How to Fix Your Businesses Online Reputation
Has your business or your brand recently received negative reviews that have caused your reputation to plummet? Look no further. This article is a great guide if you find yourself in this situation.
Everyone knows that one of the most important things for your business-and your brand-is your reputation. In addition to your reputation, it is also imperative that you have a positive response when faced with negative feedback and controversy online.
Even large, well-established corporations face obstacles while trying to maintain a positive reputation. During this age of social media, where posting takes seconds and negative reviews spread like wildfire, it is important to understand that one social media post has the opportunity to change the perspective of your brand within minutes.
While it is true that reputation will plummet faster than it takes to be fixed, it is important to take your time while planning out your next steps and consulting the right company if you find yourself in this situation.
Constantly Monitor your Brand
It is important to stay on top of monitoring the feedback that your brand receives. Even if your reputation is a good one, you should actively be taking steps to minimize the possibility of a negative review adversely affecting your reputation.
This may be accomplished through the hiring of a reputation management company like Repute PR. Our reputation management professionals are able to monitor the mentions of your name or your company online and alert you and your company to any negative press you may receive.
One of the best ways to monitor your brand is to look at the search engine results pages (SERP) and utilize Google Autocomplete. This service helps you look out for negative stories and reviews and take a more proactive approach to maintain your brand’s reputation. If you discover negative reviews, you can use Google Analytics to look at your site’s traffic. This data may guide you to the possible issues.
Address Complaints As Quickly As Possible
When looking through your reviews, it is important that you address complaints in a timely manner.
Some social media users expect a response in under an hour, and most expect a response in under 24 hours. Statistics also show that unhappy customers will share their experience with up to 15 people. These statistics demonstrate how extremely important it is to respond quickly and effectively–working with customers to help solve the issues at hand.
A negative post on social media has the opportunity to reach a large population in a small amount of time, so your response must address the complaint, show sympathy, and effectively try to change the person’s perception of your company.
While these comments have the power to hurt your reputation, you should never delete the complaints. If you delete someone’s complaint or question, you are at risk of tarnishing your brand’s reputation.
A useful tip is to make sure that you are regularly checking your customer support email. If you have an influx of messages from angry customers, you should have your support team analyze the comments and save them to a document or spreadsheet.
This will allow you to organize the comments and reviews and will help you identify the common traits among the complaints. You must reply to these customers during this process. Communication should be your number one priority.
Plan Your Strategy for Social Media
It is important to brainstorm ideas and strategies to address any negative situations the comments identify. Often, a company will respond immediately before giving thought to its message. This may do more harm than good. Sometimes, it is more beneficial to post a statement immediately after a situation, but it really depends on the particular case.
Often, it is better to wait to really think about what you want to say and to let the public cool down a bit. You should work with your team to assess the damage that may be caused by the statement and identify the outcome you are looking for from your response.
According to Entrepreneur, the hardest part of this process is understanding the pre-work and after-effects of communicating with the media.
If you find yourself in this type of situation, you should work on improving your image through your actions rather than with just words. Hiring a reputation management company can help you gain insight and perspective into the situation.
One technique that some reputation management companies may utilize is hiring a trusted journalist to tell the story to the public in the way that you want it to be portrayed.
Think About Your Company Values
What is one of the most important values that people look for in a company? Trust! Your customers’ trust is imperative to being a successful company. So, regaining your customers’ trust has to be a priority.
Responding to your customers in the most appropriate way is necessary to regain their trust and fix your reputation as a business and as a brand. Even if you are able to regain customers’ trust after your crisis, it is not the time to relax.
After experiencing relief from a crisis, it is essential that your company exemplifies the core beliefs that are stated in its mission. Your company should be especially focusing on the feedback from the past and becoming the best possible version of your brand.
This is a great moment to share with your customers all the progress your company has made over the years and your commitment to the issues and beliefs your company stands for. Repute PR is a great resource when it comes to managing your company and thinking about its reputation and our professionals are available to help you manage your online reputation.
Think About the Future of the Company
Now that you have successfully gotten past the crisis, what should you do?
In order to maintain the future of your brand, you need to plan and think about the reputation you want to uphold and how you are going to sustain it. It is necessary to evaluate the crisis and see what you can do differently.
Establish a plan with your reputation management company to address future issues. That way, you and your company are ready if another issue were to comes along. Another important step is to have a concrete plan in place to ensure that something like that does not happen again.