Have you ever noticed that bad news or negative experiences/reviews about a product or a brand spreads faster when compared to the positive or good qualities of the same? For example, you go to a restaurant and spend a good time with your loved ones there, you probably will remember the experience; however, in most cases, you will not really share it; alternatively, if overwhelmed, you will definitely share it with your friends when there is a discussion on food or restaurants in your city. On the other hand, when you face a bad experience, you will want to share it with a lot more people so as to caution them to not to eat food at the restaurant that has not treated you well and this puts the reputation of the restaurant visited on stake.

In this blog post  I am highlighting how important it is for Brands to consider managing their reputation online:

1. Social Media Reputation Management (SMRP) Takes Your Brand One Mile Ahead: Imagine that you are walking by road along with a friend complaining about how poor your air conditioner is and all of a sudden a person dressed in professional attire bumps in and introduces himself as the service manager of the same brand whose air conditioner is poor and extends his hand to serve your problem, how satisfying you would feel? In a social media scenario, a listening brand can easily listen to the concerns in conversations (on social networking sites) or the not-so-direct casual concerns (but brand manager gets to know by running a research on the brand name using listening tools) and reach out to them with the solution or pacify customers that the brand is concerned about the problem faced and it shall be soon solved. A brand talking to its customer on social media is definitely the first step to humanize the brand and it also takes your brand one mile ahead.

2. SMRP Controls the Negativity in the Air: On social media, a conversation spreads like wildfire; the sooner the brand intervenes the negative conversation, the faster it’s controlled. If a brand takes necessary steps to find out the root cause of negative conversations on the web, it can contact those individuals and try to control the negativeness to spread further.

3. Reputation Management May Bring Positive Word of Mouth: When a brand manager contacts the customer who has suffered an issue and tries to get the issue sorted in time, the unhappy customer overwhelmingly reports back to the social media on how the brand had responded to its concerns and solved it. This in return helps save the brand’s reputation as the one who was cribbing about it is now talking good about the brand. This completely helps brand save its reputation online. Provided that the company representatives should request customers to share about the concerned solved issue on social media. Airtel practices this in India while solving customer issues via social media.

4. Online Reputation Management (ORM) Makes Your Brand Distinct and Visible: Today, every industry has many players and customers have a wide variety of choices to pick from the brands of their choice. For example, in telecom, apparels, fashion, food, and retail chains, each and every category has got many players. Shifting brands or products is an easy choice for customers; to retain the loyalty factors of customers, a brand goes an extra mile by having better customer support, giving extra warranty, offering free services, etc. Reputation management on social media can help your brand be visible and distinct and gain attention of marketing thought-leaders. Reputation management tactics helps in reputation enhancement.

This is an excerpt from my book Social Media for Business.