Many first-time business owners are surprised to learn that one of their company’s most important assets is its brand reputation. After all, if your brand reputation becomes tainted, you could potentially lose both your existing and prospective customers. On the other hand, if you take care of your reputation and it remains positive, you could gather a band of loyal customers for many years to come.

In order to take care of your brand reputation, first you will need to establish it. Read on for our top tips on building a positive brand reputation.

Ensure social circles positively reflect your brand

While it might be uncomfortable to accept, who you are associated with can impact your brand reputation. Not only your opinions and actions but also those of people you are connected to, can make or break your business’s credibility. Be aware of this when commenting on other people’s content or sharing other people’s posts. Whenever you do this, you are affecting what people think of you and, more importantly in this context, your brand. Also bear this in mind when taking on new staff members and have a social media policy in place.

Interact with community and influencers

Once you have decided on your brand and started to establish it, try to interact with your target community and influencers that fall within it. Social media can be a wonderful tool in spreading the word and adding to your brand credibility. Of course, this also means, once again, that you must take the utmost care not to damage your brand reputation by posting something controversial online or endorsing someone who has.

Create engaging and high-quality content

You’ve established your brand and know what you stand for. You’ve also begun to interact with influencers in your field and members of your target market community. Now, you need to start creating content that is relevant and that will engage your audience. This content could be in the form of social media posts, blogs, website content, eBooks, interviews, videos – the list is almost endless. If creating content isn’t your area of expertise, consider approaching a leading digital marketing agency for help.

Keep watch over what people are saying

However well things are going, be sure to keep watch on what others are saying about your brand online. You can do this with tools such as Hootsuite, Brandwatch, TweetReach and others. Google Alerts can also be helpful in this respect. While potentially uncomfortable, it’s sensible to monitor what is being said in order to protect your brand from trolls and hijackers.

Additionally, no matter how word perfect you are and however good your customer service, there will likely be someone who has something negative to say at some point. The crucial thing here is how you respond to that negativity. Remain professional and polite at all times and have a plan in place to cover all eventualities. In cases like these, hiring a reputation management agency might be the best option as they might have extensive experience dealing with such clients and may know how to not damage your brand’s image.

Remember your offline reputation

In this digital age, it can be easy to forget that we also have an offline presence in the world, and that can make or break a brand reputation in just the same way as an online presence. To maintain this, do your best to keep your customers content and satisfied. Try to generate real-world word of mouth and repeat business.

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