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Businesses across all industries must seek to preserve and improve their brand reputation, to maintain the respect of their audience and the wider public. Negative reviews quickly have an adverse effect on a brand’s status, and in the age of social media, it’s important to keep on top of these. Luckily there are plenty of steps you can take to protect your business reputation, and maintain your appeal. To get started today, check out these simple ideas.

1. Create Reputation Guidelines

First things first, it’s important to create clear reputation guidelines, so that your staff understands what’s expected of them. Outline the values and ethics of your company and the reputation you are seeking to uphold. Determine the type of things your staff are permitted to say when representing your brand on social media. Create a reputation management policy, stating how frequently you will check online search results for your brand name. You should also consider how you will deal with negative reviews and press.

2. Devise a Winning PR Strategy

It’s important to devise a winning PR strategy, to ensure that your business is portrayed positively in the media. As well as this, your PR strategy should outline how you communicate within your company, and within your market. Your strategy should include a roadmap to help you manage a PR crisis. A few other company PR tactics could include social media, community relations, events, and influencer marketing strategy.

3. Work With a Reputation Management Company

To improve your reputation management, it’s advisable to work with a great reputation management company. These companies can take care of your online reputation, by tracking and molding your rep on the internet. Various strategies are used to improve and monitor online reputation. A few of these include tracking third-party sites, review acquisitions, monitoring social media, and managing content. A reputation management company can help your company to fix a poor reputation, as well as tracking your competitors.

4. Improve Your CSR Strategies

Corporate Social Responsibility encourages companies to consider the way that they impact society. The idea is to achieve a positive impact, whether that’s politically, or environmentally. Many consumers like brands to speak out against social injustices and support social causes. To improve your business reputation, you’ll need to work carefully, to improve your CSR strategy. Companies should seek to engage in philanthropic causes where they can, and represent the positive values of their target audience.

5. Use Social Monitoring Tools

Many brands like to use social monitoring tools to track their online reputation. A few of the best options include:

• Awario: One of the leading social listening tools, this platform covers the web, blogs, social platforms, and news publishers. A few of the top features include sales prospecting, analytics, and Boolean search.
• Mention: With the help of this social listening tool, brands can manage their online reputation with ease. Features include an insights center, customizable API, and an influencer dashboard.

Social monitoring tools can help you to enhance your online reputation, and gain valuable data to use to your advantage.

6. Get the Right Insurance

To protect yourself legally, it’s important to get the right insurance for your business. Failing to have the right insurance protection could end up poorly affecting the reputation of your company. The insurance you require may depend on your industry, all companies should get some form of public liability insurance. PL insurance covers legal costs and compensation payments, for instance, if someone sues your business. A member of the public might attempt to sue your business due to an injury, or damage to their property. Insurance packages will vary in price, so whether you’re looking for affordable restaurant insurance or cybersecurity insurance, ensure that you conduct detailed research.

7. Improve Your Customer Service

To protect the reputation of your business, you must keep your customers happy. There are many ways that you can seek to improve your customer service, including:

• Use chatbots to offer 24/7 services via messaging chat.
• Use CRM systems to monitor customer preferences and offer a personalized service.
• Train your staff to ensure the best standards possible.
• Minimize your response times, to reduce complaints.
• Ensure a clear policy to professionally deal with online complaints.

Try gaining plenty of customer service feedback, these insights can help you to work on your weaknesses. There are several ways that you can collect customer feedback, including emails, surveys, and chatbots.

8. Offer Authentic Content

To improve your reputation and branding it’s important to offer top-quality content. Brands that offer low quality content may cause damage to their reputation online. Ensure that you provide a range of content that’s authentic and unique while responding to search intent. Use content creation tools to support your creativity and find new ideas. Monitor your competitor’s content, to ensure that you are offering something original (and better)!

9. Seek Positive Reviews

Brands need positive reviews to improve their online reputation. You can contact your satisfied customers, to ask for reviews and testimonials. As well as this, it’s important to focus on your negative reviews. Offer a professional response, and show how you are dealing with the issues. Negative reviews can quickly damage the reputation of a company, and so it’s essential to ensure quality control at every stage. There are several ways you can seek to get positive reviews including:

• Offer incentives: If you offer an incentive (such as the chance to win a prize), customers are more likely to give you a review.
• Make it easy: Streamline the process, make it both easy and fast, so that you don’t take up too much of the customer’s time.
• Review sites: Add your business to some of the most trusted review sites, whether it’s Yelp or Trustpilot.

Protecting your business reputation is crucial to maintain your success, and rise above your competitors. Ensure that you keep on improving your reputation management strategy over time. Adjusting your strategy may be necessary, depending on which challenges you are facing.