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Brand Management And Online Reputation: Interaction With Customers

In previous articles, we explored online reviews and ways to explore them, and some ways to respond to them. In this article, we will discuss some more advanced ways to manage your online reputation and manage your brand.

Which phrases should you be tracking?

In order to do this, we will need to understand the different ways users post about your brand. You will not only need to track your brand name online, but every possible misspelling of your brand name that you can think of. If you sell any well-known products, people may well mention those and not your brand. For this reason it is better also to track any popular product names and misspellings thereof. If you have any well-known employees, do the same with their names, too.

It is also a good idea to keep an eye on key words in your industry, too. For example, we would want to track “Social media Marlow” and “Social media company Marlow” in addition to the more obvious “Social Buzzing Reviews“.

Finally, it is also prudent to check in on your main competitors once in a while too.

Engaging with customers

In previous posts, we have discussed the merits of responses. According to Sprout Social, nowadays more than a third of people turn to social media for customer care, well ahead of visiting your company web site, e-mailing you or telephoning for help. That means that some of your customer care budget would be well spent engaging with customers on social media. The average response time for businesses is ten hours – but if you want to really impress your customers, four hours would be much better.

Likewise, negative messages may sometimes require supreme patience and kindness. These media tend to be a very public platform, so it is especially critical that your company is seen to be as humanistic and kind as possible – a far cry from any canned or automatic response! If you make sure to hear your upset customer out, do your best to provide a solution, and let them know their situation is being monitored, you will have done everything you can for the situation.

Internal measurement

Finally, it is important for your own business to track sales from online referrals and reviews.  This will help you understand in the numbers how social media is affecting your company – and may well provide the evidence of return on investment to increase the budget for social media brand management.