In order to manage your online reputation, you can’t just spam-email people or change your opinions whichever way the wind blows. Your brand needs to be entertaining, engaging, and consistent. There are some tried-and-true methods for building up your brand that you can employ to grow your fan base exponentially – with a little patience and hard work.

Let’s talk about some of the best white hat methods to manage your online reputation!

Produce video content to manage your online reputation

Videos bring a face to the brand and help your viewers to get closer to you. This means that you absolutely need to have them. Now, with that in mind, the average viewer has an attention span of about 8 seconds so you need to hook them early in the video. Make sure that you open with something that gets their attention so that they’ll be interested in watching the rest of what you have to say.

Video also sells products, with about 64% of customers becoming interested in a product after a novel video. With any luck, you’ll go viral, but you won’t have a chance of that if you don’t get over your shyness and produce some videos.

Videos are worthless if no one can find them

Videos are a labor of love. You have to find the right words, images, special effects, and mini-video snippets to splice together into something that will keep your audience’s attention. All that hard work will be for nothing if no one knows where to look for it.

This means that you need a video distribution strategy and that’s going to be through social networks. Make sure that your video is posted on the following:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Youtube

Think of it as standard advertisements that you see whenever you walk outside. If your ads are on park benches, billboards, subway walls, and in bus stations then more people will see them and over time you’ll get the attention that your brand deserves.

A good performer knows their audience

You need to have a good idea of who exactly your audience is so that you can customize your content. If your content is scattered you run the risk of confusing your core audience or worse – alienating them. By learning a little bit about who is watching, you can ensure that you are producing what most of your viewers wish to see.

This is probably the most important advice that we can give. Know your viewers so that you can excite them – not disappoint them.

Be yourself because the internet remembers EVERYTHING

You need to be consistent in what you say. Wavering views aren’t going to do you any good and if you are anything but honest, someone is going to notice. If you make the mistake of posting something on social media that doesn’t fit your brand then someone is going to find it, post it, and your brand may never recover.

Be yourself and don’t be dishonest just to catch a few views from something that is trending at the time. It’s never worth it in the long run.

Check regularly to see what people are saying about your brand

You need to search weekly (or daily if you can) to see what people are saying about you. Googling your name or your brand name daily can help you to find out what people are saying about you. To make the search easier, use quotation marks. These make Google only return the most targeted information. For example:

“my brand name”

Adding those quotes will help to filter results to just your name. This can help you to see when people are particularly happy with you or when you’ve managed to irritate your fan base and this is information that you NEED to know.

Communication helps your audience to feel close to you

You also need to communicate with your followers. Interacting with your audience from time to time helps to make them feel involved personally in your brand. When you respond to someone, they are likely going to tell their friends, ‘hey look, -brand name- talked to me’, and those friends will go to look and possibly view your content.

This exposes your brand to new potential followers and that can multiply your fan base exponentially. So, make it habit to communicate regularly. Show them that you are real and that you are listening to them.  Set a little time aside every day for it and your brand will grow.

React to negative reviews professionally – never emotionally

You are going to have some critics. It is impossible to avoid and it’s also very frustrating. Your initial reaction might be to say something nasty but that will only harm your brand.

When you are responding just keep the following things in mind:

• Always be friendly – it shows that you aren’t phased by their criticism.
• Don’t make it personal – Use their name, of course, but don’t make any personal, cutting comments (no matter how much you want to).
• Don’t try to sell anything – They’ll just make fun of it and you don’t want them to criticize your wares, too.
• Always thank them for their feedback – “I appreciate your feedback, thanks so much for sharing.” Is a good response and it doesn’t give them much to work with if want to lob something nasty at your reply.

Sharing helps to encourage your brand

Another great way to get fans on board and to drum up excitement for your brand is by sharing. If you get a good review, check out that user’s profile, and get in the habit of this. If you stumble onto some content that you like then feel free to share it.

Check the user out thoroughly before you do, though, just in case they’ve got some content that doesn’t match your brand. You don’t want to get backlash for endorsing anyone and if you don’t do your homework, you might accidentally do just that.

If they seem to be well-aligned with your brand then go ahead and share their content with your viewers. What happens with this is that your viewers know that they too might be shared and this will drum up more reviews and more excitement.

Manage your online reputation

Today we’ve explored the world of white hat techniques to grow your brand and manage your online reputation. As you can see, consistency is key when it comes to growing and keeping your core audience. Saturate social media with your content so that people can find it, be yourself, and communicate with your fans.

Once your core audience is aware of you and they feel that they are part of your brand then they are going to do most of the heavy lifting in growing your online presence. You can count on it!