How to Handle Negative Online Reputation Using Social Media

If your business has been hit by negative press from a critic, client or media it is likely to show on the first page of search results. In order to push down this kind of results, your business needs to have an active online presence on popular social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.

There are no established rules to use social media for handling negative content — the points below however can help your business maintain a healthy online reputation.

• Keep an active online presence and focus on sharing content rather than just profile creation. Highlight the positive things other people or customers say about your business. Some social platforms even have features that let others recommend your company, like the LinkedIn Recommendations.
• Don’t respond negatively to online feedback that questions your product or any other aspect of your business. Instead try to resolve the issue immediately.
• Don’t choose a social platform just because it’s authoritative or currently trending. Pick platforms that are visited by your target audience. For example, LinkedIn is a great option for interacting with professionals. Twitter or Quora are for casual conversations and relationship building with all age groups.
• Try and target highly relevant keywords like ‘[Brand Name] reviews’, ‘[Brand Name] feedback’ etc. in your company profile. This is essential especially if negative reviews appear for these keywords. Techniques like this are part of the social media profile optimization and are necessary for rapid results.
• Another good practical tip is to connect the different social accounts to each other so search engines can correctly identify that all of them belong to one entity.
• Avoid making multiple company profiles on the same platform. This will fragment your presence and raise questions to prospects looking for your brand.

Previously, only the travel and servicing industries were using social media for traffic generation and reputation management. Nowadays any business in any industry is set to benefit from social media, including managing negative content that might appear. Around 75% of online users will click on a negative search result before a positive one if the prior ranks higher.

As such, whether you are a manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer, online reviews and feedback will always be part of any company’s reputation — this is inevitable already.