Management Summary
The paper is about the importance of online reputation management for start-ups. Why a start-up? Because a start-up is smaller than a small business and the smaller it is, the wider variety of tasks it will have to take on, and this creates a more challenging environment for them to handle ORM. Understanding how can an effective ORM change their business is quite good to consider once we learn the consequences of not having one.
Perhaps start-ups assume that they are still too small to attract critics and negative reviews and therefore they think they are on the safe immune side of facing reputation damage.
ORM should not be an option in general to anyone because no one can jeopardize his reputation, which is linked to his image, his actions and values and this affects our credibility in the society and the trust we try to establish with stakeholders. It is vital to know about what is said about us, to monitor our social media platform to address any negative feeling before it touches our reputation, and it is crucial to promote a positive image and get engaged with the audience. People rely on reputation before moving into any kind of relation, therefore reflecting the value of the brand is needed in this digital space. What we post and what is posted about us will affect our brand and such interactions with our audience.
The general first perception we provide is very important and what the employees say and do affect the company’s reputation and therefore the business itself. Building the reputation will require time and therefore the start-up can consider from the start this effort and do it in the right way. The reputation will be driven by the company behavior, and company behavior will be amplified by social media. Social media can be effective tools if well managed to prevent crisis and build a positive reputation even if they can cause a risk. No one owns his reputation but what is possible to do is to monitor it, build it, and repair it immediately once affected. Negative reviews rank high in search engines and therefore can be seeing very fast and having an effective ORM plan can prepare us to increase the good reviews, manage the bad ones and build a trustworthy brand and reputation.
It is known that one can’t please everyone and negative reviews are unavoidable. Knowing that mistakes are inevitable, our main goal is finding the ideal way to handle them. By handling reputation well, a start-up can leverage critiques into online reputation boosters. Our aim is to provide the best guidelines that can be applied by a start-up and therefore we have concluded with simple guidelines for start-ups to manage their reputation with the constraints they have. This is important for them because reputation damage on Social Media is an actual phenomenon and they should at least be prepared.
