Reputation management refers to all the activities that are performed by an individual or an organisation in an attempt to create or maintain a strong and positive brand in public perception. A positive or negative word of mouth is enough to enhance or tarnish a brand image. So, corporate organisations must always be ready to either seize the wave of positive or to negate the bad press by any possible way. Without an effective reputation management strategy, even one negative comment can turn into an unnecessary PR fiasco.
Corporate reputation management has the three following stages-
- Building: This stage of reputation management is for businesses that are just getting started and thus need to create a positive brand for a surge in business.
- Maintenance: This stage of reputation management is for established businesses who need to sustain their carefully nurtured brand image.
- Recovery: This stage of reputation management is for businesses whose reputation has taken a hit.
In this day and age of real-time social media, when one negative tweet from a customer and a misplaced tweet from the social media executive can cause years of hard of work to go down the drain, corporate affairs management has become almost synonymous to online reputation management (ORM). The virtual world is where most of the action takes place and businesses cannot neglect social media backlash anymore.
Now, online reputation management is an intensive process that deserves unique attention from specialised personnel. There are many avenues one can tread to execute an effective ORM strategy. Regular blogging is a handy tool for ORM. Some businesses use direct reviews as a part of their ORM strategy by hiring people to write good reviews of the company. Businesses must also maintain their social media profiles and set a specific tone to their social media postings to distinguish them from others. The most important aspect of social networking is that businesses must acknowledge every query or complaint with a humble and calm demeanour. Very few things hurt your reputation as much as losing your cool in front of your entire social media audience does. And for every complaint, there will be a positive comment which must be met with a heartfelt thank you. That is how businesses should strive to build networks of loyal customers. Businesses can also create positive content and go on a spree of self-promotion to suppress all the negative content concerning your business in Google listings.
So, it is perceptible that corporate reputation management is a significant part of the marketing strategy of any company and can make or break the deal for them.