We may be close to reaching the edge of the year 2020, but there is still time to adopt a new and enhanced online reputation management strategy and gear your business for 2021. It is so easy to destroy a company’s credibility in a matter of seconds.
Thus, utilizing content moderation services is essential in protecting your online reputation against user-generated content depicting hostile intent or promoting defaming, abusive, offensive or pornographic visuals and texts.
At the same time, the present-day society shows how people are more critical and precise with the brands they choose to support. Customers’ heightened awareness demands a more stable brand reputation. It is a highly instrumental tool for businesses to stay afloat, devise actionable plans to counter varying feedback, strengthen customer bonds, and ultimately get accustomed to the developing trends in the business industry. That said, here is a breakdown of the top trends for online reputation management in 2020.
What are online reputation management trends that you should follow in 2020?
1. Trolls are still your arch-nemesis
One of the 2020s most commonly practised trends for online business reputation management involves suppressing trolls. Although the digital space is rife with opportunities that are beneficial in maintaining and improving your online reputation, encountering detrimental factors that contradict your progress is inevitable. Of these factors, online trolls are on top of the list. their skills are dedicated to damaging credibility by focusing on your greatest asset and strongest source of audience impact on the internet—social media. They post content that causes harm to your brand online, and these contents can be in the form of texts, images, videos, and even advertisements that directly degrade your online reputation.
Here’s what you need to realize: There is a fine line separating real customer complaints from a troll. The close resemblance between the two is what makes it harder for you to distinguish genuine from fake followers. That is why it is essential to know that a troll only focuses on damaging your brand online, whereas a complaint concentrates on factors that need improvements and changes. Knowing this enables you to tread lightly in addressing trolls. This can be done by engaging with them with one or two replies, and if they are being persistent in delivering harmful and misleading remarks, then this is the time you stop engaging.
2. Maximize Social Media Influencers
2020 is the year when the impact of influencers on social platforms is just as strong as that of world-famous celebrities and industry leaders.
It is not too late for your business to work with an influencer to greatly improve your credibility to the digital audience. The scope of social networking and digital media may be a core contributor to your overall marketing impact. Your online brand reputation management strategy is potentially improved further by collaborating with social media influencers. Influencers can play as your bread and butter in extending your social media presence. They have the capacity to reach a wider range of customer demographics that your current reputation building strategies alone might not even be able to reach.
Influencers can play an integral role in how your audiences perceive your brand online by delivering a positive comment or reaction to your brand. Most of the time, it is in the form of a testimonial or a product review. Associating your brand with renowned influencers significantly boost your brand.
3. Reinforce Video Marketing
The process of establishing your reputation online also means reinforcing and devising newer ways of marketing your brand through content. It is an especially wise move to utilize contents that are visually creative and enticing. Videos play a crucial role in improving your current online reputation management strategy. Some of your best options for video marketing include explainer videos, testimonials, product reviews, and other visually appealing content that showcase the authenticity of your brand online.
These videos help change how your target consumers perceive your brand and enable you to penetrate your customers on a more emotional level. Featuring videos on your website and on different social media platforms help propel your online reputation towards your desired goal. As time goes, audiences will delve deeper into your brand persona and demand more visual content. The instant and magnetic appeal it brings is proof that videos and other visual marketing content are instrumental in maintaining and building an online reputation in 2020 and beyond.
4. Empathy Is More Than Alive
Empathy should be practised and valued by businesses more than ever.
One of the core goals in establishing your online reputation is to consistently be empathetic in terms of communicating with customers. Today, providing digital empathy may be just the key for your business to stand out. Indeed, providing the best visuals to feature your products or even working with an influencer can amplify how you establish your online reputation. But it also pays to know that nothing beats a business showing empathy towards its customers.
Since one of the most commonly used marketing channels is social media, it is your core responsibility to respond to all your customers’ concerns in the most empathetic ways possible. Make them feel that you understand them as if you are in their shoes. This enables you to have a more intimate connection with your consumers, gain more followers, and eventually turn these followers into paying clients.
5. Setup An Efficient Moderation System
The internet as it now takes on several, different roles. It allows different businesses to flourish and thrive. Unfortunately, it can be a very dangerous place as well. Most moderation experts in the industry like Chekkee would agree that the emergence of different marketing strategies for building and improving your social reputation also breeds individuals harboring a hostile agenda along with the most sophisticated tactics to damage your online credibility and reputation. The best way to counter this is to have a reliable moderation system in place to protect your brand against individuals posting content with hateful and malicious intent on your social media pages and websites.
Having a team to moderate all your online platform content will not only improve your brand reputation and credibility. It will also encourage a stronger following while helping increase your conversion rate.
It All Starts From You
The internet landscape is a plethora of both beneficial and detrimental factors that affect how easily you put your name on top of the most reputable brands online. 2020 is the defining year for your business to build and maintain a strong foundation of integrity. As we are counting down the days before the year ends, you need to make each day count. Follow the trends mentioned in this article as these will help you gear your business better against the inevitable evolution of the industry in the upcoming years.
What do you think of these trends? Are they worth following? Let me know in the comments box below!