Modern Brand Reputation Management 2023

Your brand’s credibility is tremendously important in the modern world. According to Invesp people read 4-6 reviews before trusting a company and making a purchase. And they spend around 31% more on businesses with outstanding reviews. Positive brand esteem is one of the main factors in increasing loyalty among your clients, building confidence, and getting to the top positions among your industry leaders. 

But in the modern world of reviews, influencers, and endless comments creating a positive impression for a business is rather hard to do. And keeping a good image is even harder. 

That’s why brand reputation management is one of the most fruitful tactics you can invest in. Read on to find out what it is, how to do it effectively, and in which ways PRNEWS.IO can help you. 

Build Positive Online Reputation & Remove Negative from SERP

What is Brand Reputation Management?

As the name suggests, reputation management is the practice of controlling and influencing how your name, product, or service comes across and is seen by the audience.

It is a rather old practice, originating from the PR world. Of course, it has changed quite a lot. With the growth of popularity of social and online media and search engines, managing your public image has become a lot more complex. 

Nowadays the practice includes not only the traditional media coverage. In a world where every unsatisfied customer can instantly share their opinion and broadcast it to a huge audience, issuing a press release once in a quarter is simply not enough. Brand reputation management today has to account for social networks, search engine search results, various review platforms, as well as user-generated content. It implies continuously keeping track of what the audience is saying about your brand, your goods, and your service. And controlling that narrative to the best of your abilities.

And, of course, solid brand credibility is not built overnight. It requires continuous work spread over extensive time. The results are usually not obvious right away. But in the long run, managing and controlling how the public perceives your brand brings undeniable benefits to the business. It allows you to stay on top of things and address any damaging situations right away.

What Does It Involve?

Your credibility depends largely on the audience’s direct and indirect encounters with it. It includes not only the quality of your products or services but how you treat your clients and employees as well.

So to effectively influence your credibility in the public eye you have to be ready to:

• Address criticism publicly
• Be open to feedback
• Allow everyone involved to share their experiences
• Engage with your audience

Brand Reputation Monitoring

Monitoring the online chatter should be the first stop on your way to successfully influencing the audience’s view of your company. Even if your business is new and the name is not very established yet. 

Defining the ways to track your credibility and other info that might affect the business is the key to success. Why? Because there is no other way to measure the impact the online mentions have. And to take actionable steps to control the narrative. 

The main thing to remember here is that most conversations about a brand happen outside its official channels. This means you have to be aware of everything said about your brand everywhere. Not only in your official Instagram account or Facebook community.

Monitoring can be done manually or with various tools. But it has to be done. It is the only way to react to potentially damaging comments before they become an actual problem. 

Online Brand Reputation Management Strategy

To be effective you need to have a comprehensive strategy with clear goals. You and your PR team have to know how exactly you will engage your audience, how you will position yourself online, how you will inspire conversations around the business name, and what content you will create to draw audiences in. The strategy has to be in line with your brand’s philosophy and values. And it has to be built around your target audience. 

The goals your strategy should aim for are:

• Trust. This one is hard to gain. But it’s achievable. Start with providing valuable content for free, help your audience create deeper emotional connections with your business. 
• Transparency. Allow your employees to publicly and freely talk about the brand. Address criticism publicly, humbly, and politely. Ask your clients for honest feedback.
• Quick reaction. Aim to reply to any requests and concerns of the customers as quickly as possible. Especially to the public ones. It’s better to respond “We’ll get back to you shortly with more info” than wait and appear like you are ignoring the problem while you gather that info. 

Best Practices

As with everything else in the world, there are tried and tested practices in managing a business’s credibility. Adopting them to suit your values and goals is guaranteed to bring good results.

Content Marketing

If you produce content solely to sell you are doing it wrong. Offer your target audience some valuable and free content. Content that helps them solve their problems. And you are guaranteed to get loyal customers who will eventually become your advocates.

Read more:

• TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU Stages for Your Content Marketing Funnel
• How to Assure Your Boss to Use Content Marketing
• Think You Know All About Content Marketing? Think Again

Focus on the Customer

It’s pretty obvious – happy clients provide stable long-term income. But your bottom line is not the only benefits customer satisfaction can bring to the table. Content clients are likely to share their positive experiences with your brand with their friends and subscribers. And this impacts the brand’s esteem significantly.

Of course, it goes without saying – whatever it is you produce or offer to the market has to be of the best quality. But you have to create a positive customer experience as well. There are a lot of ways to do that. You can provide personalized services, regularly check in with your clients, send newsletters and surveys.

The most crucial thing to invest in is customer support though. Fix all arising issues efficiently and you will rise above the competition fast. If you’re tight on budget, even AI customer support can help with simpler customer queries.

Employee Happiness

Don’t make the mistake of overlooking your employees’ happiness when developing the strategy for controlling the public view of your business.

The performance of happy employees is greater. Because they care more about the brand they work for and its success. You can not hope for a superior customer experience when your employees are overworked, unhappy, and unsatisfied. That’s a fact. 

Brand Advocates

Brand patrons are the best thing that can happen to your company’s credibility. These people are your clients, employees, and partners who love you and don’t stay silent about it. They recommend you to others on their social accounts. They provide you with free word-of-mouth advertising. They are the ones who make your image exceptional. So you’ve got to love and nurture them. 

Read more: What Are Brand Ambassadors & Why Do You Need Them?

Brand Reputation Management Services

You do not need to establish an in-house PR team. You can always ask external specialists for help. There are agencies that provide wide management services and those that do smaller chunks of work. External help is great because these people know what they are doing, they have all the necessary tools at the ready, and they can customize their service to fit your needs. 

How PRNEWS.IO Can Help

So how can PRNEWS.IO help you create a solid positive public impression? Remember the content tip above? We can help you with that. We cart brand content to the most authoritative media worldwide. How can this impact your brand’s public image? Well, if the most influential media have something good to say about you then your prospects are more likely to trust you. Besides, this way you can reach wider audiences.

Reach out to discuss how exactly we can help you build up your company’s credibility!

Read more:

• Comprehensive Guide on Personal Reputation Management
• A Strategic Overview for Corporate Reputation Management
• What to Do with Social Media Reputation Management