How To Protect Your Brand Reputation?

Social media can be a double-edge sword.  When implement correctly, social media can make your brand seem larger than life and soon enough, you will have thousands of people who love what you have to offer.  On the other hand, social media can destroy your brand and give you a bad reputation in just a few hours. Remember, potential customers will use search engines, like Google and Yahoo, to find information about your brand and what others are saying about you.  It would be devastating to see your company’s name associated with negative results on the first page of the search engine. It’s sad but true.  Unfortunately, bad news seems to rank higher in the search engine than good news.

Building your brand reputation can take years but one devastating blow of negativity can spread through the search engine like a virus.  You may have a community of people who love the heck out of you, but there can be one unhappy client or a faceless drama-queen who feels the need to blast you online.

So, how do you prevent negative comments from spreading like a wild fire? It is essential to have a brand reputation management strategy in place before the crisis begin.

Let’s use Dominos Pizza as a perfect example. Two Dominos Pizza employees video-taped each other doing some inappropriate and unhygienic acts to an Italian Subs. The employees thought the act was so amusing, they decided to post the video on YouTube.

How did Dominos Pizza handle this negative crisis to their brand name?  Within hours, Domino’s President Patrick Doyle launched a series of reputation management to control the fire. He launched a video on their YouTube channel and Twitter account to defend the brand’s reputation. He apologized for the actions of his employees; stated the action taken to rectify the issue (by terminating the two employees) and how they would avoid this issue from happening again.

Here are a few reputation management strategies you can follow to protect your brand.
•    Remain professional during negative crisis
•    Respond immediately and apologize for your customer’s inconvenience
•    Inform your customers of the your action taken to resolve the issue
•    Be honest and transparent
•    Have a communication channel to handle all complaints, whether by email, blog, or phone
•    Respond promptly by any social media tools available
•    Be proactive and engage with your audience
•    Generate more positive buzz around your brand
•    Monitor your brand name with Google Alert, SocialMention.
•    Visit knowem.com to see which websites you have registered your name

Do you have a reputation management strategy for your brand? If so, what strategy would you like to add to this list?