Reputation management typically means the effort put into influencing how individuals perceive a brand when viewed online. Think of reputation as to how or what individuals think you are while the character is who/what you are.
Today, brand reputation plays an essential role as a deciding factor for a majority of consumers. A recent study reveals how 57% of consumers often review the social presence of a brand to learn about their new products & services.
Despite popular belief, online reputation is something that’s not completely out of your control. Several marketing strategies can help boost reputation and one such valuable component in reputation management is content marketing.
Through content marketing, you as a brand can control the story. Each aspect of content marketing – be it social media posts, videos, or blogs, it remains under your realm to rule.
In the end, the opportunity to influence your audiences completely falls under your control and how you implement your marketing strategies as well. So, how can you best execute this? Let’s find out!
What Does Great Content Marketing Look Like?
The goal here is to acquire as many positive online mentions and owned assets as this can directly influence good brand management.
The perception of your consumers largely depends on whatever content you create. So, what exactly is the key to managing a successful content strategy that will keep your audiences engaged and skyrocket your brand reputation?
There is a lot that goes into creating great content, however, we’ve narrowed down three essential components to keep in mind when creating content.
- Relevancy – Firstly, situate your company/brand as an insightful informative hub on subjects that remain elemental to your company/brand. By doing so, your content can match the wants of your audience.
- Consistency – secondly, if you're looking for brand recognition, it's crucial to keep your content consistent, be it in style, tone, writing, or voice as it will represent your brand personality.
- Quality – lastly, it’s extremely vital to portray the trustworthiness of your brand by utilizing original research, reviews, links, and testimonials from satisfied customers.
5 Ways to Manage Brand Reputation Using Content Marketing
While it’s not entirely possible to read the minds of audiences or control their perception, managing brand reputation is something that businesses can have full control over.
This is the perfect loophole where businesses can create high-quality content to make the best possible impression on audiences and so, here are 5 ways businesses can manage positive brand reputation through content marketing.
1. Stay Prepared
Our current digital space is like a battlefield, so, if you’re looking to override the competition, you have to be prepared. One great thing about the combined efforts of content marketing and reputation management is its tool availability for streamlining processes.
Through the use of correct content marketing along with reputation management tools, it helps in providing all the right weapons for any marketing initiatives. Along with other things, these can assist you to:
- Track your brand reviews and mentions
- Multiply customer feedback throughout different channels
- Oversee conversation for content creation
- Provide an efficient customer feedback response system
2. Remain Proactive and Positive When Responding to Brand
Be it a compliment or a concern from your customer's end, any brand mentions offer valuable opportunities for brands to create a positive impression and drastically improve online reputation.
You can start by personalizing your customer's reply instead of simply copy-pasting a generic one and remember to always thank your audience. You can also move questions or concerns away from social media to handle avoidable conflicts.
As cheesy as it sounds, implementing positive and proactive content can further your audience engagement and brand reputation. This includes answering any customer queries and responding to shout-outs as well.
Nike is a great example of managing customer responses. Being a huge company with several avenues and products, Nike created a separate handle for customer support where the social content is targeted at simplifying the process of complaints and questions from customers.
3. Initiate Community Participation
When it comes to customers, one thing is certain: they love purchasing products or using services from brands that honor and share their values while also giving back.
If you happen to be an active community member then this can be of immense value for your content marketing. After all, visual contents remain quite essential for brand awareness.
You can utilize this community involvement for increasing brand awareness and start by highlighting your online content through various formats like:
- Posting photos – A great way of tying up your community involvement with your content strategy is posting photos. If you’ve taken part in any fundraiser or a community event, you can publish those on your social channels and sites.
- Posting Videos – This is another great way of displaying your brand’s community participation. If your employees had participated in a sports event or something similar, post some behind the scenes.
Creating a nurturing sentiment and highlighting that community involvement against your brand portrays trustworthiness – something customers look for in a brand.
4. Mix Things up With Influencer Marketing
It’s always easier to build business credibility if there’s an authoritative figure backing up your brand. One perfect strategy for leveraging this technique is influencer marketing.
By mixing in influencer marketing along with your content marketing, it allows your brand to:
- Increase awareness – As influencers have thousands of follower count, the content they share regarding your products or service can expose your brand to potential customers and even reinforce those already existing customers.
- Build trust: Customers often believe mentions about brands when or if it is sourced from an expert within the industry. Hence, when influencers vouch for your content, it can immediately boost engagement with your audience.
- Provide fresh content: When brands collaborate with influencers, it proves as an efficient method of supplying fresh content like reviews or blogs about your brand from the influencer.
However, it's important to reach out only to those influencers that remain under your brand's niche. You can utilize tools such as Deep Social and Buzzsumo when scouting potential influencers.
5. Pick Topics that Remain Under Your Audiences Interest
When you’re choosing fresh topics for blogs, it’s important to not leave out the interest of your customers. For instance, if your Twitter followers happen to ask the same question constantly, you may consider writing on that.
This is something that offers businesses the chance to showcase knowledge and authority regarding topics that your audiences are keen about.
While creating content on topics that provide an insight into your company can also be largely beneficial for not only your brand but for your audiences as well.
As audiences love an inside scoop, content on how your products are made can be highly beneficial for your brand reputation.
Final Thoughts
Whether it’s ensuring brand-friendly search results, posting consistent customer-related stories, or building up content through negative experiences – the thing that remains clear is, consistent and compelling content is extremely useful for reputation management.
Your work and effort as a brand go beyond designing a website or creating traffic. A huge portion of your responsibility as a growing business depends on nurturing your brand image and the faith of your audience. After all, your success is their success and vice versa.
