How to Leverage Technology to Boost Your Business Reputation
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
– Warren Buffet
Your online reputation is essential to the success of your business. But it is also fragile. That is why having the right technology in place to maintain your reputation is so important. Without it, you are left moving from one potential PR crisis to another. This can be time consuming and inefficient.
So why not find tools and strategies that can help you along your way to a stellar reputation?
In this article, we will explain why business reputation is so important, explore how technology and website design can help your business reputation, list specific strategies you can use to leverage technology, and point out some tools available to you.
Table of Contents
Why Invest in Business Reputation
There are several reasons to invest in the reputation of your business. Some of the benefits are obvious. For example, customers will trust you more if you are a reputable brand.
But a good business reputation impacts every facet of your business. Specifically, a good reputation does the following:
- Increases your public visibility. Being seen exposes you to more leads. If you want to maximize business, increasing your online visibility is one of the best things you can do.
- Grows traffic to your website. Not only does a good reputation put you out there, it makes people more likely to click on your website.
- Helps customers make purchasing decisions. If leads recognize your name, they’ll likely choose you over unknown competitors. Name recognition helps you stand out and it alone can make the difference in a sale.
- Encourages customer retention. Once you have a relationship with customers, they will stay if you keep up a good reputation.
- Attracts quality talent or employees. A good reputation doesn’t only attract new customers. It also attracts quality employees. And who doesn’t want the best dev talent to work with them?
- Allows you to control the online narrative of your brand. A good reputation helps to refute smear campaigns and bad press. It gives you authority. If nothing else, being reputable takes the edge off of negative reviews.
- Protects you from online risks. Everything online comes with risks. Hacking, phishing attacks, data loss. You name it. If you have a good reputation, users will trust your site more despite the risks.
- Establishes you as an expert in your field. With so much information on the web, it’s hard to determine what’s reliable. A good reputation is one of the few things that builds credibility.
The advantages go on. Whatever the full impact of a good business reputation, it needs careful tending to.
According to Cindy Leines, founder and CEO of Plymouth–based CEL Public Relations Inc, “You can either manage your reputation, or it can manage you.” That is why we will provide ample strategies for you to manage your business reputation with technology solutions.
How Can Technology Help my Business Reputation?
In the past, word-of-mouth was the most effective form of marketing. And it still is. But technology and the internet have opened new channels for your word-of-mouth reputation to spread.
Today, your business reputation lives on a blend of review sites like Google My Business, Yelp, FourSquare, TripAdvisor, Facebook, and so much more.
Unless you are a mom-and-pop shop that relies primarily on a local market, you need to reckon with your online reputation. In fact, research shows that “your online reputation directly affects sales and revenue. A one-star drop or increase in your overall rating could mean a 5-9% increase or decrease in store-wide revenue.”
Whether you like it or not, online technology affects your business reputation at a growing rate. So you might as well use it to your advantage.
How to Boost Your Business Reputation through Technology
There are several strategies for building and maintaining a good business reputation online. Here we break them down into three main categories: Branding, Marketing, and Customer Service.
Branding
- Leverage social media. Social media platforms are the new town square. And if you want to be seen, you need to make an appearance. Creating an account on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram is perhaps one of the easiest things you can do to do to build your brand. If you have not already, you can do this in a matter of minutes. Then link your social media accounts to your main website and automate the publishing of new content. That way, you keep a minimum social presence with minimal effort. Of course, you should engage your customers, too, which brings us to the next point.
- Engage customers across multiple channels. Whether from your website, from your social media accounts, or in person, you should engage customers on a regular basis. This establishes customer loyalty and trust. It also shows that you are an interactive brand and not just an impenetrable facade. A responsive brand is a reputable one.
- Automate the review monitoring process. Take advantage of digital monitoring tools like Google Alerts, which inform you when your company is mentioned across the web. Checking review sites manually can be tedious and time-consuming. But with digital monitoring tools, you can stay up to date with the latest. Simply set up notifications to alert you to new reviews and mentions and you have a live pulse on your online brand.
- Get earned media. Boost your brand by getting featured in press releases and other online publications. Earned media means you didn’t pay for it; rather, you “earned” it through your own promotional efforts. This kind of third-party publicity is one of the most effective ways to boost your reputation.
- Be your own media. When you can’t get earned media, become your own media by creating content over social media pages, podcasts, or blogs. The opportunity to publish online is endless with no barrier to entry. People expect you to be self-promoting, but it’s better than nothing.
- Invest in Paid Media. Paid media comes mostly in the form of advertising, whether through display/banner advertising, search advertising, or social network advertising. This can be an effective way to force your name out there. Consider trying Paid Per Click (PPC) advertising to get started.
