How Social Media Impacts Your Online Reputation

How Social Media Impacts Your Online Reputation

Social media matters. Even if you try to avoid it in your personal life, your business must be represented on the major social networks.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other networks have billions of users across the globe. Consumers of all ages and demographics use them on a daily basis, and countless businesses are actively engaging with them through text, images, and video.

If you aren’t, you’re falling behind, and your reputation may be suffering.

So just how does social media impact your online reputation, and how can you use it to your advantage?

Be Inspired to Be Better

Word of bad behavior or gaffs on social networks carry real weight with consumers and can bring negative attention to your brand within hours.

For example, United Airlines made the news in 2017 when a paying customer was dragged off one of their planes because it had been overbooked. The violent video went viral, and the situation only worsened when the CEO was found to have little grasp of the incident’s horror.

In a case like this, social media showed the world a glimpse of United Airlines’ corporate attitude and values that was truly ugly, and people voiced their disgust by the thousand. It was inevitable that someone would record the incident on their smartphone and share it with others, but United Airlines did little to ease people’s fury.

Social media should make you more aware than ever that everyone has a voice today. One consumer who experiences appalling service (or flat-out indecency, as with United Airlines) now has the power to tell millions of others across the globe to boycott the business in question.

How can you avoid such extreme repercussions? Concentrate on making sure your company’s protocols, processes, and training allows no room for incendiary behavior. At the least, you reduce the risk of damaging your own reputation. At the most, you will help it get better and better.

Also, social media results tend to appear high on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Any results carrying negative information on your brand will be eased lower and lower down the page, reducing the risk of consumers seeing bad reviews before visiting your warm, welcoming social accounts.

Of course, as we established above, bad customer experiences can find their way onto social networks and catch fire quickly. Your page may be bombarded with questions and demands for a response if your business acts in a way it shouldn’t – visitors will encounter this and may form an unfair opinion.

Keep Up to Date with Your Reputation

Another perk of social media is that it lets you monitor what people are saying about your business.

You may not be able to track every comment on every network, but you can still see enough to gauge public opinion. It’s vital to respond to people as and when you can, to help manage your reputation.

Nothing makes a business appear unprofessional and uncaring than a string of unanswered Tweets or Facebook posts on their page. Consumers lodging complaints, asking about upcoming products, demanding information on late deliveries, and generally sounding off can be enough to paint quite the unattractive picture of a business within seconds.

You need to stay on top of your social accounts as best you can and engage with followers whenever possible. Even if they are saying something negative, your response can prove essential in winning them over. You need a strategy in place to handle comments and feedback, no matter the language used, no matter how angry the writer obviously is.

Allowing yourself or anyone else from your company to respond without thinking, based on emotion rather than good business management, can be a terrible mistake. Even if you cannot think of a suitable way to address it immediately, it may be best to leave the comment without a response for a day or so – this would be far less harmful than an enraged rant.

We can help you setup the right tools to monitor mentions of your brand, and let you know whenever your brand is mentioned on social sites, forums, news pages, and more.

Be Positive

Following on from responding to negative comments and feedback, you need to interact with people writing positive things too.

Saying thank you, sharing their kind words, or simply replying with a sweet emoticon can all show your business in a good light. It proves that you listen to what people have to say and value their input or custom.

Still, a positive, well-written, contemplative response to a criticism can bring good attention to your brand out of bad, too. It’s vital to be apologetic and address how your business will attempt to fix the problem caused.

You need to remember that other people will see any interaction you have on social media (unless it’s through direct messages), and even simple but positive comments can boost users’ opinion of your business. They may take a look at your account to investigate your products or services, and possibly follow through to your site.

Another key factor to consider is the tone of voice you use, and how engaging it is for your followers. You need to show consistency in your language and style from one post to the next, otherwise people may be confused. Social media can help you cultivate a strong brand personality and boost your appeal to your target demographic, so use whichever tone best suits your market.

Never underestimate the power of social media as a business tool, no matter how big or small your company is. Startups with one employee can build a wider audience through a well-managed social account, while the biggest corporations can be dealt major blows by their poor choices.

Call us today and we will help you create a social media strategy that incorporates the points discussed above, and you can help to make sure your online reputation remains strong for years to come.