Online Reputation Crises and the Role of Social Media
The best way to manage a reputation crisis online is by taking precautionary measures. Negative online experiences might be inevitable and instead of being reactive, businesses should be pre-emptive in managing their online reputation.
Online Reputation Monitoring
Surveys show that most businesses recognize the critical aspect of managing their online reputation. As such, these companies already spend time and effort on monitoring online mentions of their brand. The survey indicates that over 40 percent of digital marketers actively monitor their company’s online reputation on a daily basis.
Daily monitoring helps in constricting the reach of any possible negative mentions. As a result, companies lower their risk of losing potential customers that might base their purchase decision on what they see online.
People usually search online for brands, in order to get a more comprehensive overview of the company. They tend to look for signs of credibility to justify their decision. Should they find something negative, it could easily put off a significant amount of prospects from doing business. Hence, reducing negative online mentions provides consumers with a feeling of confidence in their decision to use a company’s products or services.
The Role of Social Media
Businesses also regard social media as the main tool to monitor online mentions of their brand. More than 40 percent of digital marketers said they spend the majority of the time searching social media for any negative mentions.
The major difference between social media and search engine platforms in regards to your online reputation, is that social media is much more difficult to control. Users will tweet whatever they want or go to any reviewing platform to vent their frustration. As a result, this can impact a brand’s reputation on search engine results.
Social Media Control
With the power of social media platforms, companies have a lower degree of control over their online reputation and a pro-active approach is necessary to succeed. Businesses should be pre-emptive about devoting resources to online reputation management. This will lead to much better results opposed to spending money and time on recovery after a negative online reputation crisis.
Online reputation management can be complex and can take a lot of time to observe tangible results. If your business is having a hard time coping with it, there are agencies that help companies solve their issues online.
External agencies are proficient in identifying the source of negativity; help you understand what distribution channels to use and how to gauge audience sentiment. As such, professional agencies can help businesses learn how to prevent crises from escalating in the future.
