How to Protect Your Brand’s Reputation on Social Media

Social media is a fantastic way to promote your brand and to connect with your community. It is one of the more prominent ways for your audience to understand how your brand is perceived. But with the rise of social media branding, there are many things to look out for when posting and interacting online. To help you understand the ins and outs, here are a few ways you can protect your social media brand reputation.

Create Guidelines

Having specific brand guidelines for you and your employees to follow when posting can help avoid any confusion or problems that might arise. These rules and guidelines can include, but are not limited to:

  • Consistency – Keeping up your brand’s reputation is all about staying consistent. Whether that be in the style and design of postings, the brand voice and tone (ie. captions on posts, blog writings, brand announcements), or even the timing of posts and interactions.
  • Engaging with your audience – When attempting to engage with your following, always use official brand accounts. Along with consistency, these engagements should coincide with the way your brand’s voice and tone come across.
  • Having a social media team – There should only be a select few employees with access to the information of the brand’s accounts. This guideline helps to assure that your accounts are in good hands and no posts go unsupervised.

Keep Up to Date

Staying up to date with trends and controversies can help your brand to increase engagement and to stay out of trouble. One wrong comment can cause a major catastrophe when it comes to the internet. Always research and educate yourself and your team members on the latest happenings. Better to be safe than sorry!

Monitor and Connect with Your Community

Checking your insights for data can be extremely beneficial in understanding what your audience responds to best. If one topic receives more interactions than another, sit down with your team and compare the two to understand why that is and how you can implement the successful traits in later postings. Responding and connecting with your community can give valuable feedback in moving forward and building trust with your audience.

Responding to Crisis

Even some of the most well-known brands have had slip ups on their social accounts, knowing how to manage and deal with these problems is key to protecting your brand’s reputation. Finding social listening tools, or partnering with a social media agency team equipped for online reputation management, can notify you when you receive negative feedback and be extremely helpful in catching the problem early and to respond in a timely manner. Once a problem has arisen, the first step is to delete the post and to always release a sincere public apology. Never try to delete and ignore the issue!

Social media branding is a great tool for any company! It can seem overwhelming when first understanding how to correctly and safely manage the accounts but having a base level knowledge of where to start can boost your confidence immensely. Doing your research and following these simple steps and ideas can help your brand stay in the loop and keep up a good reputation.

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The Benefits of Social Media Reputation Management

Where there are people and businesses, there is also reputation. Reputation determines the social standing of a person or business in society. For businesses in particular, it is extremely important to have a positive reputation because it can drive sales and increase customer loyalty. A good reputation is not easy to gain, especially after a damaging blow, which is why a brand must incorporate an effective social media community management into their business to ensure consistent efforts and actions are taken. In other words, a brand’s reputation may be positive or negative at the moment, but it can always be rewritten. 

What Is Brand Reputation Management?

A social media community management team presents ideas through sticky notes

Brand reputation management is the process of monitoring how the public sees the brand while continuously influencing their perception for the better. Keeping an eye on the public’s perception may sound tedious to some since opinions tend to change, but in the world of business, reputation is everything. It takes years to build a positive opinion but only minutes to completely lose numbers of customers. This loss can be eased with the aid of brand reputation management, as it has the ability to control a brand’s narrative. 

Small businesses may believe that due their size, they don’t need any brand reputation management as of yet. However, that is false; even local businesses may face reviews or events that can put the brand at the center of conversations. It is important that companies of all sizes incorporate a social media community management team to address any incoming issues, whether big or small. 

Keeping & Attracting Customers

Once a brand is well reputed, the business will have an advantage over their competitors. Customers and clients will stay loyal to the company, knowing that their products and services have and will continue to satisfy their needs. Additionally, by word-of-mouth from those loyal customers, more will be attracted to a brand who already has a good standing in the industry. After all, trust is a key factor in any relationship. 

In order to ensure that a business maintains this trust with their customers, in addition to a reputable name, a brand community management team must incorporate strategies and content that is accurate and consistent to their brand’s character. Conversely, if a brand posts content that is inconsistent or is false information, it can affect their credibility. 

GoodRx is a medical service company and a client of Bright Age who frequently shares original articles on their Facebook and Twitter pages. Although they’re known for finding the best pharmacy coupons and deals to save money on prescription drugs and other medical costs, another main mission of theirs is to inform their readers about their health. This consistent character, to help others regarding their health, builds credibility within trust and an increase in reputation.

Customer Experience & Support

In order to preserve and improve a brand’s reputation, social media community management teams must also focus on their business’ customers’ experiences and collect feedback. This is a given to improve their services as well. When customers feel like their voices are being heard, their thoughts about the brand increases positively, leaving a trail of good seeds planted around on the Internet. 

The transport company Uber, for instance, is famously known for mastering their customer experience. The customer service team identifies any problems in their consumer feedback data and readdress it with solutions to improve their service. Additionally, Uber wants their commuters to feel safe when entering the vehicle because at the end of the day, it is still a stranger’s car. To foster this trust, commuters are aware of their driver’s name, the make of the car, and the driver’s ratings. It also works both ways; the drivers, too, are aware of a user’s rating and are able to cancel on those with poor ratings. With this foundation of trust Uber has built into its system, satisfied drivers and commuters are more likely to use the service again, providing Uber a reliable revenue stream. 

Maintaining Sales

Social media reputation management teams can also help preserve and increase sales by taking care of a brand’s reputation. As mentioned before, it takes constant effort to build a positive opinion about a brand from the public, but only a matter of minutes before losing customers. With a management team, sales are able to increase while the reputation does as well. Additionally, companies with high reputation can use this to their advantage by increasing their prices. Due to their high reputation, their loyal customers are willing to pay the price of the product no matter how much it is marked up. 

