Improve Your Online Brand Reputation With These Long-Term Strategies
Improve and maintain your online brand reputation with these 4 proven approaches, keep reading to give your businesses reputation a boost online.
It is no longer enough for a company to only sell a good product.
A brand’s reputation is a major factor when customers are deciding who to do business with. A brand’s reputation can be affected by word of mouth, but a brand’s online reputation is far more impactful.
What do customers find when they search for your company?
Do they find your website and social media, or customer reviews and blogs?
When a potential customer finds your business, they make judgments. There are simple steps you can take to improve your brand’s online reputation that will have long-lasting effects.
Know Where You Currently Are
You cannot improve your brand’s reputation if you do not know how your brand is currently perceived. You need a baseline to compare any improvements. How you find out what your brand’s current reputation is looking different for each brand. The Internet is a space for infinite conversation so there will always be someone talking about your brand and you can find these conversations.
Start your search where your brand is most present and active. If your customers are talking about your brand on Twitter more than Facebook, look through Twitter to get a sense of the brand’s reputation. If your business has a physical location, be sure to check Yelp and TripAdvisor as well.
There are also tools that will help you discover where your brand’s reputation stands. The Brand Grader will give you a fast overview of your brand’s online presence all for free. This tool will tell you where your brand is being talked about online, where the people talking about your brand are from, and whether they are speaking about your brand positively or negatively.
The Importance of Reviews
Many companies depend on customer reviews to discover what is working and what is not. It is in your best interest to encourage more customers to leave reviews. Be sure to have a dedicated section on your website for customer reviews so you can track them easily, but also so other customers can see the reviews.
People trust other people. Customers are more likely to trust a company other customers say they trust. Customer reviews do provide valuable data for a company, but they also improve a brand’s reputation. Positive reviews influence potential customers so they might become a spending customer.
To further boost your brand’s online reputation, you should engage with and reply to all customer reviews. The common myth is that you should only respond to positive reviews, but this is not true. Take the time to reply to every review either thanking the customer for their positive feedback or apologizing and acknowledging your business’s shortcomings. Thanking a customer for their feedback makes the customer feel heard and appreciated which improves your brand’s standing in their eyes. Did something go wrong during the shipping process on a customer’s order? Own up to it, promise to do better, and actually make improvements. Apologizing for and acknowledging your company’s mistakes humanizes your brand by showing your brand’s willingness to improve which improves your reputation.
Connect With Positive Brands and Influencers
Associating your brand with other brands with positive online reputations boosts your reputation in the process. There are many different ways to connect with another brand online, but some methods are more involved than others. Bring in influencers from other brands to write guest blogs on your website and link to it on your social media channels.
The content the influencer makes should be of good quality, but the content is not the main attraction for this partnership. An influencer writing a guest blog post for your brand acts as an endorsement. Having a brand or influencer endorse your brand increases your brand’s visibility and credibility. You receive some of the goodwill that your partnered brands have worked for. Partnering with a brand known for its authority and credibility will bring those same traits to your brand. Choose associated brands and influencers carefully based on what characteristics you are looking to add to your brand’s reputation.
Search Engine Optimization
There is an aspect to a reputation that does not deal with customers at all, but rather algorithms. The Google algorithm determines how your website ranks and where it shows up in search results. There are things you can do to “please” the algorithm and boost your reputation.
- Utilize metadata fields
- Link internally to other content pages
- Link to your social media profiles
- Frequently update content
- Ensure your site is mobile-friendly
Your brand’s online reputation is not something you can ignore. Find out how your brand is currently perceived and then invest the time to better your reputation. Listen to feedback, respond to review, connect with positive brands, and take advantage of SEO services to see a boost in your brand’s online reputation.
