Social media is an excellent platform to strengthen your company’s online reputation. The more visible, active and transparent your brand is the more likely you are to succeed. Customers prefer buying from brands they know “everything” about.

The first step to strengthen your reputation on social media is to try to get into your customer’s head. When you look at a brand name, what questions come into your mind?

Some of the most common questions relating to a brand include:
Do I trust this brand? Do they provide accurate information? Are they credible?
Do I want to find out more about their products or services?

You should have a go at answering these questions yourself and identify which areas you need to improve.

A thorough competitor analysis will also provide you useful insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your current and potential competitors. The more you know about your competitor’s strategies, the better you can identify opportunities and threats.

Read on to discover more about how social media can benefit your business and how you can measure your company’s online reputation.

How Can Social Media Help your Brand?

Social media is by far the most interactive form of media. You can get feedback instantly, and you can react to any comment immediately. As a platform it can help your company to shape the conversation you have with your customers, followers and prospects by responding to those who interact with you.

It also works as a news channel for your company’s news and updates. The popularity of conventional news outlets such as print media and TV news are on the decline.
The digital landscape provides users with more convenient ways to access news and social media plays a huge part of this shift fuelled by the profitable online ad market.

Benefits of Social Media

  • Interactivity: you can reach out to your customers directly and answer any queries.
  • Instant reaction: if you check your social media accounts regularly you can respond to your customers immediately.
  • Easy to get in touch: Social media systems make it simple to communicate, which is why many customers prefer to communicate through social media compared to a phone call or email.
  • Personal feel: because you can react directly to your consumers’ queries quickly, they will feel valued. Similarly, to a face to face meeting, you can adjust the tone of voice of your response to theirs.

Social Media Checklist to Improve your Online Reputation

To effectively build a good reputation on social media you need to be active and dedicate time to it. Social Media isn’t something you can post on occasionally and check periodically and think it will work.

We have created a checklist for you to ensure you don’t miss any crucial task.

  • Check notifications for all social networks you use daily.
  • Use social listening tools such as Hootsuite, TweetReach or Buzzsumo.
    These tools identify mentions of your brand outside of your posts and collect data about your business, your competitors and the market. These insights can effectively help you to improve your social media marketing strategy.
  • Respond regularly and quickly to comments and mentions within a few hours if possible.
  • Always communicate in a polite and positive manner, especially when handling negative reviews and comments.
  • Regularly create fresh and relevant content.
  • Use social media to express your brand personality and voice, help demonstrate to customers and potential customers what makes you stand out from your competitors.

How Can you Measure your Online Reputation?

The Harris Poll has developed a useful measurement system of visibility and integrity called Reputation Quotient (RQ). As they say on their website: “While other models measure reputation in a vacuum, RQ is technically designed to understand how a company is perceived in modern culture.”

In practice, this means that RQ conducts surveys to determine the most visible brands online. These companies are the ones that come to mind because of their good or bad reputation.

The brands in the survey will be evaluated according to six dimensions of reputation. You can use the same measurement system to further identify and understand the online reputation of your own business:

Products and services

Radical transparency about your products and services can help to strengthen your credibility. That means you don’t hide your flaws and proactively work on improving quality.

Customers like personal stories about dedication and hard work which lead to success. You can even document every step of the way.

Emotional appeal

Do you consider emotional impact when you design your marketing campaign? You should.
Human decision making is heavily influenced by emotions, way more than cognitive thought.

This is true for creating reputation strengthening or rebuilding campaigns as well. Although our first instinct would be to state facts and arguments, ensure to also use emotional elements for high impact.

Personal, uplifting and sentimental stories related to your business help your customers develop feelings for your brand.

Workplace environment

This factor seems less critical. However, cheerful employees are your brand ambassadors and can bring business just by showing passion for your company and product.

By demonstrating how fun and pleasant your office is on social media will make your brand instantly more sympathetic to future employees and socially conscious customers alike.

Posting about improved company policies, fun and meaningful events such as charity events or volunteering, photos of happy office life can significantly strengthen your reputation and make customers feel more confident about buying from you.

Financial performance

To write about your company’s financial situation on social media can be challenging depending on your company culture and policies. People love to be associated with winners, so they are more likely to do business with successful companies.

If you manage to be more transparent with your financials, that will demonstrate your honesty.

Vision and leadership

Think about Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. What do they have in common? They both are visionaries who made a massive impact on their companies’ reputation by their actions.

Managers matter not only from the business point of view but also for good or bad online reputation. Encourage your managers to demonstrate their knowledge, vision and management style publicly via social media and blogging.

Writing professional articles on LinkedIn is a powerful way to enhance online reputation.

Social responsibility

To be socially active and support good causes are essential for companies in the social media age. Be creative and research organisations who do something innovative in saving the environment for example.

More and more customers become environmentally conscious thanks to all the educational campaigns and social media campaigns.

Ensure your company isn’t left behind in charity work and publish about the noble causes you support on your social media accounts.

Need Help with Your Social Media Management?

Are you unsure how to start your social media activities to improve your online reputation?

Do you struggle to create relevant content for your audience?

We are happy to help you to develop your social media strategy; we can also manage your SM accounts and social media advertising as well.

Give our friendly team a call to learn more on 01285 50 55 50.