Social Media Reputation Management - Why Is This Important and How To Develop Your Strategy

Elena Cucu -

Building up your business means paving your way to success based on a set of rules, values and ideas in which you believe in. Your only goal is to satisfy a need for your clients and make it profitable.

When promoting your brand on social media, reviews and feedback will soon appear. Some may be overwhelming, while others may discourage you.

You need to know from the start that social media reputation management for your brand is not an easy job. Being patient and kind to your customers are the little things that will really make a difference in a world where competition is wild.

In what follows, we will learn together everything you need to know about social media reputation management and why this is important for your business.

Ready? Let’s begin!

Social Media Reputation Management

  1. What is social media reputation management
  2. Why is social reputation management so important
  3. How to develop your social media reputation strategy
  1. Top social reputation tools to implement
  2. Social media reputation management - do’s and don’ts

1. What is social media reputation management

Social media reputation management relies on performing a brand audit, monitoring and listening to learn what your audience says and thinks about your business.

Your brand’s reputation depends on the way you interact with your audience. One of your business purposes is to increase brand awareness through positive feedback.

And once you get noticed on social media, a sea of reviews, polls and mentions will emerge. Does this make you feel anxious already?

The odd thing about it is that you cannot only focus on the bright side of things (namely positive feedback), but also on negative reviews.

Such a thorough analysis implies the use of several strategies and tools to facilitate your journey towards having a successful brand and happy clients.

You may think that’s impossible, but you should know that, although it requires a lot of effort, it is attainable.

Keeping track of users’ feedback and being fast and consistent when responding to their queries can offer you bonus points in the eyes of prospective clients.

The way you interact with your present customers says a lot about how much you care about them being satisfied and how careful you can be with future clients.

That is why, you need to keep in mind that your behavior in the online world is being constantly watched and judged by thousands (probably millions) of eyes.

Be careful when you choose your words when talking to customers. Once you hit that “send” button, there is no going back.

2. Why is social media reputation management so important

Now that the term social reputation management starts becoming more familiar, it is time to go deeper into the problem.

You are probably wondering why this thing is necessary and whether your brand is going to “survive” and thrive on social media without it.

Well, the short answer is no. If you are looking for the entire explanation, the long answer is coming up.

Imagine this. You’ve launched your brand for some time now. You are active on all big social media platforms and as you get noticed, your follower count rises, your number of customers increases and you start getting reviews.

Like in any industry available on the market, there are always some really happy clients, while others are not satisfied and may be complaining.

You should not immediately jump to conclusions and think that’s entirely your fault. Maybe they just had a bad day and that cumulated with a late customer service response from you.

Or maybe it is your fault, but the sooner you solve the problem, the better.

Building a social media reputation management means learning how to cope with any type of situation, especially when it comes to angry clients.

Keep in mind that, when buying a service or product, usually people click on reviews to decide. If all they see are negative comments and unsolved issues, they will most certainly avoid hitting that “Add to cart” button.

Brand reputation management is making sure that you keep a friendly connection with your customers, satisfying their needs, while they offer you positive reviews. I think this is a fair exchange.

3. How to develop your social media reputation strategy

Since we’ve learned the “what” and the “why” of social media reputation management, now it’s time for the “how”. In what follows, you’ll find out how to develop your social media reputation strategy to rock the marketing world.

This step-by-step guide on brand reputation management is exactly what you need to fuel brand awareness.

  • Perform a brand audit to discover more

Firstly, before panicking when hearing the words “negative reviews” (like I do), you should see what your brand’s current position and status.

How many positive vs negative reviews, votes, polls you’ve got lately?

You should ask yourself this question at least once every quarter, being always aware of what people think about your brand and services.

A social media audit is a great asset dor your social media management process, since it will help you learn more on your brand’s evolution while your marketing campaign is still developing.

Check your engagement rate on all social media platforms, follower count, reach, demographics and video views.

To perform an in-depth audit, you could use a social media analytics tool, like Socialinsider, to look at all the metrics and compare your brand with the market in your industry.

Moreover, it will come in handy if you also implement the use of a listening and monitoring tool to help you find out what people say about the changes you’ve made with your new campaign.

This way, you will find out whether you need to adjust your plan in order to attain your company’s social media goals.

Keep track of all the mentions and tags and split them into positive, negative and neutral. This categorization will help you decide on your next marketing campaign.

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Recommended: 13 Essential Instagram Metrics Every Marketer Should Monitor

  • Track your brands’ mentions

To always keep an eye on what users say behind your back (meaning without tagging you) in the online world , you need to use a listening tool.

Via this type of analysis you get a grasp of all the discussions about your brand on social media. Isn’t that amazing?

This will help you establish what benefits you bring on the market in your industry, what are your customers’ needs and how satisfied they are with what you sell.

By tracking your mentions you get a lot of data that helps you put in place a new social media reputation strategy.

You learn what you did good, what you did wrong, what to adjust to make it perfect and what to bring on the market to satisfy a new need.

  • Respond to mentions

When you track those mentions, make sure you do not only collect the necessary data from them, but you also answer the queries.

Even if users leave positive reviews, thank them for their effort. In case some people present you with their issues, make sure you offer to help them as quickly as possible and apologize even if their problem is not that big of a deal.

