Does the thought of typing your brand’s or business’ name into Google make you cringe? If yes, you might want to revisit the concept of online reputation and what it entails. With everything being online and public nowadays and too easily traceable, cleaning up your digital shadow is a must. What this means is that you need to properly look after all your actions and communications on the Internet. It is, unfortunately, not enough to have outstanding services and products. The hottest commodity is apparently your services’ and products’ online reputation. To make your customers feel as good about your brand as you do, takes effort. Here are the most straightforward steps you can take in this direction:
Monitor your brand’s digital presence
It is safe to assume that you are present in all kinds of places on the World Wide Web. These include blog posts, review sites, and social media platforms. Ideally, you would want to know in what complimentary terms people describe your brand. It is a good sign when you are not able to monitor all this manually by yourself anymore. This is where brand tracking tools enter the picture. You may choose a free or a paid tool. Just make sure you choose one that can track all conversations about your brand regardless on what platform it appears. The tool should then be able to generate a detailed report of your brand’s performance. Talking about analytics, you may get inspired by the services the Citrix Cloud management system offers, particularly their analytics for performance.
Be aware of your competitors’ digital presence
Ask yourself what use is it monitoring your online reputation if you have no idea about who you are up against. See what your competition does, get inspired, and implement the best ideas in your business. Your goal by tracking other businesses’ online presence is obviously not to plagiarize other people’s ideas and rip off their products. Your goal is primarily to position yourself in the market. Competitive monitoring gives you the chance to analyze your own metrics in the context of your competition. There is always room for improvement, whether it is about your marketing and PR strategies or your customer service.
Have a review strategy
Develop a conscious strategy for your online reviews. This will help you more or less equate the amount of negative and positive reviews and ratings. Being mindful about your online strategy will minimize reviews from frustrated customers venting about their discontent. Simply requesting your customers to leave their comments or give you a rating may not bring the desired results. You may consider offering some incentives to recurring shoppers. These may come in the forms of coupons or an invitation to an inner circle. The inner circle would comprise those customers who would first learn about the latest discounts and special offers.
Work with reputed influencers
The most trusted way to convince influencers to embrace your business or products is to make them interested in them. This means that you would be looking for influencers who are relevant for your brand in one way or another. A popular bodybuilder influencer could be involved with a clothing brand or a sports nutrition brand. Having already well-established influencers cooperate with you is advantageous in many ways. Even if your brand is not that well-known, it does not matter as long as the influencer spreads knowledge about it. The influencer has earned their audience’s trust already, so them popularizing your brand lends you credibility. Reach out to those influencers who target the same audience as you and boast a good online reputation already.