Thinking About Your Business Reputation Management

Transcription

1 Thinking About Your Business Reputation Management You are probably being solicited by a number of reputable firms offering to help you with your Brand Reputation Management (BRM). Most often, when you look underneath their offers, it is frequently another way to say Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And while SEO is a component of BRM, it isn t everything that is required. It is important for you understand conversations that are taking place about your business. So how do you monitor this information and make sure you are being perceived the way you want to be in the marketplace? What is different about today s brand reputation management? BRM has been most dramatically changed by today s user-generated feedback via social media and review networks and is now commonplace. This instantaneous feedback means new challenges and opportunities for your business. Now BRM is about actively managing the references, conversations and feedback on your business. Many of these are online, but it is equally as important to understand the offline environment. An in-store or office complaint that doesn t receive a timely and proper response will eventually make its way to the online grapevine and cannot be ignored. What is the best way to manage your company s BRM? Here are the key areas you need to address: Search Engine findings Brand monitoring PR/Social Media Reviews and recommendations Customer service Negative PR management Brand Promotion Complaints 1 P a g e

2 Search Engine Findings What happens when clients or prospective clients type the name of your company into a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo? First of all, let s hope that your company is the first one to appear on the page. The remaining entries will vary but will usually include social profiles, entries for Google Places and news stories. Make sure any facts printed there are correct. Your goal is to dominate that page with listings that you control. Make sure you set up key social profiles on LinkedIn and Google+. It is also a great idea to make sure you appear prominently in search results for key search terms within your industry. The more a customer sees your brand in search, the more they will regard you as an active and important player. There are a number of ways you can accomplish this, but we would strongly suggest that you have someone or hire someone who can monitor and manage this for you. Brand Monitoring The amount of talking people are doing about your brand online may be dependent on the size of your business, your industry and your client experience. Regardless, it is important to understand what is being said. You may need to respond to inaccurate stories, deal with unhappy customers or simply reply to an unanswered question. Even a small number of mentions, whether they be positive or negative can have implications for your brand. The good news about today s online ubiquity is there are a lot of tools available to help you monitor these conversations including the following: Google Alerts Social Mention Technorati Hootsuite 2 P a g e

3 PR/Social Media A key component of Business Reputation Management is to project a positive business image across multiple tactics including online. Social media, news releases and community engagement all allow you to build your public image. Online, make sure you maintain activity on the networks that are most relevant to your business and create a reputation as an expert in your field. This will gain you credibility for your brand. This can be done through a number of well-known networks including: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Pinterest PR Wire But it is important to all maintain activity on industry and geographic sites, depending on your industry. For larger businesses, you also need to see activity for you key staff. Make sure you and your staff has current and accurate profiles that represent your company well. 3 P a g e

4 Reviews and Recommendations It is simply not possible to please all of the people all of the time. The digital age now provides the perfect platform for customers to register reviews on your website and many others. For most companies this is a very good thing, allowing prospective clients to hear how great your company is from someone other than you. If you don t have a place for your client to review your work on your website, you should consider doing so. If you are fortunate enough to have many excellent reviews, make sure they get posted to not only your website but the social networks that are appropriate for your business. When you share and encourage reviews, your customers will do the positive talking for you. Customer endorsements have proved to be more influential than anything you can say about your own business. If you have mixed reviews or negative ones, work to address the problems causing them. This is a great opportunity to make improvements to your business. Finally, don t forget to encourage your clients to give you reviews on third party sites like the BBB and Angie s List (if appropriate) or any industry website. Customer Service It is sometimes difficult for the people within your business who touch your customers to understand the impact they can have on your brand image. Every interaction with a customer or with a supplier makes an impression and that impression can be positive, neutral or negative. You need to be communicating internally with those employees to make sure they know what is expected in terms the experience required to reflect positively on your brand image. You may want to consider measuring through customer feedback on your value proposition and holding the employees accountable for specific levels of service through that feedback mechanism. There are a number of low cost and survey options available online which can provide you with the feedback data. Key to obtaining it will be getting your customers permission to send them that or providing them with a website address where they can provide that feedback. 4 P a g e

5 Negative PR Management Negative PR can occur in many shapes and forms from a disgruntled customer or employee who posts their feedback online to real complaints. For most businesses, negative feedback will be from customers and must be addressed. If negative comments are posted about your business, make sure to follow-up and respond to these as quickly as possible. Another good reason to make sure you are monitoring your online presence. If the comment is particularly negative, you may want to offer a customer a discount or some valued object from your business with a sincere sorry communication. If the same feedback keeps occurring, you need to address the issue directly instead of apologizing. Brand Promotion Your best customers can be your best salespeople. Engage them through events, feedback, references, etc. Ask them to provide video testimonials that can be used on your website and well as in your sales so they are projecting their positive experience with your brand. Complaints Regardless of the channel a customer or employee uses to communicate a complaint, the sooner you address that complaint, the less likely it is to be blown out of proportion and have a negative impact on your brand. Make sure you have feedback mechanisms in place so you hear them. Not all customers or employees complain. Sometimes they just walk away. Unfortunately, that doesn t mean that they don t have negative comments that they share with their network. Make sure that you or someone on your staff is frequently searching for your business on a number of search engines so you can know and address any complaints. 5 P a g e

6 Carey Road Marketing provides Strategic Business and Marketing that helps businesses grow. Make sure you understand your brand image. If you need an objective partner that can help you understand your brand image and make recommendations that can be a strategic advantage, please give us a call at There is no charge for that first conversation. 6 P a g e