5 Best Practices for Brand Reputation Management

By Scott Conlon

May 9, 2022 Solutions

Brand reputation is the mark of your business’s credibility and authority. People prefer popular brands because buying from a well-known brand gives them peace of mind regarding quality and price.

That’s why reputation management should be an important process for your business in today’s highly competitive marketplace.

In this guide, we’ll outline some foolproof ways to manage your brand’s online image.

5 Best Practices for Reputation Management

Here are some best practices for reputation management. Follow these tips if you want to present your brand in a way that attracts and keeps new customers.

#1) Monitor what people say about your brand.

Monitor your public reputation proactively and regularly across various channels, including blogs, social media, and review sites.

You can use tools like Sprout Social or Mention that make it easy to keep an ear on what people are saying about your brand. Using these tools, you can view user-generated content and process it to see whether something good or bad is being said that is affecting your brand reputation. Accordingly, you can take actions to fix and improve your brand’s image.

Answering people's questions, reviews, and feedback is an important part of brand reputation. But sometimes, it's better to not say anything at all. Good online reputation management is about knowing whether to reach out and, if so, how and when.

#2) Focus on the customer experience.

Eight percent of customers feel more emotionally connected to a business when customer service solves their problem. Consumers value helpful and empathetic agents who provide quick resolutions to their issues. That's why improving customer experience should be at the core of your reputation management strategy.

In fact, customer experience has become one of the most important variables influencing consumers' buying decisions.

To deliver an exceptional customer experience:

First, respond as quickly as possible. Customers are impatient!
Offer personalized customer service. It’s not possible to remember customer names and previous conversations. So, make a note or keep a record of previous discussions.
Listen to customers patiently.

#3) Tackle negative reviews quickly.

Even if you offer the world’s best products or services paired with amazing customer support, you should still expect negative reviews. Everyone has their own perspective -- and that’s fine.

But, make sure you answer any negative reviews in the shortest possible time. Statistics show that just one negative review can detour nearly 22% of local customers. The number increases with a growing number negative reviews, so it’s best to handle negative reviews as soon as possible.

Reach out to unhappy customers with an apology and solution.
Invite them to connect with you personally to resolve the issue.
Offer a refund and/or compensation to turn unhappy customers into happy ones.

If nothing works, bury the negative review once and for all by getting a lot of positive reviews.

#4) Grow your content marketing efforts.

Content marketing is all about controlling your brand's story through social media posts, blogs, videos, and other forms of content. The good news is, it's fully under your rule. You can shape it the way you want.

As you create content, make sure you pay attention to the following three essential components of good-quality content.

Relevancy: Your content should align with your business goals and customers' needs. It should answer people’s questions, resolve their problems, and address their pain points.
Consistency: This is an often overlooked area of content marketing. If you want to strengthen your brand recognition, keep your content consistent in style, writing, tone, and voice so your content can best reflect your brand personality.
Quality: Add value to your content by utilizing original research, adding links, and highlighting reviews from satisfied customers. Mix up different forms of content, including text, videos, infographics, polls, etc.

#5) Strengthen your social media brand reputation.

Nearly 54% of people research products on social media. More than 79% of people say that user reviews on social media influences their buying decisions.

These are just a couple of numbers showing the importance of your social media brand reputation. This includes posting and monitoring strategies across various social media channels and engaging consumers who talk about your brand.

Follow these tips to manage your brand reputation on social media:

Post relevant and actionable content.
Practice social listening.
Focus on increasing positive reviews, not followers and likes.
Share your best reviews on social media.

Remember: Reputation Management Isn’t a One-Time Tactic

Reputation management is important and should be an ongoing initiative. There is a huge digital ground you have to cover. Customers share their experience on review sites, directories, and local listings, in addition to social media and your website. So, keep an ear on all talks on every platform.

Finally, don’t hesitate to ask for help. MyArea Network can help establish and grow your brand into a powerful one. In addition, we can create solid reputation management strategies fully customized to your unique brand personality.

With an effective strategy in place, you can drive engagement with your followers and fans, developing lasting relationships with your customer.

Let’s discuss your project now. Contact us to see how we can help build and protect your brand reputation.

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