As CEO of Strategic Advisor Board, Jason Miller helps influential brands and celebrities create generational wealth with their businesses.
It’s necessary to guide your brand’s narrative as much as possible. Do this by monitoring your brand online and consistently and quickly addressing narratives, both positive and negative. This involves owning your mistakes and creating fresh content so the algorithm favors your business’s narrative.
You work hard on your company’s brand image and personal brand image. Unfortunately, your image isn’t only what’s taking place in your meetings and marketing campaigns; a big part of it is what’s happening on your audience’s screens and in everyday conversations. Digital reputation management, also known as online reputation management, is an ongoing process, and it’s best to be on top of it so that anything negative gets addressed as quickly as possible. But it’s also not just a crisis control tool, because a positive brand image should also be addressed as quickly as possible. Managing your brand’s reputation shouldn’t be put on the back burner because your brand’s very survival might come down to its reputation.
Addressing Lasting Digital Footprints
It can be daunting thinking about every single comment, post, article or marketing campaign about you or your brand that has ended up on the internet. Sometimes it’s not just about what’s been published about you, but also about what you’ve published yourself. Anything from a past stance your company took to a past ad that hasn’t aged well might be considered insensitive today. Although you can bury your digital footprint, it’s never actually deleted. Instead, it’s indexed, archived and still discoverable for anyone who looks hard enough.
My best advice to combat something that resurfaces and that you aren’t proud of or isn’t in public favor is to provide a narrative. If it’s an old client review, you may not need to deal with that. But if it’s a controversial topic your company stood behind once and it’s resurfacing and going viral, that’s when you’ll want to address it. Start by acknowledging it and not ignoring it. Even if you’ve rebranded or gotten new management, that issue is still in your company’s history and it needs to be addressed if the public seems concerned at all. After you’ve acknowledged it, apologize and showcase how you’ve grown as a company. Show your open-mindedness and your willingness to change and grow with today’s audience.
Working With The Algorithms
The next step is about actively influencing how your company’s narrative is seen. Search engines thrive on longevity, and this is the hardest part of having a negative digital footprint. Control the narrative by controlling how content shows up first. The best way I’ve found to do this is by using fresh, new content that shows your company’s growth and uses search words aligned with the negative content. This way, the positive content should show up first and can focus on the positive aspects of a product or service and what’s been improved. Using different types of content like blogs, posts, podcasts and videos can help with burying the negative content. Create high-quality and consistent content so your company’s content commands more attention.
Online Vigilance
I encourage crisis prevention over crisis management, and you can do this by monitoring your online presence. There are online reputation management software products and tools to help you keep an eye on where and when your brand gets mentioned, what posts are made, what the tone is, and how your competitors’ reach and influence are compared to yours. I would recommend investing in these tools, especially as your company grows. You may want to start with individual tools that specialize in social media, but eventually, you might benefit from software that has many tools to manage all points of the internet. These advanced tools can give you real-time data on where your company is mentioned. Don’t get blindsided because you’re not monitoring your brand’s social narrative, industry and competitors. Conversations can shift your audience’s perspective quickly, so it’s important to address issues as quickly as you can. The faster you can address it, the better.
Your digital footprint lasts, and negative content can come back to bite you. Because of this, you need to control the narratives by using new content that’s interesting and engaging. You should create content in all forms and variations, such as blogs, videos, social media posts and so on. It’s important to keep on top of all forms of mentions you get from other companies, competitors, customers and your audience.
Be a part of what’s happening from the start and control the narrative of your business by staying in the loop with conversations. Address any concerns your audience has head-on and apologize sincerely when it’s appropriate. Everything you do in terms of digital reputation management all boils down to building trust and deeper connections with your audience. Digital reputation management is an ongoing process that requires time and a commitment. It’s often best if you’re able to have a department dedicated to this important task so you can always be seen in the best light possible.
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