The online reputation of a company is responsible for the success or failure of a business. A good reputation will mean more sales, more trust and loyal users, which is, ultimately, the final objective of an ecommerce. So, working on this element should be one of the main dishes in the marketing strategy of any online store.
This factor is achieved with time, effort and resources. Offering customers what they want, the way they want it and knowing how to react if they go through a possible crisis.
There’s really no exact formula that will provide an optimal reputation, but you should start by listening to your customers. They will give you the keys to know both your strengths and exploit them, as well as to know your weaknesses and be able to manage them.
Even so, there is a tendency to think that once a good reputation has been achieved, there is nothing more to be done and that with a bad image, the business is doomed to failure. However, online reputation is a living thing that constantly changes. And sometimes, too quickly.
It is necessary to constantly work on it, especially if the business is going through a bad patch, as happened a few years ago to the Volkswagen brand (which we will discuss later in this article).
How do I know what online reputation my brand has?
Lets start by the beginning. To know how to manage your brand’s online reputation, you will first have to know what is said about you on the Internet. To do this, there are some tools that will allow you to know more or less the opinion of your clients.
Social networks, for example, are a very important source of information for a company. Through comments or likes it is easy to detect if you are offering your audience the content they need, or if you should change the direction of your content.
Users who follow brands usually look for quality content that may be useful to them at some point. It’s not just about talking about your brand, but about talking well. Analyze your audience, study what they like and try to adapt to it.
You can also do a Google search with the name of your brand, name of the product or service, or with relevant keywords in your sector and see what is said about you. If you can’t find opinions with these terms alone, you can also add the word ‘opinion’ in the search engine.
A Google search will be much more complete because both the reviews received on Google and those received on blogs, other websites or social networks will appear.
How to improve my company’s online reputation
An optimal online reputation is achieved through transparency, consistency, respect and credibility.
Working it correctly allows you to improve the company’s web positioning. This happens because a website with a well-managed online reputation is usually an authority page in its sector, which translates into high organic traffic.
To improve it, start by taking care of the image of your website and social networks. It is not enough to publish from time to time. Consistently define the tone of the messages with which you will address your audience, keep the website updated, generate interesting content or publish images with good resolution. In short, take care of the image of your brand and what you want to convey with it at all times.
Another important factor is that you know your clients well. But how will you know what they want if you don’t ask them? For this, there are tools like Revi.io that allow you to collect and publish user opinions in an e-commerce. This way you allow other clients to read about you and you can learn first-hand about the strengths and weaknesses of your business.
It will also allow you to easily and quickly publicly manage and resolve a bad customer experience. Sometimes, a bad review can become an opportunity for the ecommerce to demonstrate its professionalism and good customer service. Being accessible and approachable will translate into happy customers and, therefore, a good online reputation.
How to manage a brand crisis
It is as important to know how to maintain a good online reputation as it is to know how to manage a brand if you make a mistake. A poorly managed error can cause a brand to fail miserably.
In case you don’t remember, if a brand made a mistake in the design of the engines of its products several years ago, but to avoid the complaint, it decided to install devices in its vehicles capable of cheating emissions tests. When it was uncovered, it had to face both financial expenses and harsh criticism from its clients.
Their reputation at that time was in tatters and they did not know how to manage it either. They waited days to explain what happened, when the thousands of criticisms in the digital world had already begun. Now, this will be a fact that will stain the company always or, at least, for a long time.
If you want to achieve a good online reputation, business transparency and respect for customers is essential. If not managed quickly and effectively, an online reputation crisis can destroy, in a very short time, an impeccable brand image built after years of hard work.
