset visible? Or is someone else actually showing up at #1? For your brand, your website should always appear #1. If you have a website and it does not show in the #1 rank or even in the first page, then you seriously need to consider basic SEO.
  • What other sites show up when you search your brand? Sometimes, malicious sites may appear alongside your brand in the search results and dissuade your customers from going to your site.
  • Is there any bad press, review, or negative tweet about you that appears in the first page? It might be too late for you to get started on your own then, and you may need to get an expert in reputation management to fix it for you.
First Step, Look Up Your Business Online
If you haven't yet, make sure to build a website, claim all your social media profiles, and build your online presence. Reputation Management starts with owning the different assets online about your brand and then managing the conversations around it. Make sure that you are in control of all the different avenues where people can damage your reputation.

1. Register and Claim Your Business

Register and Claim Your Business
A crucial part in building a good online reputation for your business is by registering your company on online business directories such as Google My Business, Bing, Yelp and Linkedin which help you build a professional online presence and get more traffic to your site. You may request for ownership of your Google My Business listing through these instructions. 

Yelp is also a great business directory platform that has about 34 million unique users. You can register on Yelp by signing as a business owner and providing your business details and then confirming your email. Yelp will take you to their page wherein you can claim your business through email or phone verification, then you can get started on promoting your business page by adding basic and eye-catching content to it.
Linkedin Company pages are also automatically generated by the platform whenever someone adds this as their workplace in their current position; what you can do to claim the page is to make sure you add and confirm the email address you used to create the page and enlist your current position with the company name. Once completed, you can select from the menu and claim your page or add yourself as admin to the existing page generated by Linkedin.

2. Start Listening to Your Customers, and Monitoring Your Site

Now that you have your business set up in the right channels, it’s time back it up by keeping a keen eye on website and social media traffic, insights and reviews. This are normally built-in your site, so you’ll see unique visitors who have visited your site and inquiries or comments on your blog and social media posts. It’s good to monitor and moderate customer actions on a daily basis, 24/7, so you can reach out to your customer immediately and maintain a good response rate on online which invites more customers to your account.

A free and easy way to monitor your brand online is by using Google Alerts. Setting up Google Alerts for certain keywords allows you to monitor what type of sites are talking about your brand, where is your brand getting mentioned, and where you can improve. 
Start Listening to Your Customers, and Monitoring Your Site
Here are the steps for you to set this up:
  1. Create a Product Intermission or a Product Document that outlines the name of your product, the features unique to your product, and your compelling pitch.
  2. In Google Adwords, create a campaign and add as keyword all the different terms you know people search for in looking for a solution like your product
  3. Create Ads on Google AdWords based on your Product Intermission
  4. Run your Ad for at least a week
  5. Collect your data and Analyze

3. Ditch Fake Reviews and Followers

Ditch Fake Reviews and Followers
Some businesses might take shortcuts and grow their followers and make up their own reviews online. The bad news is, your customers will definitely tell if its true or fake and it can turn off some customers. Producing fake followers will also not help you rank well on search engines also. 

4. Enhance Company Values To Fit Online Market

Enhance Company Values To Fit Online Market
Get potential clients and workers that match your business’ vision by incorporating company values into your profile, posts and other content. This will help you hire the right talent and inspire clients along the way.
Enhance Company Values To Fit Online Market

5. Establish Your Expertise

Establish Your Expertise
A well-defined way of showcasing your expertise online is getting reviews from previous clients you’ve worked with given their permission and offering free webinars and courses that let your audience learn more about your products and services and teach them a new skill related to your field of expertise. A lot of businesses have their own channel on YouTube that contains quality video that is short, creative, professional and pretty much sums up their products and services and it is mostly retained in the minds of customers because 80% of the audience are visual learners. Video marketers also get 66% qualified leads.

6. Increase Positive Response

Post inspiring content that will help build up your customers. They could be leadership quotes, a good report on the industry your working for and tips to better investments. Don’t settle for anything less than the best and most accurate info you can find.
Increase Positive Response

7. Respond With A Quick Professional Response to Negative Feedbacks

Respond With A Quick Professional Response to Negative Feedbacks
It’s good to keep your integrity as a business owner or manager by responding to negative feedbacks in a professional manner. Keeping your responses short and helpful to the customer is also the best way to manage a negative feedbacks. Remember not get emotional about it, as it can steer up conflict. 

8. Filter Spam and other Irrelevant Content

Filter Spam and other Irrelevant Content
A really good way to manage spam comments or unruly and sometimes out-of-context reviews is to learn how to moderate customer reactions online through built-in audience response features in your site builder. Wordpress allows you to filter comments by clicking accept or ignore comments. The case is different with social media platforms, because you can only delete, mark as spam, report or block comments with the validation of the developer. 

Other companies though, opt to switch off commenting like in YouTube channels, which might be annoying for some of your followers online because they’re forced to hold in something positive and inviting they want to share. 
Filter Spam and other Irrelevant Content

9. Build a Community of Influencers

Build a Community of Influencers
When the concern of one customer seems to be a hot issue online, you’ll need back up, and that's where a community of influencers who believe in your brand come in. They’re main goal is not counterattacking what the person or group initiating negative reviews, but their role is tranquilizing the bad reviews, with good insights about your brand. Sure, this may take some time, but investing in the welfare of your customers definitely brings out the best influence for your brand online.

Responding positively to negative comments may not totally convince some customers who’ve had a bad experience in previous undertakings whether from your company or outside, but it reveals how much the company values its integrity and would not let any sort of offense break what it stands for. 
We do hope this resource will help you build, grow and maintain your online reputation as a credible business. If you have comments or questions, feel free to drop a line below and we’ll be happy to assist you in the best ways we can.

10. Encourage Visual Feedback

About 65% of people are visual learners, according to Forbes. Make your storytelling such as customer testimonials and feedback visual through short videos. Take advantage of how large your potential market reach would be using social media platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube. Through visuals, your market gets a feel of your product, enticing them to experience it themselves. With your product and brand visually distributed among platforms, the higher the chance of recognition.

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