The reputation of a brand is indisputably a huge asset for any business house. At the same time managing the online reputation can be tedious and time-consuming and calling for special expertise.
We are today living in a world where 90 percent of consumers are influenced by online reviews and ignore brands that have a bad review. It’s, therefore, imperative that the online reputation of your brand remains positive at all times.
Despite best efforts and well-conceived precautionary measures, all brands face reputation problems from time to time. Brands must learn to meet successfully those challenges and protect and preserve its online reputation.
The stock market baron Warren Buffet had once said that he will be more tolerant towards employees when losing a sale but ruthless when losing the company reputation.
Reputation is not merely how other people perceive a brand. It’s also about what the brand is seen to do — how it interacts with consumers, the tone and tenor of the online message it conveys, what values it claims to impart, and how it responds to intimidating situations and negative reviews.
Try to evolve a communications and content strategy that all employees follow. This will make it easier to manage your online reputation. Mistakes may continue to occur when running a business, but your employees will at least know how to respond in a positive manner during moments of crisis.
The key is to adopt a proactive approach to reputation, and not having a team that gives out contradictory brand messages, or still worse, a team that doesn’t respond at all.
Encourage your happy customers to leave reviews and you may even reward the best reviewers. If a customer is annoyed and leaves a negative review, contact him/her immediately and rectify the situation. Never ignore bad reviews as they have a potential for wrecking your future business.
Of course, it may not be ethical to offer rewards for positive reviews by customers, but if a brand asks customers to review the product, many satisfied customers will oblige with positive reviews. Request a client to write a review a month after they received the product.
In today’s internet age, if a brand — or a person working on a brand — makes a simple mistake, that mistake is at risk of going viral and being all over the internet almost immediately.
To successfully manage your brand reputation, always appreciate the concerns of your customers. Brands that are dismissive of customers’ concerns can quickly invite the wrath of social media users.