Effective Strategies for Managing Brand Reputation on Social Platforms
Social media has torn up the old rule book on brand management.
On the one hand, the social media revolution has brought a lot of benefits to marketing. Social platforms give businesses access to audiences many times larger than any form of traditional media. And through the magic of ‘going viral’, it’s possible to reach those mammoth audiences with much less effort and input than you would require for, say, a major broadcast media campaign. In a neat twist, the audiences you want to reach take care of distribution for you.
Even more importantly, social media allows brands to interact directly with would-be customers on a two-way basis. As well as continuously gathering feedback from what social users say, like and share, this allows businesses to engage with customers on a much more personal level, helping to build loyalty and trust.
But there is a downside, too. ‘Going viral’ isn’t just hard to predict. It’s easy to attract attention for all the wrong reasons too. Social media represents a fundamental loss of control for brands, a new media ecosystem where users are in charge. Campaigns can be completely derailed by negative reactions, and materials that businesses would rather not be shared can reach far and wide. The reputational damage this can cause is real and far-reaching.
The marketing industry has therefore had to adopt new approaches to brand management that reflect these new realities. As a leading UK social media management agency, Key Element has been working in this field for more than a decade. Here’s our take on what businesses need to do to shore up their reputation management on social media.
Why does brand reputation matter?
Business leaders and consumers alike are in agreement about just how important reputation is in the modern digital world. According to Deloitte, 87% of executives now see brand reputation as the biggest risk area for their business. And that’s because, for consumers, online reputation is now the biggest determining factor when choosing which businesses they buy from.
According to a survey from TrustPilot, 97% of people say that a positive online reputation is the biggest factor in them trusting a brand. But flip that around, and 90% of consumers say they have decided against a purchase because of a negative online review.
That makes reputation management on social media especially delicate. It only takes one negative comment to lose a potential sale. But what’s most worrying for brands is how quickly those comments can be shared and amplified.
In the past, mistakes or poor practices in customer service could more or less be settled in private. You might lose one customer plus their close friends and family. Now, brands have little control over how an emotive story or video clip is transmitted online. You’re dealing with the fallout of mistakes in the court of public opinion. And if you don’t act decisively and effectively, before you know it, your name is tarnished in the minds of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.
In addition, people demand full transparency these days. There’s always the temptation to simply remove negative comments from your branded channels. But that can make consumers even more suspicious. As per TrustPilot again, 95% of people say removing negative reviews and feedback decreases their trust in a brand. It’s more damaging to have no negative reviews and create the suspicion that you’re removing them than it is to have some but respond to them in a sincere, authentic way.
How to manage reputation on social media
Given the nature of some of these challenges, it’s reasonable to wonder to what extent you can manage brand reputation on social media at all. After all, you’re not in control over what people say and share about you. And as we’ve noted, it’s counterproductive to try to ‘control’ negative feedback by seeking to bury it, anyway.
Nonetheless, there are ways to garner and maintain a more positive reputation on social media, while still being authentic and trustworthy. Here are our top strategies.
Use analytics tools to track and understand what people are saying about you
The first step to improving your brand reputation on social media is understanding where it stands in the first place. Some of the more established ways of measuring performance in social media marketing – number of likes, shares, click-throughs etc – are great for quantifying things like visibility and how that translates into conversions and potential sales. But they are pretty blunt instruments for diving into what people actually think about your brand.
Recent AI innovations like sentiment analysis can scan all posts and responses relating to your brand and quantify how positive or negative the discourse around your brand is. This gives you a good indication of how much work you have to do to achieve a strong, trustworthy reputation. By tracking it over time, you can identify slips and wins, and from there start to dive deeper into what it is that motivates people to say positive and negative things about you, and therefore where you can make improvements.
Understand what people want from you
By digging deep into what people are saying about you on social media as described above, you’re not just revealing what your business does and doesn’t do well. You’re also unpicking what people want from your brand. Every positive comment, review and like is a statement that you have delivered against expectations. Every downvote, critical comment and bad review is a sign that you have fallen short.
Positive reputations depend fundamentally on giving people what they want. There are other ways to improve your understanding of expectations. Social listening is another analytics approach that monitors broader conversations on topics relevant to your brand (including what your competitors are doing) and gives you insights into the latest trends. This can be especially powerful in planning social content, and giving your campaigns the best possible chance of ‘going viral’.
The other thing you can do to understand what your audience wants is simply to speak to them. This is ultimately the biggest opportunity social media offers to brands. The more active you are in engaging with your followers, the more you will learn about them and the better positioned you will be to meet their expectations. Plus, proactively engaging with people on social media is a great way to build trust and raise your visibility. 76% of social media users say they value responses when they post comments or feedback on brand content.
Take criticism with humility and honesty, but don’t be afraid of boosting positives
It’s inevitable that you will encounter negative feedback on social media. It’s just the nature of the beast. But another benefit of being proactive in how you monitor and engage with the things people say about your brand is that it gives you an opportunity to steer the conversation in a more positive direction as early as possible.
As we’ve mentioned, that doesn’t mean dismissing or trying to bury criticism. On the contrary, it’s much more impactful to address negative feedback with honesty and humility, offer an apology, and talk through how you can put the situation right with whoever is involved. This can often turn a mark against your brand into a plus. It shows you are prepared to listen to people, and you act on what they say. That’s a huge tick for brand reputation.
At the same time, don’t feel you have to be overly humble about promoting positive feedback, including full user reviews, on social media. After all, people value reviews and feedback from other people as a resource. A huge majority of consumers use them when making purchasing decisions. By highlighting good reviews and good feedback on your social channels, you are just making it easier for people to find authentic opinions on which they can base their own judgements.
Summary: It pays to take social media management seriously
Social media has been around for some time now, but from a marketing perspective, the opportunities and risks it presents continue to evolve rapidly. From the role of influencers to selling directly through social platforms, there always seems to be something new around the corner for businesses to consider.
What is certain is that social media’s strategic importance to businesses will only go. Those who get to grips with effective brand management on social platforms the quickest will have a competitive advantage for years to come. It therefore pays to take social media management seriously right now.
To find out more about managing your brand reputation on social media, and how social marketing in general can boost your business, get in touch with our social media team today.
Matthew Cowell