Social Media Community Management

A social media community management team is an essential to businesses, especially if they want to market towards the new generations today. Building a reputation may take years to do, but with a team who puts in the constant effort to strengthen a brand’s positive image, the business’ goal will eventually be achieved. Bright Age works with all sorts of brands, including GoodRx, Galaxy Theatres, and more. Sharing our ideas and content for your social media page in order to increase your reputation is what we do best. Reach out and request a consultation with Bright Age today to complete your goals!

How to Improve Your Company’s Online Presence through Community Management

Online community management is something that is often confused with social media marketing, and although the two have significant overlaps, it’s important to note their differences. Community management comes after social media marketing, focusing on customer service and monitoring responses on social media content. Community management is vital if you want to present your company as likeable and reliable, and it is necessary if your goal is to not only retain fans, but also to gain potential customers, partners, and employees. Here are a few easy steps to improve your company’s online presence through the use of social media community management.

Actively Monitor Mentions

The breadth of your community isn’t often confined only to social channels, such as Facebook and Instagram, but also on external articles and blogs, and the discussions and comments on those platforms. It’s important to actively monitor mentions of your brand, especially in places you might easily miss, such as when users don’t directly tag your brand in their posts, when your brand name may be misspelled by users, or when customers are mentioning your brand by product instead of by name. Make a daily effort to keep up on monitoring mentions, so that you are able to identify conversations you can join or initiate with your audience.

Engage Thoughtfully

After monitoring your mentions, create a thorough plan for executing how to engage with your customers. In today’s atmosphere in regard to social media community management, community managers are expected to reply in a timely manner, with carefully crafted and thoughtful responses.

Social media community management screenshot of Sprouts Facebook page responding to customer positively

Take a moment to thank fans for positive comments. As for negative comments, keep your responses public to stay transparent and so that other customers who may have similar concerns can easily find an answer, except in cases where the conflict is personal. Providing a well thought out response to a negative review or comment rather than ignoring it, shows potential customers how much your company values feedback and open communication.

Reward Fans

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While monitoring your company’s mentions, take note of users that are consistently engaging with your posts. You can use your observations to change your social media strategy and create certain campaigns targeted towards certain groups. Offer discounts or free samples, or organize a giveaway to reward loyal fans. Even simpler, acknowledge fans who enjoy your products or your services by incorporating user-generated content into your posts, turning brand enthusiasts into brand ambassadors. This will show existing and potential customers you truly care about what your fans have to say.

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Community management is integral to a social media strategy for companies looking to increase their reach and improve their online reputation. However, the seemingly simple act of monitoring mentions can in itself be time-consuming and difficult, let alone crafting thoughtful responses to customers or organizing giveaways. Reach out to a digital marketing agency with thorough knowledge of social media community management, such as Bright Age, in order to coordinate a digital marketing campaign that will work best for your company.

Why Online Reputation Matters for Businesses

In the previous age of marketing, people would hear about businesses solely through word-of-mouth or through reviews in physical publications, such as newspapers or magazines. However, as marketing has shifted into the digital age, so has the culture of reviews, and ease of access to reviews has especially been impactful. Now more than ever, reputation management on the digital forefront is critical for businesses, especially smaller and newer ones trying to get their foothold in the market. If this is something you’ve never given second thought to or considered as important, we’ll break down why online reputation matters for businesses and how to get started with implementing social media customer care.

Potential customers are paying attention to what others have to say about your business online, so you should, too. According to Forbes, 97% of customers use the internet to find a local business. Reviews are prominently featured at the top of search results, right underneath business details like hours and location, and when a consumer is searching “restaurants near me,” they’ll likely choose to visit the bistro with five stars over the café with three. In fact, 93% of consumers ages 18-34 use online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions. You want your business to be that five star rated company that potential customers choose over lower ranking competitors.

Reputation management screenshot of Profiles in History Google reviews showing ratings and reviews

Futhermore, a good online reputation not only helps attract customers, but also potential employees. Job searchers lean toward applying to higher rated businesses, too. This can help to widen your applicant pool and, in the grand scheme of things, improve your business even more from the inside out.

In contrast with higher ratings attracting more business, low ratings can have a starkly negative impact. Half of consumers say negative reviews make them question the quality of a business. With that being said, you can run the risk of losing 22% of business when potential customers find a negative article on their first page of results. That number doubles to losing 44% of potential business with two negative articles, and nearly triples to 59% with three.

What’s the solution in order to take control of your digital narrative? Implement a strategy of online reputation management. If you’re just starting off, do an initial sweep of your content by going through the first few pages of search results relating to your business and remove what you can, such as outdated photos. Next, check up on the reviews customers have left you on platforms such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, or TripAdvisor.

If you find negative reviews for your business, don’t fret – here’s where social media customer care comes into play. Besides using ratings to inform their decisions, 30% of consumers also pay attention to whether or not businesses are responding to reviews. Implement a strategy of not only thanking customers for sharing their positive experiences, but also responding thoughtfully to critical reviews. Make sure you acknowledge the customer’s negative experience and offer your contact information so that the customer may speak further about their experience. Win that customer back by providing exceptional customer service, while simultaneously showing potential clients that you truly care for your customers and their experience with your business.

Social media customer care screenshot of Galaxy Atascadero Yelp Response showing customer feedback

Of course, you may still have trouble implementing these practices or even finding time to monitor your business’ online presence. Working with a digital marketing agency like Bright Age that has expert knowledge in reputation management can help you focus on the day-to-day tasks of running your business smoothly.