The importance of a company’s reputation is often underestimated, until of course something happens to tarnish a once sterling reputation. If this has happened to your company, you and your fellow team members have probably been working frantically to clear that bad rep up to make it whole again.
Maybe you’ve even considered hiring professional reputation management services. Deciding on whether to go at reputation management alone or hire someone to help is the first step, and it’s not an easy decision to make. There are several factors to consider if you’re on the fence about it.
There’s a lot more involved than you’d think
There are a lot of moving pieces to reputation management and many factors involved that you might be surprised to hear about. Reputation management is all about getting your brand name out there to the public in the most positive way possible. This is done through several means, including social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram as well as search engines like Google.
If you want to go about reputation management as successfully as possible, you’ll have to focus on all – rather than just one – of these moving pieces. A common mistake is to only set your sights on managing your social media rep, but there is so much more involved that just Facebook comments and criticisms.
Brand reputation management is time consuming
You might think that you can squeeze in a few of your newfound reputation management strategies and practices here and there, but it is technically a full time job. If you stay on top of it from the very beginning of your company’s creation, you might be able to handle it on your own. Otherwise, you’ll need someone working on it full time.
Experts know the importance of all 3 aspects of a brand’s reputation
The main misconception about reputation management is that it is only necessary in the face of a reputation-related crisis. This is not the case, not at all. In fact, even when your reputation is seemingly flawless, you still need to put some effort into reputation management practices. If you’re company is large enough and experiences high sales volume, you might even consider hiring a full-time staff member to specialize in reputation management.
Professionals understand that it isn’t just about fixing what has been broken, it is also about maintaining what’s already there – and building what isn’t. That said, there are 3 main aspects of solid brand reputation practices: build, manage, repair.
The first step is to build it up with practices like social media marketing and search engine optimization. Then you must maintain it with review management and strong customer support. In the face of a reputation crisis, rebuilding must be done so that your company’s profits don’t take a huge hit.
As you can see, implementing a reputation management strategy for your business it will be extremely difficult to do on your own. If you are a small business or just starting up, go ahead and give it a try. Otherwise, your best bet is to hire professionals such as Niche Inbound to work their magic.
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