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You hope your customers feel the same as you do about your brand. But that\u2019s rarely the case.
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You may love your brand and think it\u2019s amazing. And maybe your girlfriends, your parents, and your dog agree. But none of that matters unless your market is just the guest list for your Thanksgiving dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You hope your customers feel the same as you do about your brand. But that\u2019s rarely the case.
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Your brand\u2019s online reputation<\/a> is constantly evolving and re-defined by every social media comment, review, and blog post. When someone discovers your business, they make judgments and buying decisions based on this content online. So if you want to stay ahead and keep your business afloat, you need to proactively manage and improve on all the feedback you receive from the internet. As with everything, there are practical steps you can take to proactively improve your online reputation management. In this blog post, we\u2019ll talk about five things you can do to make sure your brand is always presented in the best light possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Table of Contents:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monitoring your brand<\/a> online helps you find out what your brand image looks like right now. That\u2019s the first step to digital reputation management – if you don\u2019t know what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not, it\u2019s tough work trying to improve anything. What you monitor depends on where your brand is present. Do people talk about you on social media, on forums, or on review sites like TripAdvisor or Amazon? Do you even know? If you\u2019re a restaurant, bar, or tourist attraction, you need to at least monitor review sites<\/a>. If you have a physical location, you can bet that people give their opinions about you on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google. If you sell physical products, you also need to keep an eye on Amazon, eBay<\/a>, and other online retailers. On top of these obvious review sites, you also need to think about blogs. You also have forums, blogs, news sites, and all of social media to worry about. And you need to be tracking all those conversations to have a clear grasp of your online brand reputation. But people talk about your brand all over the internet, all the time. Trying to monitor all these conversations on your own is a losing battle. Luckily, there are tools to help. Obviously, we would recommend you do your brand tracking with Mention<\/a>, where you can track any conversation of your brand, anywhere online, and generate analyses and reports with a few simple clicks. A good media monitoring tool<\/a> lets you track the whole lot from a single dashboard, so you don\u2019t have to go looking. But if you\u2019re just starting out, not ready to invest in a tool, and want a quick pulse of your online brand, you can try this free tool, the Brand Grader<\/a>. The Brand Grader<\/a> gives you a quick overview of a brand\u2019s online presence in seconds. Simply choose the company or product you\u2019re interested in, and you\u2019ll see:<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a free tool that takes a few seconds to use, the results are quite powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Online reviews<\/a> are becoming omnipresent. They are the first thing people see when Googling your business. To improve your online reputation, you need a solid online reputation strategy to manage your reviews. Because most of the time, people don\u2019t bother leaving you reviews, unless they\u2019re super mad and can\u2019t wait to vent online and ask all their friends to do the same. Like my friend, Melissa, who was so annoyed at a shop that after leaving one bad review herself, she asked five other people to do so as well. And you don\u2019t want to just leave your online reputation<\/a> marketing in the hands of these angry customers. You can start by actively asking for a review after a transaction or after a customer has used your service for a while. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Mention, we have an in-app pop-up that asks our user how happy they are with our tool. If they put a score that\u2019s higher than 8 out of 10, we ask if they\u2019d like to leave us a review on a public review site. Most of the time, if customers are happy with your service or product, they\u2019ll agree to leave you a nice message if you ask nicely and tell them how much it would mean to you. There are many other ways you can actively improve your online reviews<\/a>, like building your official profiles, responding to reviews, monitoring online review sites, etc. None of it is rocket science, so give it a go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Influencer marketing has been a marketing trend for a while now. In the B2C world, big brands generate significant ROI with beauty and fashion bloggers, and the B2B world loves to hear from experts and industry influencers who\u2019ve made it. Working with great influencers boosts your online reputation in these three ways: Knowing this, when we started our video marketing campaign, we decided to bring B2B marketing influencers in our videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These videos have generated a lot of views, shares, and engagement in our social media channels, and led to multiple syndications, notably on Convince & Convert<\/a> and Social Media Today<\/a>. Both articles now rank on the first page of Google for the search term \u201ccontent marketing predictions 2017: This brand visibility and recognition wouldn\u2019t have been possible if it wasn\u2019t for the influencer\u2019s participation in the video. The key to online brand reputation management is to find the right influencers that speak to the same audience you\u2019re targeting and has a good online reputation of their own. When we started our expert series, we found marketing influencers by looking at Mention\u2019s influencers dashboard<\/a> for big guns that were already engaging with our brand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We also looked at their interests to make sure there\u2019s a market\/audience fit: As with any human relationships, living up to your word and being consistent in all areas of your communication with your customers is essential to building a great online reputation. Did you offer a customer a discount as an apology for bad service? Did you promise to \u201cspeak to that employee\u201d about an issue brought up over Twitter? Since everything is said online and public, anyone interested can follow the story and know if it ends badly (i.e. you lied, or only paid lip-service.) But if you take it customer feedback<\/a> as an opportunity to make real changes in your business, and actually improve your organization, savvy customers will definitely notice, and come back for more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your online reputation is always going to be relative of your competitors\u2019. Do people like you or them more? Why do your competitors\u2019 customers prefer them over you? What are people saying when they compare your two brands? This is all crucial information that will help you improve your own reputation online. But the best benefit of monitoring competitors is that you can avoid a lot of mistakes. Either you see something they\u2019re doing right and can implement it before you miss out any more, or you can learn from someone else\u2019s mistakes<\/a>. Then there\u2019s the added benefit of being able to reverse engineer their marketing strategies based on what content they put out. From engagement to SEO and content \u2013 it\u2019s all public, you just need the tools to find it easily. Luckily, few things are private on social media. And the web in general, really. If your competitor is marketing online, you can probably find it. And analyze their online reputation management. What\u2019s their online review strategy like? Do they do customer support on social media? What influencers are they working with? There are tons of different things to look at: their websites, social media profiles, paid ad campaigns, email marketing sends, PR coverage\u2026every channel and area is an opportunity for you to learn and improve your online reputation management strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your online reputation is like a relationship. Except it\u2019s a relationship you have with hundreds and thousands of people. It\u2019s definitely trickier to manage than a normal human relationship, but the principles remain the same. Be conscious of what people think of you, reflect on their feedback to improve yourself, observe what the others are doing, stay with good company, and be honest and reliable. It\u2019s may not be easy, but it\u2019s simple.
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n5 ways to proactively improve your online reputation today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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1. Monitor your online reputation and presence<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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2. Have an online review strategy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n3. Work with influencers with great online reputation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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And when you do influencer outreach right and build long-term relationships with influencers, you\u2019ll get powerful endorsements from these industry leaders that will boost your online reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n4. Be consistent and deliver on your promises<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Following through and making the changes you\u2019ve committed to are key to maintaining your reputation online.
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Your marketing team can spend a billion dollars on a campaign about you being a brand \u201cthat cares.\u201d But if your customer support is never available or treat unhappy customers disrespectfully, no influencers or marketing speak can help save your online reputation.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n5. Track your competitors\u2019 online reputation and strategies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nYears to build, seconds to tarnish<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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