- Nurture relationships with advocates and influencers. Advocates and social influencers can boost your brand and help you drown out negative reviews. But you need to nurture your relationship with them to keep them loyal to your brand. So take advantage of online spotlights and testimonials.
- Implement a Reputation Defense Strategy. Criticism is inevitable. So you need to have a plan in place in the event of a media attack or media inquiries. Don’t let them permanently scar your brand by being unprepared. Defend your reputation by fighting defamation cases, responding to inquiries quickly, and minimizing bad publicity in the event of a business mistake or failure. Invest in public relations (PR) strategies early.
- Build a top-shelf website. Your website is the face of our brand. So it should be visually appealing and interactive. Give customers digital access to your business processes. Let them see exactly what you have to offer and how it works. Designing a clean, effective website will strengthen your business reputation on first impression.
- Use mobile technology. Develop a mobile-friendly website or even a mobile app that engages customers. This shows you are an established brand that values compatibility across many devices.
Marketing
- Use data analytics. Data analytics is the process of crunching data via mechanical algorithms. With the right data analytics tools, you can assess your business reputation on the web. For example, find out what other sites are linking to yours, how your clients are interacting with your product, and where your brand name is appearing most. Adjust your reputation strategy accordingly.
- Use videos to your advantage. These days, professional-looking videos are easier to make than ever. They can give your brand a positive online personality. A good website with images and graphics is nice, but videos are so much more personable. People like seeing the people behind the brand, the members of a company. And when you can show a competent face, your reputation will naturally benefit.
- Take advantage of translation services. Translation services can help you grow your reputation in new markets. New translation technologies are becoming increasingly efficient, so repackaging your product for another country is easier than ever.
- Adapt to voice search. Mobile voice search is a growing form of web search. People no longer need to type keywords into the search bar. They can just speak into their device directly. If you optimize for voice search SEO, you’ll naturally establish a good reputation by being one of Google’s top picks.
Customer Service
- Offer electronic payment methods. Cash is dwindling and electronic payment methods are on the rise. Make payments easier for your customers by offering e-payment options via credit card, store credit, or other online payment solutions like Google Pay and Apple Pay. This way, you build a reputation for convenient transactions and establish yourself as a business that is easy to work with.
- Offer a callback option. Nobody likes waiting on hold. So if you have a customer service line, offer a callback option to reassure customers you will get to them ASAP instead of trying their patience. This reduces hold times and significantly reduces any bad impressions of your business. After all, you don’t want to be known for having slow service.
- Integrate chatbots. Chatbots can answer questions quickly, making it less likely that visitors bounce from your site. Plus, they can be algorithmically automated. This is much more cost-effective than hiring live customer support agents and makes your business much more responsive. Of course, some queries may need to be forwarded to a human, but most don’t. And having a responsive site greatly improves your online reputation. Nobody likes a sterile site that offers little interaction.
As you can see, reputation management can be an extensive undertaking. Start with a few of the above suggestions and gradually develop a reputation management strategy that you can maintain long-term.
Software Tools for Building Your Business Reputation
Now that we’ve covered specific reputation-building strategies, here are some software tools that can help you in the process.
- Google Alerts lets you create alerts to keywords. Simply sign in to your Google account and enter a search term. Then you’ll receive daily email updates about where that term surfaced on the web, including websites, news articles, and blogs. Create a Google alert for your brand name to keep a pulse on how it is being used across the web.
- Reputology is a one-stop solution for managing online reviews. The platform allows you to monitor, analyze, and respond to them in one place. This way, you don’t need to go through the tedious process of manually monitoring and responding on multiple review sites.
- Awario crawls the web for conversations relevant to your business, whether they are about your company, your market, or your competitors. Stay in the loop on everything that could affect your business.
Google Alerts
Source: https://www.slrlounge.com/how-to-find-your-stolen-images-online/
There is plenty more software out there. Find a solution that works for you and start taking control of your online reputation today. You won’t regret it.
Working with Dev.co
Here at Dev.co we recognize how important the right software technology is to your business reputation. We think it’s essential to success.
If you still don’t know where to start, we can help you get off on the right foot with a scalable website design. Let us help you build a site from scratch or redesign an existing one. That way, you can shape the online face of your company and control how visitors interact with your business. Contact us today to get started.
Ryan is the VP of Operations for DEV.co. He brings over a decade of experience in managing custom website and software development projects for clients small and large, managing internal and external teams on meeting and exceeding client expectations–delivering projects on-time and within budget requirements. Ryan is based in El Paso, Texas.
