What’s being said about your company matters more than you might believe. Whether it’s a poor customer review or a critique of your hiring practices, such remarks can have great impact on your company’s reputation and, therefore, your bottom line. In fact, companies encountering negative online content or other forms of reputational harm risk losing up to 22% of new business deals.
As such, employing proactive strategies to oversee and protect your company’s reputation is vital to seeing growth as a business. Below, we’ll briefly go over how to manage your brand reputation more effectively.
First, to see what is being said and develop a powerful reputation management strategy, you must go to where the majority of impactful conversations regarding your brand take place: online. Such conversations can happen across all types of online platforms. It could be on various social media channels, business review sites, and even pages for hiring services. Analyzing all these potential sources takes the right resources.
Generally, utilizing a risk management solutions service is constructive in detecting reputational risks and appropriately addressing them. Such services are capable of comprehensively evaluating loss exposures and taking steps to mitigate the adverse effects of loss. This helps protect your company’s reputation from existing harms as well as potential ones.
Another route to consider is partnering with or employing a public relations team. Such professionals help you by devising advantageous campaigns designed to increase brand awareness and enhance consumer trust. They could even help repair a damaged reputation. Along the same lines is fleshing out your social media presence and content marketing strategy. Incorporating SEO, unique content, and other modern best practices could go a long way in portraying your company as a credible authority and driving the business to new heights.
Other approaches come down to how your employees are hired, trained, and treated. Delivering the best customer service possible requires the right employees. Owners are advised to include background checks and drug screening as part of the hiring process. This helps to weed out employees who may be apt to misconduct. Conducting these checks is especially crucial for any employees who are in close contact with customers, such as contractors working inside of client homes.
Once hired, your employees need to be incentivized to become brand advocates. This often involves driving employee engagement and satisfaction. While achieving this looks different for every company, there are ways any type of employer might improve employee engagement. Going forward, you should be prioritizing employee recognition, encouraging feedback, and creating a people-first culture where staff members feel they are valued. The result could be a workforce committed to your company and protecting its reputation from harm.
Want to learn more about protecting your company’s reputation? Check out the accompanying resource for further information.
Infographic created by PlusOne Solutions, a contractor compliance solutions company