Your online reputation can make or break potential career or business opportunities and affect customer loyalty, trustworthiness, and overall success.

When people search for your name or company online, they form an opinion based on your content creation, social channels, customer reviews, and more. Not only do people view the internet as their first source of information, but they also trust what it tells them. More importantly, they make decisions based on what they find online.

• 59% of people trust search engines the most when researching a business. (Edelman Trust Barometer)
• About 90% of employers look at potential employees’ social media profiles, and 79% have rejected a candidate based on what they found. (The Manifest)
• 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses. (Bright Local)
  86% of risk managers and executives believe that reputational risks could result in potentially crippling business outcomes, such as loss of income. (Willis Towers Watson)

Looking at statistics like these, it’s clear that what happens online affects your entire life. Other people are creating your reputation for you. While it’s comforting to think you have significant sway over what others think of you, very little of your online reputation is under your control. In fact, your reputation is mostly determined by what strangers on the internet think and say about you when they find you online. However, there is a wide range of things you can do to influence how people feel about you or your business, including:

• Review monitoring
• Content marketing
• Being active on review sites
• Responding to customer feedback
• Paying attention to your social media management

These digital marketing efforts can improve retention and generate happy customers if done with a holistic approach that naturally improves your online reputation.