The AMBITIOUS approach to brand and reputation management

Last updated on July 4th, 2025 at 09:25 am

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about your brand and reputation management? Is it Trustpilot? Glassdoor? Google Reviews? Your social mentions? Maybe your media coverage?

When it comes to online reputation management (ORM), it’s all of these things and more. Whether you’re running a business or building a personal brand, how people see you online matters more than ever before.

But what exactly is online reputation management (ORM), what does it involve, and why is it so important? This article will break down the AMBITIOUS approach to online reputation management and show you how we can help you build, maintain and protect your digital presence.

What is online reputation management?

ORM is the process of monitoring and influencing how your business is perceived online, which is crucial for the success of your business. It’s a modern foundation of brand reputation management, because the vast majority of interactions, be it conversational or transactional, happen online now.

How you’re perceived online can have a significant impact on your ability to do business. A string of negative, unanswered Trustpilot reviews portrays a negative reputation and might lead prospective customers elsewhere.

A low Glassdoor score might sorely hamper your ability to recruit, or inactive social media platforms might hamper your ability to communicate your brand values and even gain meaningful customer feedback.

A good brand reputation counts for more than negative reviews and negative publicity.

Why positive brand reputation matters

It all comes down to trust, and trust is everything. 93% of consumers say online reviews influence their purchasing decisions, and those first impressions last. Did you know that after a bad first impression, it takes eight subsequent positive interactions to change one person’s negative opinion of you?

In an online setting, that can be a difficult thing to shake.

But the good news is we can help you take control of your online image and turn it into a powerful asset for your brand; this is how.

Rolling out a brand reputation management strategy

Monitor, listen, learn

Using tools like Google Alerts, Meltwater, Hootsuite or one of the many ‘social listening’ tools out there, it’s possible to track mentions of you and your brand across all manner of online entities.

From news outlets and social media platforms to review sites and forums such as Reddit, with the right tools and the right search parameters, we can find out the total of your online reputation in a relatively short and efficient period of time.

The monitoring period is also indeterminate. There could be a specific focused period, a product launch or a crisis period, for example.

Pro tip: treat negative and positive mentions as equally valid. Thank people for positive praise and as much as ‘negative’ feedback. Both are immensely valid for your operations and help you become a better business.

During these focused windows, your ORM and social listening would naturally be much more honed and focused. But we would always recommend that monitoring be treated as an ‘always-on’ activity.

This can be quite a time and resource-heavy challenge, which is why having an agency partner helps. Not only are they better equipped in terms of tool investment, but they also have the skills and the capacity to.

That’s where having an agency partner helps because we can pick up the weight of the day-to-day.

Creating great content

Great content is the best way to tell your story and showcase your expertise.

Think blog posts, videos, press releases, and social media updates that showcase your expertise and values. Content is EVERYTHING!

It doesn’t matter if you’re a fitness coach or a SaaS provider. Great content builds credibility and keeps people positively engaged with your brand. But we can make it even better.

When we combine content with wider PR and marketing strategies, we can work with you to plug all of those reputational gaps and bring up your reputation online, offline, with media, customer bases and beyond!

Engage with your tribe

Whether it’s a glowing review or constructive criticism, always respond professionally and promptly. Thank happy customers for their support and address complaints with empathy and proactive solutions.

Engage with the good stuff that’s great for the algorithm, and also great for the overall customer experience. It’s also a nice little dopamine hit for you, the business, to see that you’ve got a really happy customer. But the latter is particularly important.

An honest response to a negative experience will leave the individual feeling seen and heard. When handling negativity, the most important things you can do are:

• Stay calm, don’t get defensive and don’t push the issue back onto the customer

• Seek a resolution, but try and take it offline.
• Don’t retaliate. Communicate.

Sometimes it can be hard to hear someone’s negative experience, but you need this kind of feedback.

Be vigilant, timely and honest, particularly on social media, because this is the intersection between marketing and customer service. Your social comments and interactions, along with your online reviews, are some of the first things people see.

These are the impressions that can last.

Optimising for search engines (SEO)

Focus on creating fresh, positive content that ranks higher in search results. We’ll be honest, this has gotten a lot more complicated and competitive lately.

Constant updates to Google’s algorithms and the rise of AI have made SEO a lot more complicated. Traditional ranking factors are no longer enough to warrant a top place in the search. Instead, content providers need to demonstrate their quality and their worth, rather than their ability to place keywords and create entity associations.

Online content optimisation stretches far beyond your blogs and Google. It’s on YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn. It’s now a far more holistic ecosystem than it ever was.

As a result, what we’re seeing is a pivot to more purpose and experience-led content. Less of a focus on ‘high-scoring’ keyword-oriented content. Rather, content that supports experience, trust and knowledge and showcases an overall positive brand reputation.

We know this can sound like a lot to take in, but it need not be a cause for concern.

These are the kinds of strategies and tactics that we’re particularly adept at executing. We pride ourselves on having our fingers on the pulse of PR, content and SEO; we wouldn’t get very far if we didn’t.

We worry about these things, so you don’t have to!

Be prepared for crises

No one likes bad press, but it happens. The key is having plans in place should the worst happen.

What this looks like in real terms is:

• Have a clear communication chain in place; who needs to know what and when? Think of it like a communications triage system.
• Have clear responses primed and ready to go.
• Communicate with absolute transparency with stakeholders and shareholders.
• Remember that people value honesty and transparency above everything.

Crisis management is one of those scary terms that no one really wants to deal with. But you have to, you just do. You could put in so much work building a loyal customer base, only to have it fall away because of one mishandled issue.

The way we like to look at it is you’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it

That’s exactly the kind of approach we can build out for you. As a part of a press office function, we can incorporate issues management and crisis preparedness plans to ensure that if and when a problem hits, we’re all ready!

In summary

Online reputation management isn’t just damage control. It’s an opportunity to create lasting and meaningful relationships with your audiences.

In setting up a combined ORM and PR project, we would:

• Audit your current reputation: what’s already out there? Are there any red flags we need to address?
• Set up monitoring tools: real-time alerts ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
• Build positive content: blogs, videos, case studies, you name it! We’d flood the digital space with great stories about them or their brand.
• Engage daily: responding to comments and reviews consistently shows that they care about their audience’s feedback (good or bad).
• Address negativity head-on: no sweeping things under the rug here, transparency is key.
• Measure success: use analytics tools to track progress over time to ensure we’re moving in the right direction.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or cleaning up some bumps along the way, remember this golden rule: your reputation is yours to own, so make it count.

A positive brand reputation is the difference maker in business. Find out more about how we can develop your online reputation management strategy and work with you to cultivate a strong brand reputation, get in touch.