Reputation
How Reputation Works In Social Media
Social media plays a pivotal role in how people view a business or influencer. From creating relationships through connecting with audiences to building a consistent brand image, social media promote business faster than other means in the digital age. This is why it plays a major role in online reputation management.
Many factors influence your image, and there are many options for keeping it under control. Below we cover how your social media presence as a brand is related to your online reputation and some of the actions you can take to stay in control of your online image.
Find out what works best for your brand, and you won’t have to worry about what to do when facing an issue regarding your brand’s reputation because you’ll already have a plan in place.
What Is an Online Reputation?
Once a brand has established an online presence, they have a reputation. Their reputation is influenced by content associated with their name that can be easily found using keywords in search engine queries. What appears in the results depends on what audiences think about them and how well a brand manages its reputation.
Having a strong brand identity and using a custom strategy for maintaining your online reputation will keep your reputation in the right light. There are many companies and tools that can help you manage your reputation if you struggle to do it alone. This can be especially difficult for new or small brands that are still learning the ropes of online marketing.
That’s where managing your online reputation through social media can help to start building the identity you want to convey. You can reveal your purpose, which is crucial for building loyal customers.
Does Your Social Media Presence Impact Your Online Reputation?
The short answer is yes, — your social media presence has a significant impact on your online reputation. What you post online affects how people perceive you or your business. Although not everything online accurately represents reality, audiences believe brands with credibility. Brands have a responsibility, to be honest with followers on social media.
Maintaining a positive image of your brand is essential for success. Any negative perceptions or social media reports should be taken seriously and acted on professionally to show how you conduct yourself when there’s conflict. Everything posted online can be brought back years later, so you must do your best to reflect the character you want your brand to be associated with.
What you post says something about your character. Some posts may not be as serious as others, but they send a message to potential clients and people who could be in your network. You don’t want to make posts visible for everyone to see that you wouldn’t want your family or other professionals to find.
No matter how long ago, the content you have posted on social media can follow you into new chapters in your life. You may not be the same person you were when you associated with certain ideas or other brands. Still, people in your life can potentially uncover information about your previous online reputation through a few simple searches. Depending on the circumstances, this can prevent you from securing a loan or progressing in your career.
Can Your Reputation Affect Your Social Media Following?
Your online reputation affects the way audiences perceive your brand. The way people perceive you offline will have a similar effect on your social media following.
Almost everyone is familiar with articles and videos circling the web with people documenting their experiences running into celebrities while at work or on the street. The feelings shared in these posts can affect how that individual perceives the celebrity in the future and influence anyone who sees the posts as well. Audiences want to spend their time and money supporting people they believe in. Credibility and trustworthiness are two elements that any brand needs to be successful.
What people know about you determines if they want to be associated with you. It’s possible to make mistakes online without tarnishing your reputation forever, but it does take work to regain the trust of your followers. Maintaining a positive offline and online reputation is necessary to keep your following interested in continuing their support.
Although there can be some healthy boundaries between you as a person and your brand, your online and offline images are intertwined. No matter how different you wish they could be, you have a responsibility as a brand to make these two entities as cohesive as possible so audiences know who they are following.
What Can You Do to Improve Your Online Reputation?
Any of the social media platforms you have an account with can be used to grow or repair your reputation. If you want to take your image in a new direction, you can alter the one you started by rebranding. This can be done because your original image doesn’t accurately reflect your goals, or you have made adjustments following a situation that negatively impacted your online reputation.
You should come up with a strategy that works for you. Every brand should follow a custom online reputation strategy to suit their business needs. Some ways to improve your reputation include:
- Use your name on all major social media accounts. Don’t be afraid to be yourself.
- Prioritize the social media platforms that are most relevant to your brand and audience.
- Be consistently active and update your personal and business profiles.
- Use a range of platforms other than the most popular, including forums, blogs, and multimedia platforms.
- Don’t post casually. Edit and review all of your posts before publishing them online.
- Filter out friend requests on platforms like Facebook from strangers or accounts that look suspicious.
- You should also filter out your friend and followers lists periodically to remove unwanted or inactive profiles. Inactive accounts can prevent you from generating the best organic growth.
- Don’t make it a competition. Focus on your growth rather than that of others in the same industry. You may have fewer followers than others, but you have more engagement on your posts.
Manage Your Appearance on Searches
All of the posts you like, comment on, and share, the causes you support, and the content you publish affect how your audience perceives your brand. Your actions play out in real-time in front of a live audience. There are many ways to improve your online reputation, and managing your appearance on search engines is one.
When people type your brand’s name into Google, what do you want them to see? Managing your appearance on search engines involves the keywords associated with your brand and the algorithm. If your social media profiles appear on the first results page, it will push down other results that may not be the most favorable. This gives people a more presentable look at your brand.
The results that appear affect your strategy and your online reputation. The top results will influence how people think about you, so you want them to be positive. You can monitor what people are saying about you all over the web, but sometimes it can be helpful to work with a company that can do the work for you. They will also help you develop a strategy to improve your results in the SERPs. Staying in Charge of Your Image
If you have a presence on the internet, there will always be positive and negative things for people to say about your brand. Monitoring how audiences perceive you is the first step to maintaining your narrative online. How you choose to react to reviews will affect your online reputation. You want to follow the strategy that works for you to eliminate responding to hate at the moment that will most likely hurt your reputation.
Negative reviews or articles about your brand can be spun to work in your favor. This may be difficult to accept at the moment, but there will always be enough positive things to outweigh the bad. You can use this as an opportunity to grow or spread more positivity. Take the time to respond to those who have said nice things instead of the bad to show where your priorities are.
Ignoring or responding to negative attention professionally can help boost your online reputation. You can’t always control how people view you online, but you can do your best to remain authentic and handle difficult situations without jeopardizing your reputation. There are many companies and tools to help you manage a healthy reputation.
Your Reputation Matters
Social media provides an easy way to connect with your audience and network with others. Customize a strategy to preserve your online reputation and generate brand growth. Social media can affect your reputation in positive and negative ways. Prioritizing your online reputation is the first step to being successful on social media.
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