5 Things That Can Destroy a Brand's Online Reputation
Social media is influencing everything. From the presidential elections to purchasing habits, whether we want to admit it or not social media is driving change. Brands should be jumping on this opportunity. You can now speak directly to your customers, you can now create a base for your brand to be viewed and reviewed, talked about, liked, and shared. You can now influence many from your cell phone or laptop from anywhere at anytime. But still businesses are making crucial mistakes that are destroying their online reputation and hurting their bottom line.
If you can’t figure out how to generate ROI from your social media efforts at the very least, you need to protect your bottom line. And below are 5 things your business is doing right now to destroy your online reputation.
1. Inactivity
The biggest red flag a social media user can come across is a brand’s page that is completely inactive. You’re about to chose a restaurant or buy a product only to find out they haven’t posted to their page in over a year… Are they still in business? How good can this company be if they aren’t activity posting contact and engaging with their customer base? “With more than 1 in 3 internet users saying they use social media to get more information about a brand or product.” (smallbiztrends) And the likelihood of this increasing immensely with younger generations. It’s very telling that your social presence is absolutely effecting your bottom line.
The key is to show interested users that your brand is actively growing and engaging. This will build the level of comfort necessary to have them commit to their decision to buy from your organization.
2. Overselling
Social media is a great place to increase brand awareness and drive revenue. But overselling your fan base will merely annoy them. Your social media should be an experience. It should be useful, insightful, and valuable. But if all of your posts are merely advertising a product or service you’re going to lose many followers and customers by simple overwhelming them with useless material. Be wise about how much you push your product or service. Be more authentic with your content and light with your sales.
3. Failing to Engage
Be responsible and engage. Engaging with your customer base drives brand loyalty and shows a certain human aspect of the brand or business. It’s super important to reply, like, and engage with your customers. Go the extra mile to direct message them or follow / like their personal pages. You’ll make your customers feel as if the brand they are consuming cares on a personal level about their business.
4. Half-Hearted Efforts
Most businesses have created social media pages. Most also have invested limited resources to their efforts. It’s absolutely crucial to INVEST marketing dollars and resources to your social media efforts. It’s the future of marketing and a half-hearted effort will give your brand sub-par results.
5. Low Quality Content
What irks us the most is seeing low quality content posted out on business pages. You NEED your content to reflect the quality of your product or services. So although you have the urge to post out photographs taking on your cell phone using unthoughtful captions you need to resist that urge. Brands and businesses should be focused on producing high-quality content and sharing high-quality and reputable content. They should also be paying attention to the voice they are creating for their brand and be consistent with it. A positive vibe, with a good attitude will resonate much better with users.