How to Strengthen Your Brand’s Online Reputation

In the online world, reputation is often everything. When it is so easy to get the opinion of previous customers and check out someone’s history online, you, as a brand, can’t really afford to garner a negative repute.

However, there is more to having an online reputation than keeping it not-negative. You need to reinforce the positive, make sure more people hear about you, and widen your customer base.

Let’s explore how you can achieve all this

Ask for reviews

One of the clearest signs of someone’s reputation, and the place most online users check first, are the reviews customers leave on Google. However, if you aren’t proactive about getting some good ones, you might miss out on a lot of positive feedback.

Some users simply don’t have the habit of leaving reviews after they have interacted with a business, and it is up to you to encourage them to do so. Choose who you want to ask this favor from, though, because you don’t want to burden your less tech-savvy customers with the task.

Think about where you can be found

Naturally, you will already have a website and be present on a few social media channels, but think about the alternative options as well.

We’re not advocating setting up an account on everything from Facebook to TikTok – however, think about the other places your potential customers are likely to visit. Is there a community where they are active? Is there a news outlet they likely read?

Once you have pinpointed these sources, do your best to build a presence there. You can do this via an ad, a post, a community account – as long as it gets you noticed for all the right reasons.

Encourage user-generated content

If someone shares an experience with your brand, make sure you reshare it as well. People really appreciate being recognized by a brand, and you will also be getting a bit of free press that way.

You can do it on your social, simply via a retweet or a repost, but you can also incorporate some of the feedback you’re getting into blog posts or posts you’re writing for other outlets as well.

Only work with trustworthy agencies

If you have an agency on board who is responsible for handling some of your marketing, make sure you always check them out before you start working together. Working with someone who isn’t sure what they are doing, or with an agency who is ready to sacrifice quality for a quick win, might cause more harm than good.

This is especially important when you hire someone to build links for you, and you should always work with a reputable service for this task in particular. If you have a lot of shady or low quality links, even if this initially results in a traffic boost, you might end up having to get rid of them somewhere down the line.

Work on your blog

One of the best ways to boost your reputation in the online world is to write posts that your audience wants to read – and you will need to focus on your blog in order to do that.

Make sure you’re not just writing posts for the sake of writing: you want to be covering topics people are actually looking for and that you can write about well.

Do some research and discover the major pain points of your audience, and then think of the way your product or service can help solve them. After all, you want to be blogging to promote your business, not just to blog.

Don’t focus on promotion-heavy posts all the time either – aim to find a happy medium.

Closing thoughts

Focusing on your online reputation is one of the keys to harnessing online success, so make sure you utilize the tips we have listed above, and make the most of your online presence. Of course, always strive to further enhance all of your channels, rather than just sticking with what has worked well so far.