Getting backlash and damaging your online reputation can make any business owner or entrepreneur miserable. However, that’s a part of building a brand online, so one needs to learn how to bounce back from this occurrence. Otherwise, they may not be able to rerun their business.
Here are the key things one should do if they find their online reputation going down for any reason.
1. Monitor and Listen
When you damage your online reputation, it’s most often best to monitor and listen before jumping up and defending yourself immediately.
Ideally, you should have a response soon, but sometimes, a fast answer isn’t helpful.
Monitoring your online reputation lets you stay informed about any negative comments, reviews, or mentions that may impact your image. By closely monitoring these conversations, you can swiftly respond and take appropriate action before they escalate into more significant issues.
Listening goes hand in hand with monitoring, as it involves actively paying attention to the feedback and sentiment expressed by your audience. By listening attentively, you gain valuable insights into how your brand is perceived and can adjust your strategies accordingly. You can then give a response that’s worthy of the damage that happened.
2. Respond Promptly and Professionally
Although you should hold off on giving out statements immediately after identifying a crisis, it’s still best to get your response out as promptly and professionally as possible.
If you take too long to respond, people will think you’re trying to cover up your misdeed (even if you aren’t). Hence, there is a need to create a prompt response.
Responding promptly demonstrates your commitment to addressing the issue and shows you take your online reputation seriously. Delayed responses can indicate indifference or lack of concern, further harming your reputation.
Equally important is responding professionally. This step means remaining calm and composed when addressing the challenge, refraining from engaging in heated arguments or personal attacks. Instead, focus on providing factual information or clarifying any misunderstandings.
Let them know that you acknowledge the situation and communicate your dismay professionally. Let them know what you’re doing to solve the issue. Simple.
3. Implement a Crisis Management Plan
If your business has a PR team, it should already have a crisis management plan. However, if you don’t know what that is, a crisis management plan is a comprehensive strategy that helps you navigate through and recover from an online reputation issue or challenge.
It involves implementing proactive measures to mitigate the impact of negative publicity and swiftly address any potential damage.
Outlining clear steps, responsibilities, and communication channels ensures that everyone involved knows how to respond effectively during times of crisis.
These strategies outline how to communicate with stakeholders, media outlets, and customers during times of crisis. By providing consistent messaging that demonstrates transparency and accountability, you can regain control over the narrative surrounding your brand.
4. Generate Positive Content
Although it may take a while to do this, you should prepare to start posting and generating positive content around your brand.
You don’t want to do this if the issue is still fresh, especially if you’re wrong.
However, it helps to have them ready once the issue has died down and you’ve resolved things. If you start posting positive content before you’ve solved or addressed the problem, that can lead to another backlash from your online audience.
With that in mind, the kind of positive content that you should be making after would be the following:
- positive testimonials of users and customers
- features and benefits of your product or service (if a business)
- case studies
- rewards or achievements
You don’t want to sound like you’re bragging, but you want to make things light moving forward for a bit.
5. Encourage Positive Reviews
As mentioned above, you should showcase customer testimonials to regain the trust of potential customers. Knowing that people still benefit from and enjoy your products or services can make people want to trust you again.
You should ask your current customers to leave a review if you know that they’ve had a positive experience so far. You can incentivize them with a discount to do so.
6. Engage in Reputation Repair
If you don’t have a PR team, then consider hiring one. Professional crisis PR teams specializing in handling online reputation management can be a massive help if you don’t know how to build your brand after a fumble, such as what you’re going through.
Sometimes, doing it yourself might not be enough; worse, it might aggravate the situation if you don’t know what you’re doing.
7. Foster Transparency and Authenticity
Now is the time to be as transparent with what’s going on with your brand.
Potential customers might think you’re hiding away if you start to be radio silent. They want you to be accountable, and they want you to be authentic and transparent at this point. So, make sure that you do.
Let them know what changes you’re making in light of the situation, and keep them informed of how these changes are going.
8. Leverage Influencers and Advocates
Influencer marketing can help you if you want to get people to use your products or services again. Just ensure you are partnering with the right people, as you don’t want to get into another blunder after trying to recover from an old one.
9. Cultivate a Strong Online Presence
Don’t hide away after this. To your online audience, it’s a sign of cowardice and that you don’t want to clean up the mess you made.
If anything, you should start cultivating a more substantial online presence out of this so that people know you’ve acknowledged your wrong and are doing something about them.
Just ensure you’re consistent with your communications no matter what online platform you use.
10. Continuously Learn and Adapt
Even if you’ve recovered from this, it’s always a good idea to continue your learning regarding online reputation management when digital marketing.
There are plenty of ways to better your approach to digital marketing, such as online courses like this Digital marketing course in Noida.
You can also learn from the experiences of others, the advice of experts, and even feedback from customers, both good and bad.
Conclusion
Solving the issue and acknowledging mistakes can greatly help repair your online reputation. By following the rest of the tips in this article, you could be on your way to making a comeback and building your brand once again.