Your reputation is the currency of operation on social media. Can users trust your brand? What is the general perception revolving around your brand? What do social media users think about when your brand name pops up? If you know the answers to these questions, you will be able to protect your reputation or address any shortfalls that could significantly harm your brand activity both online and offline.
According to the prominent investor Warren Buffet, your reputation will take years to build but may come undone in a matter of minutes. On the internet, where perception is king, this may be even quicker and could carry significant and lasting consequences. If your reputation takes a hit online, you will need to address it swiftly.
But what may damage your reputation on social media? There are many factors that could influence user perception negatively and impact your brand. You need to be careful about the consistency and quality of your posts, as well as the subject matter. You also need to watch your interaction with clients, as well as you affiliated partnerships. You could even get a bad reputation by consistently advertising products to your followers instead of using a more subtle approach. Almost every negative social media activity can harm your reputation on social media.
How to fix your damaged reputation on social media
Has your reputation taken a hit? You may have a harder time achieving your desired metrics of growth without positive public perception. It is important that you address this as quickly as possible. The first and most integral step is finding out what is responsible for the development of an unfavorable perception. If you do not address it, any other efforts listed below that do not directly look to mitigate it could be pointless and ineffective. These are the most common causes of negative perception and how you may overcome them to gain favorable backing for your brand on social media.
Use paid ads instead of centering your activity on advertisements
Users on social media will associate your brand with excessive advertisements if you take up an aggressive advertisement approach. Many will prefer to interact with your brand on a personal level, which may mean finding informative, helpful and entertaining content. When you focus too much on advertisements, they will be unlikely to find any value in your brand. Your efforts could even work to detract them further. A great case in point against advertising is the impact that marketing strategies may have through Facebook. If you share adverts directly through your social media pages on the platform, they generally have a less than favorable likelihood of increasing conversion levels. However, using paid targeting options could help drive up sales significantly, even when you do not carry out any advertisements on your profile.
Increasing your staffing needs to match your capacity requirements
There are many strategic questions that will guide your social media planning before you even set up on the platform. You need to understand how you will use social media to get ahead in order to actually benefit. Without careful planning, you could end up engaging in social media activity that could have little impact on your ability to benefit. Before you set up your accounts, you also need to make sure you can handle the increased staffing needs. Many people, as mentioned above, will be unlikely to trust brands that are inconsistent in their activity. By setting up on social media without sufficient capacity, you could run the risk of harming your potential clients’ trust in your brand. Instead, you should make careful considerations about your staffing capacity to avoid any such eventuality. If you do not have enough staff to handle a social media account, you should avoid setting up on the platform. If you have already accrued a bad reputation from poor staffing, you should consider increasing your staff size to match your needs. Only consider closing down different social media accounts if you do not feel that you can meet the increased staffing demands imposed by having multiple social media accounts.
Set up a social media policy to guide your representation
By setting up a social media team, you could run the risk of damaging your reputation. There are many brands that have faced significant damage to their reputation as a result of the actions of their representatives. How can members of your team affect your brand’s reputation? The quality and content of their posts to your brand accounts, particularly if they are unapproved, could affect user perception of your brand. They may also impact your reputation through their private social media accounts, since your followers could take their opinions as representing your own. It is a potentially risky course with significant consequences that may occur without any actual input from your brand. In the event that a member of your social media team misrepresents your brand, you need to issue an apology for their actions and make it clear that they do not represent your views. You can require social media team members top take a course on how to represent your brand online, as well as set out a social media policy that dictates how and when they should share posts. You may also approve posts beforehand to avoid any risk to your reputation arising from their actions. If they are on social media, you can require that they share a disclaimer that distinctly draws a line between their private accounts and your brand.
Final word
A damaged reputation could have lasting consequences on your brand. You need to take up preventive measures to avoid this risk. If you already have experienced a shift in perception, you may need to take up swift and decisive measures to address it. The longer any negative perception is left unaddressed, the more likely it is to grow. You could also consider online reputation management to help get your brand’s reputation in order.