Going through all the mentions might be tiresome, but at the end of the day it will pay off. If you make at least 2 customers happy, then you win.

  • Control your company’s story

When you build your brand, you should tell your raw story about how you got there, how you transformed an idea into a business.

Showing your human side and offering users a sense of familiarity and comfort, will make them empathize and want to interact with you even more.

The same way goes with continuing to control your story even after you launch your business. It is better to not let customers’ reviews tell a different, hidden side of the story.

Be true to your brand’s values and remain faithful to your ideas. If you are honest, your audience will be there to support you even in your darkest times.

Keep in mind the fact that you tell your brand’s story through the content you post. You wouldn’t want that content to be too salesy or over-promotional.

Your posts need to address human issues and be touchy, rather than “hey, I want to sell you this”. Consider promoting your products and services as solutions to people’s problems and tell them why they need you in their lives.

  • Take action based on social listening data

Keeping all your brand’s social media pages alive and kicking is not really a piece of cake. You need a lot of content ideas, creativity and patience to do it.

When your brand reputation is at stake, you will want to make sure that you pay attention to every comment, mention or tag you get. For instance, a third-party tool like Socialinsider shows you all your brand’s mentions on Twitter.

Moreover, acting just in time when your customers need assistance is a blessing for both them and you.

This way you will manage to avoid getting negative, angry reviews from your clients. And that’s a huge plus.

To keep count of all the online discussions about your brand (even when users spell your brand’s name wrong), you need to use social listening. In order to perform this type of analysis, you will need a social listening tool.

This type of tool can easily help you develop a better understanding of how people perceive you and your products or services.

Based on their feedback, opinions, queries, questions, wishes and issues, you can work for the better, designing a new social media strategy to improve your brand’s reputation.

You have a lot to win after performing social listening and learning what it’s wrong (if there is anything wrong) with your business and how users perceive your efforts.

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Recommended: 9 of the Best Twitter Analytics Tools to Take Your Strategy to the Next Level

4. Top brand reputation tools to implement

  • Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a great tool that you can use for listening and monitoring to determine your brand’s reputation in the online world. If you decide to give this app a try, you will be more than happy to discover every mention and discussion about your brand.

  • Reputology

Reputology is a management and monitoring platform which can come in handy when it comes to analyzing your brand’s reputation. This tool shows you all the reviews and comments about your brand that exist on the web.

  • Brandwatch

Another useful tool for reputation management is Brandwatch. This social media marketing app offers you filtering and sorting options so you can track all the mentions from social media platforms.

  • Brand24

Brand24 is another useful app which offers you the option to create a project and then track a brand’s identity. You can either track online conversations and comments about other brands or about your own business. Moreover, you can also search mentions by campaign, depending on a campaign’s tag.

  • BrandMentions

BrandMentions allows you to listen to what users say about your business and products on all social media platforms. You can search by keywords and you can also research your competitors’ reviews and see which one of you has more negative reviews.

  • Digimind

Digimind helps brands find out what people think about their products and services, tracking all mentions and tags. This useful reputation management tool offers a lot of metrics, besides the monitoring feature.

  • Talkwalker

Talkwalker Alerts is a tool which can successfully replace Google Alerts. The monitoring tool let’s you know what people think about your latest products and services and what type of experiences they had with your brand.

  • Meltwater

Meltwater is one of the first monitoring tools which appeared in 2001. This third-party managing tool can help you establish your brand’s online reputation. The app monitors all mentions about your brand from news to social media posts. How great is that?

5. Social media reputation management - do’s and don’ts

Through reputation management, you support brand continuity and sustain its continuous growth.

In what follows, we are going to look at the do’s and the don’ts of social media reputation management.

Do it to your advantage

• Be patient and respectful whenever you respond to reviews, regardless whether they are negative or positive ones

• Learn to apologize when answering to queries, even if it’s not your fault (I know that's a hard lesson)

• Respond and offer your help as quickly as possible when you get negative reviews; the ideal time span is within 24-48 hours

• Offer customers your contact info so that they can feel comfortable reaching you (Email or phone number)

• Make sure you announce your client immediately after solving their problem

• Nicely ask new customers to write a review after using your brand’s products or services

• Respond with a personalized message for every review (we are all unique, you know) and address the client by their first name to establish a stronger connection

• Try to take the conversation offline (if possible) to diminish the visibility of negative reviews

Don’t even think about it

• Start an argument with the customer

• Offer your customer gifts or any kind of “rewards” in exchange for a positive review

• Write scripted responses to your clients’ queries

• Violate the review guidelines of social media platforms

• Ignore negative reviews

• Delete negative comments or reviews

Final Thoughts

A social media reputation analysis offers you the chance to find out users’ opinion about your brand and your clients’ reviews, queries, feedback and questions.

By putting the comfort and happiness of your customers first helps you fuel brand growth and awareness.

You need to build your relationship with customers on a healthy foundation made up of quick responses and apologizes without even being wrong. Yes, we know how that sounds, but you have to be courteous and kind.

This way, you will be able to turn a negative review into a positive one in a matter of minutes, by erasing the frowning on your customer’s face and replacing it with a smile.

Hopefully this social media reputation management guide helps you build a successful marketing strategy. In case you have any questions, we are only a few clicks away, being glad to help you.