The Role of Social Media in Online Reputation Management for B2B Industries
Online reputation management and social media go hand in hand as negative reviews usually appear online due to weak social media monitoring. While the course is slowly changing, B2B companies used to ignore social media in their marketing efforts. It has been long considered that social media is solely effective for B2C businesses. However this has been proven to be a skewed opinion.
In spite of the conviction that social networks are meant for businesses to interact with individuals, platforms like LinkedIn have shown how they can become a source of network building for businesses.
B2B companies, similar to B2C, also can benefit from having a social media presence. This improves a company’s online reputation and helps at keeping negative reviews at bay.
High Authority Sites
Social platforms are considered to have high authority in the eyes of search engines like Google. Having a presence on various platforms builds a better picture of your brand in the online world. These will be the pages that will appear in the top of the search results and will help ward off negative mentions of your company. Company profiles on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn are highly relevant for search queries related to businesses.
Two Way Communications
Sometimes, a negative feedback might escalate on the internet just because you weren’t aware of it and could not respond. The person complaining has opened a Pandora’s Box somewhere on the internet because your business did not have an online presence. With social media you can offer customers a channel for communication where they can directly contact you and you, in turn, can immediately address it. Negative review resolution is much easier through social media and will not appear as a separate result in search queries.
Highlight the Positive
Further, social media is a great tool for promoting the positive side of your brand. Reinforce a positive outlook on your brand with customer reviews, case studies, infographics, self-organized events etc. We live in a world of sharing, so share details on your products, work progress on something new, ideas or how you do quality control. Try to offer a genuine insight, rather than do it for pure promotional motives. If users like what they see, the shared information will be a good enough long term promotion for your brand. The more positive content people come across about your company, the less likely they are to get influenced by negative reviews.
