Almost all businesses need to deal with some sort of crisis communications situation. This could range from a few people leaving negative reviews on your company’s Facebook page to a full-scale product recall that impacts a large chunk of your customers.
In these situations, it’s important to take the proper steps to monitor and maintain your brand’s reputation online—and there are some proactive measures you can take to ensure this happens.
Here are a few tips from our experienced content writers:
Make sure you own your brand
Of course, you should always be committed to your brand’s image and personality in the eyes of your target audience. However, you can take this a step further by literally owning your brand on as many online platforms as possible.
Make sure you have snatched up social media accounts for your brand and have purchased URL domains for your brand and any similar names. You might even consider buying domain names that have negative terms, such as [YourBrandName]Stinks.com. This might seem funny or odd, but you never know when or how angry customers could try to harm your brand in a worst-case scenario.
Finally, make sure you have official review listings up and running on platforms like Yelp, YP.com and Angie’s List, and that you have been encouraging customers to leave positive reviews on these sites when appropriate.
Learn how to better monitor your customers
Keep tabs on what people are writing about your company online, particularly on social media. They may or may not directly tag you in the posts, so you should also do searches for your company’s name to see what people are saying. This can help you to get out ahead of any problems that arise, while giving you an opportunity to respond to users who directly mention you and your company.
To that end, make sure you have a clear social media protocol for your employees so they can respond appropriately.
Promote the positive
You don’t have to promote everything your company is doing, but anything that is inherently positive should get some attention. Any charitable activities your company engages in, for example, should absolutely be shared. The basic idea is to promote positive aspects of your brand without it coming off as being to self-promoting. These positive stories help build your company’s reputation so that it’s harder to tear it down when a small controversy arises.
No business owner wants to see these types of challenges arise, but through these proactive steps, you can protect your reputation and navigate these issues successfully.