In today’s digital world which is online focused, any small crisis can develop into a major online reputational crisis due to the real-time nature of social media platforms.
Print media rarely report an adverse story about a company, but blogs, forums, and other social media platforms can do massive damage if there are any negative contents which can go viral in a short time.
The first step in online reputation monitoring strategy is to prevent a reputational crisis happening in the first place. This should be done with proper planning and the best use of all the online platforms where your brand is active and it should include monitoring of brand mentions, sentiments of the consumers and strong threat detection and protection plan.
Some of the strategies for social media reputation monitoring are as follows;
• List out the thing you want to monitor like the keywords related to your company and brand in online discussion that are likely to include company name, company website address, names of products, names of senior employees and directors, names of close competitors and common expressions.
• Set up accounts Utilizing social media monitoring tools which are available for free. Some of the popular tools available on the web are Google Alerts to track general mentions, social mentions to track social media, Blogpulse to monitor the blogs, tweetbeep to track twitter and wholinkstome to follow links.
• Run regular searches and set up alerts using RSS feeds which will immediately notify you when any mention of your name happens in discussions.
• Set up accounts in all social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and consumer forums where people may talk about your company so that you can respond to positive and negative comments quickly.
When engaging with the consumers there are certain rules that have to be followed;
• Since social media operates in real time, you have to act quickly to comment made by the consumers.
• Always be friendly to customers who give negative comments and solve their problems so that you gain respect and support from them.
• Be proactive in your approach when discussions arise and put across your point of view in an excellent manner.