Reputation Management – ​​How to improve your company's online reputation

Managing your company's reputation controls how your brand is viewed by the public. Companies use social media monitoring tools from their customer service team to analyze and track company reputation. Corporate reputation is managed through social media, emails, and chatbots.

The importance of reputation management

Maintaining a good business reputation is essential in the crowded world of many brands and alternative solutions. Your company's reputation is easy to damage since there are many places to leave comments and reviews on the Internet. This is because customers are usually less keen to leave a review when they are satisfied. About the product or service But as soon as they have one negative experience many customers rush to share it with people on social media and in comments and forums. Such comments are extremely harmful to brands because your potential customers will research your company before making a purchase and if they find that there are a lot of bad reviews, this will prevent them from becoming your customers.

Having a good reputation is crucial for any e-commerce business that sells products on Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and other sites, as well as any store, restaurant, real estate broker, or even government organization that appears in a Google search. When people search for “pizzeria,” they usually check the reviews that appear in the right corner of the search engine results page within Maps. If the rating shows less than 4 stars and negative feedback is written in the comments section, it is likely that people will go to dinner at another restaurant.

It is better for companies and businesses to deal with this type of negative comments and to take care of managing their reputation professionally on the Internet so as not to lose customers and potential clients.

How do you manage your company's online reputation?

The reputation management process consists of three stages:

1. Discover comments and reviews.
2. Develop a strategy.
3. Dealing with negative comments.

Let us analyze each stage separately.

Detect negative comments

First and foremost, you need to detect comments that are harmful to your reputation on various platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps, or even within closed forums. The best way to do this is to monitor your brand name through platforms such as Awario.io or even Google Alert.

Since most people spend their time on social media, it's a good idea to analyze what people are saying about your brand there as well. Marketers use social media monitoring tools that help them discover any brand mentioned on specific social media platforms with the push of a button.

Develop a strategy

Collect user feedback in reports based on platforms and patterns: Most negative feedback probably comes from one low-quality product, one manager, or one store. There may be a recurring problem such as a delayed delivery of the order. Having all comments in one place will make it easier for you to discover and deal with these patterns.

Based on the insights you gain from these reports, decide how to handle these negative comments, then prioritize tasks and assign someone dedicated to the work. The better you organize your resources, the more effectively you can manage your online reputation.

Dealing with negativity

There are many ways to deal with negative customer reviews online. The simplest and perhaps best is to address people's issues directly through your support team as soon as possible, as soon as the negative review or reviews are discovered on social media. Analyze each problem individually, apologize to the users publicly, and try to offer real ways to solve the problem until the customer is satisfied in the end.

There are also several less common ways to manage your company's reputation such as:

• Writing press releases within trusted online news sites to hide negative content;
• Submit a legal DMCA takedown request if someone tries to harm your business by spreading misleading information about your brand
• Get positive reviews from public figures and social media influencers to gain the trust of your users.
• Offer free products to YouTube and Instagram celebrities to increase their chances of getting positive reviews
• Proactively respond to public criticism about recent changes to your pricing policy.

Less transparent ways to manage business reputation such as: Removing comments and creating anonymous accounts that provide positive reviews raise ethical questions. If the laws do not strictly regulate reputation management, it is up to the company to decide whether or not to use some of these methods.

Let's find out what it takes to create your own reputation management strategy.

How to build a reputation management strategy

There are 6 steps to creating your reputation management strategy.

1. Find out where people are commenting on your brandThere is a term called touch points, which are the social platforms where your company is present, for example: specialized forums, the comment box on your blog, Google reviews, reviews on Facebook, etc.
2. Choose Monitoring Tools: Among the most popular tools for social media and online monitoring you'll find Sprout Social and Hootsuite. They collect user feedback with or without hashtag mentions into real-time reports, so you can deal with it more easily. You can also check reviews in your online store or any public marketplace like Amazon where you sell these products.
3. Decide how to respond to some feedback: Think about the tone of the message as well as the words that suit the specific situation and negative mood of the dissatisfied customer. It's best to create very specific response templates so that you can respond quickly in the best way possible.
4. Prioritizing tasks: Identify the platforms that are most important to your business reputation and create a queue that you will work with negative comments on a daily or weekly basis.
5. Appoint a responsible person: If there are a lot of negative comments it is best to hire someone part-time or full-time for the role.
6. Prevent the main causes:  Make sure you do everything you can to anticipate and prevent negative feedback because it is the easiest and cheapest way to maintain a good reputation. Double-check delivery deadlines, establish a fair return policy, and check your marketing practices.
   
   So, today you have learned how to manage your company's reputation on the Internet. If you want to improve the image of your business on the Internet, contact us through Next link