Dan Seavers — December 15, 2017 — December 15, 2017
What’s Your New Year’s Resolution?
If it isn’t to improve your business’s reputation, then you’ll join the 43% of executives who believe their online rep is important, but still don’t do anything about it.
Stop making excuses!
Wokandapix / Pixabay
Following our full online reputation management guide may be a marathon (and worth it), but these five simple steps will boost your brand fitness and get you ready for more.
1. Take Measurements
Before you can take action, you need to know where you stand now. And that falls down to the three As:
- Analyze
- Analyze
- Analyze
Take a look at all aspects of your business online. Google yourself and see what results come up (better still, look at your results in a variety of search engines). Read your reviews. And most importantly, invest in social media analytics to see what’s really being said about you online.
Only after you have that information, can you decide what elements need to be renewed and improved.
2. Cut the Flab
To keep control of your brand reputation without it taking over your entire life, you need to ensure you have a lean, keen, efficient social machine.
Now’s the time to look at what excess weight you’re carrying and cut it out.
- If you have multiple accounts on the same network, (e.g. Facebook, Twitter), take a look at which ones are working, and which ones aren’t. If they don’t cut it, cut them.
- Get rid of web pages that aren’t gathering traffic. Not only are they pointless for your business, but they could be detrimental to your SEO.
- Cut the posts that don’t work. Look at what posts your audience engages with. Echo the best ones that gain most interaction. Stop the ones that don’t.
3. Face Your Challenges and Fast
If you can’t get rid of something, you can at least minimise it.
Like your love handles. You’ll never get rid of them (or at least, I never will), but at least you can tone them up.
And the sooner you react, the sooner you’ll make a difference.
Look for the negativity online and face it.
- For smaller complaints, acknowledge them as soon as possible, then try to resolve them. Not only will it mean you’ll swap an unhappy customer for a happy one, but it’ll also demonstrate you’re a business that prides itself on customer service.
- For bigger negative issues, it’ll be worth counteracting with your own content. Brand awareness is about answering the questions your consumers have. Because if you don’t the internet will (and the internet is a scary place). Make sure the right information that you want your consumers to know is out there, like McDonald’s multimedia campaign to counteract the negativity surrounding their Chicken McNuggets.
4. Rely on Your Buddies
Sometimes you can’t do things alone. You need the motivation and support of your buddies to keep you going.
That’s where influencers come in. If you want to build your reputation, you want transparency. And to build transparency, you want trust.
Influencers have that trust by the bucket load. In fact, 92% would trust an influencer over a brand when making a purchasing decision.
So build your brand reputation by recruiting some relevant (note the emphasis) influencers, and getting them to share positive content about you.
Whether that’s brand endorsement, product placement or even making original content just for you, it’ll all help create a positive image of your business in consumers’ minds, and help drown out any negativity that may already exist.
There are more tips on how to source and recruit influencers in our influencer marketing guide.
5. Image is Everything
It’s very easy when looking at your brand reputation to focus on your name and forget about your image.
But your brand image is everything, especially when it comes to more visual elements of social media, like Pinterest and Instagram.
Your brand image is the most tangible part of your business, so use image recognition software in your search analytics to ensure it isn’t being copied or abused. The last thing you want is for it to be used in a detrimental way.
No Excuses.
Many businesses wait until they face a brand crisis before they think about online reputation management. The same way that some people won’t do anything about their health until they face their first heart attack.
But do you really want to wait for your brand to face something so devastating before you respond?
No.
Step up and take action today. Now’s your chance to build your brand reputation for 2018.
Business & Finance Articles on Business 2 Community
(84)
