How I Made $4,212 as a Full-Time Blogger Last Month - brand reputation

For small businesses and large ones, brand reputation is everything. When you get bad feedback and the word travels, you’ll find yourself losing customers.

Luckily, there are lots of ways that you can keep your reputation intact. These five focus areas will get you off to a great start.

1. Be careful on social media

If you want to keep your brand reputation intact you’ve got to be careful what you say on social media. You’ll need to establish clear guidelines that illustrate your tone of voice, and values.

Anyone representing you on social media needs to understand what’s appropriate to post, and what is not.

Additionally, social listening tools can help you to monitor your brand mentions on social media.

Collecting this type of data can help you to keep a close eye on your brand reputation, and manage any criticism.

2. Robust security systems

Small businesses are often targeted by cybercriminals, if you suffer a cyber attack this can harm your reputation.

To avoid cyber attacks, what you need is a robust security system. To protect yourself online, pay attention to the following steps:

  • Invest in bot mitigation to protect your website from bots.
  • Use anti-malware and antivirus software.
  • Implement MDM and multi-factor authentication.
  • Provide your staff with up-to-date security training.

3. Don’t skip on CSR

To build a well-respected brand, you can’t afford to forget about corporate social responsibility. Consumers expect brands to give back to society, helping customers to make environmentally sound choices.

Developing a good CSR strategy takes time, you’ll need to align your strategy with your audience values. To start building a great CSR strategy, here are a few considerations that you can make:

  • Prioritize green practices when delivering your products & services.
  • Support charity or social justice organizations.
  • Gain audience feedback, and use it to shape your strategy.

4. Manage negative feedback

Even the very best companies get negative feedback from time to time, the key is how you respond to and learn from this feedback. Solving problems quickly helps you to regain trust.

Here are a few tips to help you deal with negative feedback:

  1. Respond as quickly as possible.
  2. Focus on what you can learn here.
  3. Offer a response that proves the criticism wrong (where possible).
  4. Track negative reviews (there may be trends here).

5. Product quality control 

Without high-quality products, you’ll fail to improve brand loyalty. The key is to keep a keen eye on product quality control. Assess the product production stages, see if there is anywhere that improvements could be made.

When you’re assessing product quality, it’s a great idea to obtain customer feedback. When you ask the right questions, you can gain powerful insights.

To help you can useful feedback, these questions may come in handy:

1 . What is the key benefit you get from our product?

2. What (if any) are the problems with our service or product?

3. If our product didn’t exist, which competitor would you buy from?

4. Why would you buy from this competitor specifically?

Focusing on these areas will help you to keep your brand reputation intact. When you regularly review your reputation, you’ll make improvements over time. Starting an online business can be tough, and it’s incredibly important to look after your image.