In a world of hubris and ego stroking, the humble brag is king. What could be the most important element in corporate reputation management is showing humility in both positive and negative situations. It's something that conveys a strong customer centric approach.
Effective brand reputation management efforts are bred through strong internal communication, which if strategized and implemented correctly, always leads to customer satisfaction and increased sales. Your companies internal communication sets the tone for reputation management strategy and subsequent crisis communications.
In times where your business is facing negative comments in the public view, a critical element of your response should be built around the company culture that previously grew your loyal customer base.
Humility goes a long way and keeps your brand grounded in the minds of your current and future customers.
One of the best ways to keep ahead of potential issues, is to address them with targeted and well thought out keyword choice.
What better way to keep ahead of your reputation than by shaping it while also implementing your marketing strategy? Not only does it help with business growth, it creates positive reputation across a wide range of channels.
Rule number one of (at least I figure it should be rule number one) PR is to take control of negative sentiment.
Getting a negative review can suck, but what will suck worse is getting that negative review and not handling it before the public can see it. If your review/testimonial collection process only involves you herding people to Facebook or Google My Business, and hoping their reviews are good – then you’ve already got a problem.
Once a review hits Facebook or GMB, its already too late! You’ll have to address the feedback on those platforms, which can go either way in some cases.
Some people just want you to publicly fail, and will do everything in their power to see to that.
The absolute last, and worst, thing you can do is run around your place of business like you’re on fire trying to figure out who dealt with what customer. Asking how the interaction went left, and having to offer the world to the disgruntled customer or client.
If you were actually ranking these items from 1 to 5, this should be one of the elements of reputation management you should not overlook.
Remember how I said you’d have to interact on FB or GMB?
Sometimes that’s not the worse thing that could happen. If you, or your staff, are absolute rock stars at taking customer feedback and using it to make visible changes in processes – let that be known!
If you take a social, or authenticity based, approach to marketing – your best “in” with new customers is how you engage and interact with people.
I can’t count the amount of times where I’ve searched for a service, checked out the reviews, and was stopped in my tracks by the interaction between owner and customer. Gotta keep the crazy at bay, even if the customer is completely in the wrong.
Which leads to the last element of this list...
There’s a lot of Karen’s out there these days. Taking their sense of entitlement to new heights (great example of taking the high road when confronted in person) daily, it’s imperative for all brands and brand managers take the high road when dealing with negativity.
Of course this is easier said than done. And maybe this is one of those elements of reputation management that ties in ties in with another in this list.
One of the more base reactions we humans have is to hit back harder when confronted with words we don't like. We're sure you remember ‘yo mama' joke sessions spiraling out of control – but now there are cameras and screenshots to permanently archive those moments.
As long as you're taking the high road, your engagements with both positive and negative feedback should be manageable.
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