Being a trustworthy business is the most basic thing in increasing the customer base. No matter how good your product is or how big you market the product, nothing stands higher than getting a tagline of “trustworthy” among customers. This tagline can even make people who aren’t your customers to suggest your products to someone. Word of mouth is one of the most reliable marketing, but what happens when it comes to the digital world.
A survey conducted by BrightLocal revealed that online reviews are trusted by 88% of customers as much as peer recommendations.
As positive as this may feel, this percentage is applicable for the negative reviews or comments too. And even if you have the best business, you cant skip negative comments. There may be even people who want to push a negative comment on you. If you are not careful enough, these negative comments can leave bad taste about you.
Social media can give you positive as well as negative reviews.
How do you respond to these? How can you monitor what are people talking about your business? How can you use these engagements with users to achieve a tag of ‘trustworthy brand’.
Social media Reputation management is the process of monitoring evaluating and strategizing your content posted on social media. This can an article, image, video or even comments or mentions. Social media reputation management makes a detailed idea about the approach you are going to implement on your business page to build your reputation.
Social media reputation currently is not only about social media. Every channel including yellow pages, business finding apps, or anywhere you can find a mention about your company now comes the scope of reputation management.
Even if you are running a small local business, social media reputation can play a part in your growth. In this article, we are discussing Triggersale’s Secrets to Successful Brand Reputations management on Social Media.
Identify what to monitor
The first and the most basic step of any social media reputation management is to identify the things you have to monitor. Considering the number of social media available and the competitors, this can be a long list. Identifying these and preparing a strategy and plan with ‘what you wish to be your social media reputation’ is the key.
How to develop a list of things to monitor?
To improve your reputation keep a track of the following things in different media
Company name and mentions: The most important part of your company reputation is your company name. Keep an eye on all social media using social media analysis tools about every mention of your company name. This can help you understand what users or competitors are thinking about your company.
Every user may not know the correct spelling of your company. When monitoring, include all common misspellings to not leave anything behind.
You may also have to monitor your competitor’s name. This can help you understand how they are going ahead or changing there approach in building brand reputation. Most importantly, monitoring competitors can help you understand ‘what went wrong’ for them.
Mention of products or services: Everything mentioned above about your company name is applicable to your product name too. The importance of monitoring product name is that people may not be knowing your company name but may mention your product’s name.
High profile Employees: Some brands are identified by the name of a high profile or high a following employee. Some users who know about them may mention about your company through them.
A major take away in following your high profile employee is that users may mention your competitor’s activity or review in their comments or reply section.
Keywords: People doesn’t use any service to increase your income. They are doing it to find a solution to any of their problems or interests. People mention or search for your product or company by using common words. Tracking these most commonly used keywords can help you to even make a user in need, your customer.
Connect to a Social Listening Tool
With the number of social media and the number of business finding tools, it is not easy to keep a track of all the happenings. It becomes more difficult if your business is a multi-regional or multi-product providers.
Social Listening tools or social media monitoring tools come to your rescue in this regard.
A social listening tool keeps a tab of all the activities linked to your business in social media. Connecting your social media accounts to a reliable listening tool can save you a lot of time with better results.
With great social listening tools, you can even schedule posts and replies, automate your reply to messages and mentions, monitor reviews, etc.
Engagement with users
To build a social media reputation, you will have to be live or active in social media. Users will have to see or listen to the name of your product or company in every way they feel engaged or interested.
Customers use social media to know about any product, buy a product or for after-sale customer service.
Engage with users by posting authentic interesting content at regular intervals, which can make you visible in their timeline. A stale social media page can make everything difficult for you.
Include an automated reply service or even a full-time human customer chat service to keep your customers happy. Customers prefer their issues being addressed in the least time.
Engage your customers and encourage them to tag your business name by including activities, games, challenges, etc.
Stay close to your customers by replying to comments messages, mentions, etc. but make sure you are not over self-promotional.
Decide what kind of reputation you want
Replying to comments and mentions varies with different conditions. The response a customer expects for an after-sale service will be different from the response they expect for game or challenge mention.
Decide what kind of reputation you want among the users in social media. You can be a serious formal business page, can be a fun troll business profile or even a mix of all these.
This selection can also vary according to your business.
Select the aptest reputation which you want among users and stick on to these throughout your social media responses.
An occasional change in attitude can also be a way to create a sudden spike in engagement.
Encourage Reviews
Reviews are the most important factor in improving your reputation and business. Leaving a space for your customers to review your products can bring a positive feeling among other users. This can make them feel you are confident about your products, amenable to suggestions, and good in after-sale customer service.
Rather than sticking on to the regular review space, create posts, polls or questions which can make customers review your product. Easy clickable call to action review posts can even help you to convert a follower to a customer.
Monitoring these reviews and continuously engaging with customers can help you increase brand reputation and also help you reduce negative reviews.
Some customers may not prefer getting asked too many questions. Try to make sure you do not annoy your customers by trying to over engage them in your business profile.
Content strategy
Contents keeps your page live. Contents help you to be displayed in the timeline of your users.
Make a detailed plan of building content which reflects your social media reputation. All the contents including posts, comments, mentions, everything should be made in such a way it doesn’t change your reputation.
Following a specific pattern with respect to your business or services can help in bringing more users with similar interests or needs to your social media profile.
Conclusion
Managing your social media profile is not an easy task. All your business reputation can be spoiled in one single instance.
From the setting of goals to building a reputation requires great planning, preparation, and application. Each business is different from others, so build a reputation that suits your business making use of different tools and applications.
Successful brands or businesses create more business and customers by creating a great social media reputation.
With proper planning and application of the above-mentioned steps and tips followed, you too can create a positive social media reputation for your business.
