Thanks to social media, it’s so easy for a customer to share their experiences with a brand, both good and bad. Good reviews can improve your reputation and help you attract more customers, but a bad review or a negative tweet can be extremely damaging, especially if you don’t handle it swiftly and tactfully.
To help you stay on top of your brand image, here are some helpful online reputation management tips…
Be active online
You need to set up accounts on whatever platforms are relevant to your business and, more importantly, be active on them. If you haven’t sent a tweet in 9 months, onlookers will wonder if you are even still in business. You don’t have to use every single social platform, but make sure you maintain your online presence on whichever ones you choose. This will help you start dialogues with your customers and present your brand in the way you want online.
Listen to the conversation
If people are talking about your brand publicly online, you need to know what’s being said. Not only will this give you valuable feedback that you can act on to improve your brand, but it also lets you respond to customers’ feedback online. To help you stay on the pulse, here are some of the best social listening tools that will help with review monitoring.
It is also worth monitoring search results for your brand name and other important keywords. When you type your company into Google, does your website appear first or is there some scandalous story or negative review that people see first? You can use Google Alerts to stay on top of search results for your company name.
Respond to feedback
Whether someone tweets about how amazing your products are or posts a scathing review to Facebook, it’s always a good idea to respond. Responding to a positive comment shows that person that you value them as a customer, and shows more generally that you care about your customers and what they think.
Responding to bad reviews also shows that you care about your customers. You want them to have a good experience with your brand and want to make things right if that hasn’t been the case. Make sure you’re responding with a clear, calm head and try not to take the feedback personally. You should apologize for the situation and try to resolve it if possible. You might even want to offer them some form of compensation in certain situations. Handling negative feedback effectively can turn a disgruntled customer into a loyal, returning customer.
Do you need support with managing your online reputation? Hallen Media have lots of experience with making brands look good online. Get in touch to find out how we can help you.