Your Brand’s Reputation on Social Media

How to Research and Manage Your Brand’s Reputation on Social Media

How about some homemade donuts?

I’ve heard good things about this donut shop, Beiler’s, from a few people now… Let’s see if it’s as good as they said. 

Google. Search bar. Here we go. 

Wow, right? Looks like a good place to visit. 

What about your business? Does it have a similar reputation?

Put your brand’s name into Google and see what you get. 

Your website should be the first result, and social media pages should follow. If your business’s profile on Facebook, Trip Advisor, Grubhub, or another review platform pops up, it might also display a star rating given by your customers. 

If the rating is less than 4 stars, you’re risking losing 53 percent of leads. That’s how many people say they are less likely to contact a business if it has such a rating.

Luckily for Beiler’s Bakery, their ratings are 4 stars and higher. 

But it doesn’t mean the reviews were always this way. Unfortunately, people are willing to say bad things about businesses no matter what they do, so no one is safe out there. 

What’s more, a lack of reputation management for your brand can easily break your business by bringing down your reviews to an uncomfortable position. 

To avoid that, read this article to learn:● How to manage reputation on the most popular social media platforms.● How to plan for and deal with the fallout when it happens. 

Here we go! 

Brand Reputation Research Guide

“So how exactly should I manage my reputation? There are billions of posts getting published on social media every day. There’s no way I’ll keep up with everything!

Fair point, but monitoring online conversations as they unfold is actually not difficult. In fact, you’ve started doing simple online reputation management when you Googled the name of your business and evaluated the results. 

“No worries, you won’t have to do that every time you need to check what people are saying about you. Thankfully, there are many tools to “listen” to social media and track mentions of your business across social media”, explains Estelle Liotard, a content writer from TrustMyPaper.

Social Listening Tools

For example, the Google Alerts tool is one of the easiest ones to use for monitoring mentions across the social web. 

You can track:● Brand names. You should track this at all times to get updates when someone mentions your brand● Employee names. This could be a person who appears in promotions, CEO, etc.● Product names. This one is good for tracking the performance of product campaigns● Web page URLs. Track these to see the cases of negative references in Google results.

Tracking is simple: visit the Google Alerts page and specify what you’d like to track and select “Web” in the Sources section. 

The last step is to click the Create Alert button. Repeat the process as many times as you’d like to track more mentions. 

When you’re done, Google will send you updates as instructed. 

Check every one carefully, but also be prepared that some mentions will come from websites in foreign languages. 

Reviews 

Don’t forget that each of the social media networks you’re using has a review section. Each comment made by a customer there affects your reputation, so keep a close watch every day. 

Hopefully, you’ll find only positive comments like this one and respond by thanking the customer and asking them to come back soon. 

Reviews

But what to do in case someone writes a negative comment? Find the answer in the next section. 

Brand Reputation Management Guide

Okay, now we know how to find the mentions of your brand.

Let’s learn what to do when you discovered negative content, shall we?

Whether it’s a distasteful comment, a negative review, an inaccurate description, there are a number of good reputation management techniques you can apply.

Online Reputation Repair Techniques

Let’s see what your competitors are doing to keep their reputation intact on social media. These are the most effective techniques right now.  

Always Respond to Negative Comments

The worst thing you can do about negative comments on social media is to leave them untouched. Here’s what I mean. 

Let’s suppose that you’re a customer, looking for fine dining recommendations in a new area. Google has given you good options, so you’ve decided to take a quick look at the reviews.

That’s what 90 percent of customers do before visiting a business

So, as you’re scrolling down the review section on Facebook, you see this:

“I went there with my wife. They had a live music band playing so loud, we couldn’t hear each other. But the main problem was the food. It was very greasy and did not taste good.”

This kind of comment can scare a lot of customers away. 

There’s even one scariest thing:

There’s no reply from the restaurant. They did nothing to defend their reputation. 

In the eyes of the customers, a lack of response means that:

● the business doesn’t really care

● No one is there to take care of this

● The customer says the truth, so they’re tired of responding to every complaint.

To avoid situations like this, you should try to respond to every negative comment someone makes about your business. 

One common way is to ask them to reach out so you could help with making it right. 

For example, here’s how the social media manager from James Hook and Company (which is a top-rated restaurant, by the way) responded to a comment from a dissatisfied customer. 

Review

While the main goal of your business should be to make your customers happy, so they don’t leave negative reviews, be ready to deal with the fallout. Keeping quiet and hiding from people is certainly not a good way to go. 

Push Negative Content Down by Creating More Positive Content

Another way to minimize the impact of negative mentions is to reduce its visibility by creating more positive content. This method is called suppression, and thousands of businesses are using it to manage their reputation. 

Simply put, the main idea is to put out the fire with lots of content and make it disappear from the first page of Google search results. For example, you can:

● Publish new blog posts, podcasts, videos, and other content using the same keywords (pay attention to how the content is written as well. Even if you don’t have amazing writing skills, you can always team up with different writing tools such as GrabMyEssay or Studicus). 

● Do some guest blogging and earn a reputation of a legit thought leader in your niche

● Leave objective and respectful comments on influential, high-ranking websites within your niche.

Suppressing negative content may take some time but it can help with reducing the number of people who see it. If you don’t have time to create content, though, then check out the next option. 

Remove Negative Content from the Source and/or Google

There are two ways to try to remove content that harms your reputation: ask Google or the source.

In the first respective scenario, you can find out if the content:

● violates Google’s quality and legal guidelines (this includes hate speech, harassment, unsupported claims, etc.).

● Violates copyright laws.

● Violates content laws.

If the content you’re trying to remove meets at least one of these criteria, then chances are good that you’ll be able to remove it. 

You can ask Google to remove content on this page

The second scenario is the “worst-case” kind. It happens when the person who wrote the content refuses to change their mind about it. 

This is a very dangerous situation because only one piece of content can severely damage your reputation; especially when it comes from a source that ranks high in search engines. 

The Bottom Line

Brand reputation research and management are an ongoing process. Stop for a few days and you might easily miss something big. That’s why you should make the first step today and decide how to track the social media reputation of your business! 

BIO:

Nicole Garrison is a professional Digital Marketing Specialist and Content Creator at writing services Best Essay Education and WoWGrade. She focuses on bridging the gap between theory and practice in digital marketing. Her aim is to allow readers from across the world a cohesive and approachable way of enjoying online content.