Protecting your online brand reputation in 2021

With the rise of the digital age, social media and more voices online than ever – reputation management has become a priority for businesses. The Local Consumer Review Survey 2020 revealed that 93% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses in 2020—and 34% searched every day. Effective brand reputation management can be the difference between being trusted, or appearing on Google search results as disreputable. Here are some tips on how you can build and protect your brand reputation online.

Run an audit of your online reputation

You can’t start reputation management without knowing what your reputation is already like. Take an extensive look at how people view your brand online, what they say about you, and what kind of issues you might encounter along the way. There are several ways you can do this:

• Run a search of your brand through Google and see what results appear on the first page
• Check that you are maximizing the use of snippets to promote your content and your business contact info. Snippets are bits of information automatically generated from your page based on the tags you use; this includes your title, meta descriptions, contact, product/service listings, etc.
• Note which properties you have control over (social media, your website, your listings) and which ones will require outreach (such as news / media sites, third-party listings) to correct any misinformation about your brand
• Regularly monitor and read through reviews about your brand

You can also use brand monitoring tools such as SEMRush for an overview of your online brand reputation. These tools can provide other useful information such as who your audience is, and where your online traffic is coming from.

Respond to queries promptly

90% of customers rate an “immediate” response to a customer service-related query as important/very important. By immediate, they mean 10 minutes or less. One of the best ways to offer positive customer experiences, and in turn improve your brand reputation, is to improve your response times. This especially applies to platforms with a live chat feature such as your website or social media. You can do this by using a combination of automated bots to answer frequently asked questions and live chat agents to address more advanced queries.

Ask for feedback

One of the easiest ways to boost your brand reputation is to ask your customers for a review after you’ve delivered a product or completed a service for them. Ask for a rating on Google, on Facebook or on any existing listings that you have. Why? 88% of customers are influenced by online customer service reviews when making their buying decision.

Transparency builds trust

In this digital age, it’s easy for anyone to run a quick search and fact-check what you publish online. Be transparent with your followers and customers, and practice open and honest communication. Address any issues that customers may bring up through your digital channels instead of avoiding it or deleting it entirely.

Hire a professional online reputation manager

The best and easiest way to protect your online reputation is with professional help. With our experience in sourcing and finding the most qualified candidates, we can help you find an online brand reputation manager who will be your strongest brand advocate—and who will help you achieve your online brand reputation goals. Get in touch with us today and let’s start building your custom recruitment strategy.