8 Ways to Manage a Social Media Reputation
1: Be an Approachable Brand
One of the best things you can do here is to be a brand that people can actually approach. If your reputation is that of a brand high up on a pedestal, not answering questions and shrugging off criticisms, then your reputation is going to suffer. Conversely, if you’re a brand that speaks to people on a common level, you will develop a good reputation as a personable brand, while still maintaining professional integrity.
2: Never Forget Your Professionalism
Speaking of professional integrity, this is something that you do not have to sacrifice in order to build a social reputation. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to perform a 180 with your brand just because you’re advertising using Facebook. You can still be the consummate professional. You can still take a strong business-first approach. You just have to remember the “social” aspect here and work on the approachable bit.
3: Update Your Material
You want to develop and maintain a reputation as a brand that’s worth checking out. Being a stagnant page on Facebook and other social media sites will ensure that the reputation you develop is one of a slow-updating, hard-to-change, uninteresting brand. Whereas frequent posts and new apps launched will give you a reputation of a brand worth visiting.
4: Show Some Consistency
Though frequent updating is necessary, it’s always important that you’re consistent. Your brand can’t be sporadic and all over the place; you need to play to your market and stay in your wheelhouse. Solid business principles like proper niche marketing and a quality-first approach in your material will provide a good reputation boost.
5: Be Active in Your Engagement
Engagement is the one thing that most brands are striving for above all others, and for good reason. On sites like Facebook, you’re not selling things from your brand page. You’re attempting to build up a following in order to direct these people to your company. Your brand is just the happy social face. To that end, doing things to boost your engagement numbers is essential. The more actively you pursue bigger engagement numbers, the better your reputation will become, as you’ll be seen as a people-friendly, sociable brand.
6: Show an Eagerness to “Network”
Part of what it takes to develop engagement, beyond the proper Facebook marketing strategy and tips, is to actually be eager to engage in dialogue with your base. That’s not to say that every single person to comment on one of your posts needs to receive a reply. This isn’t blogging. But a simple “Thank you guys for liking and sharing this post!” goes a really long way, so too does responding directly to a private message.
7: Keep an Eye on the Competition
What are your direct competitors doing in order to boost their brand reputation? By keeping a watchful eye on the other guys, you might pick up a few tips about how to please a crowd and how to organically boost your brand’s name. Your competition’s audience is essentially your audience too, so you may find direct correlation with what they’re doing to how they’re perceived, and emulation isn’t taboo at all.
8: Be Ready for Damage Control
Despite how careful you are at self-editing and monitoring the people around your brand, there’s going to come a point in time where you have to perform damage control. Part of what it takes to maintain a brand is having measures in place to help you limit the scope and severity of a crisis, so take preparations to heart and decide what you’re going to do should it all ever hit the fan.
The eight tips listed above aren’t the be-all, end-off of building and maintaining a solid reputation on social media. However, it does give you an accurate, helpful framework from which to branch out. If you can follow some simple advice, you should be able to construct a great reputation and ensure that your brand is always viewed in a positive light.
Author Bio: Craig Robinson, Editor at Qwaya.com – a Facebook campaign tool. Besides writing about marketing on Facebook, Craig also writes about social context and customer engagement online.
