Just as you would protect your most cherished valuables at home, protecting your brand is as important. Any unlocked doors or holes in the walls left unattended to or miskept are prime opportunities for individuals outside of your brand to take advantage and potentially sabotage your online reputation really quickly. How you choose to protect your brand matters and we are here to help you build strong, hole-free, secured walls around your brand. Afterall, it is your most prized business possession.
Why You Need to be Alert
You’ve probably heard of countless home security companies over the past couple of years as they’ve gained more and more traction. They offer their customers the ability to protect their homes; many of which at the touch of a button. Not only do their customers feel safer using their products, they are able to manage the security strength and measures they need in order to protect their home from intruders or misfortune whether they are home or away.
In the same way you would protect your home from misfortune, you need to stay alert about your brand’s reputation. Word of mouth locally can spread quickly in smaller communities, however, with access to the internet, damaging claims or negative content surrounding your brand can spread like wildfire… and in the matter of seconds. There are plenty of opportunities for people to take advantage of the gaps you might have in your brand and reputation. Knowing what gaps you have can help you be prepared for what could happen or eliminate them altogether.
The digital era has heightened the opportunity for misinformation, negative content, hacking, and sabotage of brands. Everyone has access at the tips of their fingers to display whatever content they want, whenever they want. In order to create a secured brand with strong walls, it’s imperative you realize where potential threats lie and how to correctively take action to remove or improve them.
Secure Your Brand
How much time and effort have you invested in your business since it started? Take a second to actually realize how much you’ve spent. It’s a lot we would imagine. That’s why it’s so important to put in the time it takes to likewise protect your brand. Having a strategy that aligns with your brand to maintain and build a strong online reputation across the board is the first step to taking control of how the walls around your brand are built.
Let’s think of the bricks as your foundational brand pieces such as what services you offer, the resolution to your customers’ needs, what sets you apart from your competitors, and so on. The mortar is the consistent work you put in to maintain your brand and keep the bricks in place. Managing comments, showing up regularly and consistently online, and creating opportunities for your community to be open and communicate with you can all be thought of as mortar among much more. All of these elements fall under what online reputation management does.
You might still wonder though, how does online reputation management help you protect your brand from the craziness of the online world. Let’s dive in!
Protect Your Brand With Online Reputation Management
To build a sturdy wall around your brand, proper online reputation management is needed. At Reputation Rhino, we believe it is important not to just scratch the surface of online reputation management, but rather fully understand and address the areas of any brand’s reputation that needs to be worked with to increase brand rapport among their customers.
Building rapport with your customers means that you need to have integrity, take responsibility, put others first, do more, be consistent, look good, communicate, educate, and monitor everything online surrounding your brand. When you do, you not only find your brand looking credible to your customers, you become impenetrable from the negative elements that affect each of those categories we listed. Here are the key points you need to be aware of and why:
Having Integrity: No matter what issue you could face, always choose to provide honest, clear, concise answers that drive home the reputation you uphold as a brand in your industry and community. Being transparent will uphold the trust of your customers and followers with your brand about anything they may say regarding your brand.
Taking Responsibility: When you are able to control anything regarding your brand, the actions you take, or the associations you foster, take full responsibility. Avoid blaming others and instead show your ability to be accountable.
Putting Others First: If you have the opportunity to help people solve their problem, understand your product/service, or learn more about your area of expertise, be a beacon of knowledge to them. Stick to what you know, but go out of your way to interact with others, putting them first.
Doing More: Going the extra mile isn’t just a saying that was coined for its catchiness. It really does make a difference! Always strive to do more or be more than what is initially expected by your followers and customers when it comes to what you offer. It shows you care and want to create success for them just as much as for yourself.
Being Consistent: No matter if you are in person or online, be consistent in the messages, interactions, body language, and words you express or share with your customers. People can pick up quickly on this, so don’t be wishy-washy!
Looking Good: Effort is everything. Making sure you stay clean, and presentable to your community of followers and customers online with your brand website and online profiles is just as important as being in person with identifiable branding that distinguishes you from the crowd.
Communicating: Work ahead of any crisis that could threaten your brand by devising a communications strategy. Know who is supposed to communicate with whom, who is responsible for each mode of communication, what words your representatives should and will use through voicemail greetings and live communication, and the tone of your messaging towards the public and your customers.
Educating: Provide factual information to your audience and followers surrounding your brand’s vision, mission, and services/products offered.
Monitoring: Address reviews, comments, direct messages, emails and chats in a timely and regular basis. We recommend taking a look at least once per day!
We Can Help You Build A Strong Wall
At Reputation Rhino, we help businesses build protective barriers around their brands with online reputation management tools and proven strategy. This helps them outshine the competition while creating long-lasting relationships with customers in the online space.
Online reputation management encompasses a wide range of online brand management tools to boost a business’s reputation with the online community while closely monitoring it for threats that could try to penetrate the protective barrier put in place. Choosing a fast, efficient, and effective business that specializes in all of this will in turn increase your business’ brand security as well as boost your overall profits.
We believe every business must carefully curate its online image with the same intentionality as how it (should) treat its best customers or clients. This includes ensuring business profiles are accurate and complete, with a correct address, phone number, hours of operation, etc., crafting content that builds rapport, proactively seeking reviews, responding to reviews promptly, and taking action based on customer feedback.
We are a solution-driven organization helping to build a protective wall for businesses in a wide category of industries. We do this by effectively strategizing and implementing the best practices proven to produce optimal results through the steps and actions referred to above. If you are ready to build a strong wall around your brand, reach out to Reputation Rhino today for online reputation management services.