How Online Reputation Management Has Replaced Traditional Public Relations?

Online Reputation Management Companies have popped up all around the world after the proliferation of all kinds of websites on the internet. Everyone wants to be at the top and they all want only positive information about themselves out there on the web. This is a new trend that did not exist before the advent of internet culture. Before this, only PR or Public Relations existed. They have been around for a very long time and it used to be the only way for brands to communicate with their target audience. A brand’s perceptions in the people’s eyes depended on how good they managed their public relations. But all of this was restricted to just conventional print and later to electronic media, events, and networking campaigns. It was always more relationship-based than technical.

Then came the Internet. It brought with it websites and search engines that cataloged these websites. The days of traditional PR were essentially non-existential. Now everyone was suddenly more focused on their online presence. How were they represented on the news websites, what kind of search results came up when their brand is looked up online and was their brand reaching its target audience, became the new concerns. With these new concerns came new challenges and Online Reputation Management became a way to tackle these challenges.

Today, ORM Services are essentially rescuers of brands that have tainted online reputations for whatever reasons. At the same time, ORM services have helped create great Online Reputations for newer brands which have helped them tremendously in getting new customers and ultimately sales. Although someone with experience in Online Reputation Management would always advise a brand, personal or organization, to believe in the fact that prevention is better than cure. The goal for ORM Service providers is first to try and avoid an unpleasant situation. Then they work at handling the said unpleasant situation if it still arises. Once that is achieved, they can work on elevating the already present reputation with smart strategies in a consistent manner.

Conventional PR would never have been able to deal with the challenges that came in the age of the internet. The lack of such a marketing and advertising service in the newfound world of the internet created a white space that was then filled by marketing via search engines, email, and social media. As these manners of marketing gained more and more momentum, people’s reliance on them increased too.

So as convenient and effective as these services might have been, they still posed a danger of falsely bad-mouthing an individual or a brand. That is why there arose a need of Online Reputation Management Services. These services have helped brands create a consistently good online image. Bloggers and review sites have replaced journalists. Twitter reviews by your average Joe have replaced reviews by experts. Times have changed drastically since then and ORM companies have moved with the times to allow everyone to present their brand in whatever way they want, unlike PR companies.