Using Social Media to Improve Your Reputation, Part 2: Managing Your Profiles

Your online reputation is vital to your company’s success

In a previous article, we outlined the importance of taking control of your company’s reputation by finding out where you stand and how to get started on your business’ social media journey. Now, we are going to outline a few best practices when it comes to managing those social media profiles.

Social media has become an invaluable tool that can help you reach new audiences, gain reviews, manage your company’s reputation, and most importantly, it provides a space where you can instantly engage with your consumer base, so we want to make sure you are fully equipped to manage a space where your clients are able to leave you instant public feedback!

Commit To Authenticity

With social media, you have the opportunity to build trust in your business before you ever even meet the customer. In this day and age, trust is one of the most important things your business can have. In a 2013 study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, customers identified authenticity as one of the top qualities that would attract them to a brand.

The Journal of Consumer Psychology defines authenticity as, “The extent to which consumers perceive a brand to be faithful toward itself, true to its consumers, motivated by caring and responsibility, and able to support consumers in being true to themselves.”

It makes sense that authenticity is important to consumers. People want transparency, and certainly don’t want to feel like a company is pulling one over on them. People want to have some sense about what a business’ beliefs and values are, and whether or not they might align with their own. Having trust in a company means that a customer sees that business as worth taking the risk of investing their time and money into.

In order to build an authentic brand, you have to have a deep understanding of your company’s core values, and then show your commitment to those values in the things you post and the way you engage with your followers.

Share Your Brand’s Story

At the heart of it all, social media profiles offer a place where you are able to show your brand or business the way you want to be seen. You have a unique opportunity to give your business a voice and share it, not only with your most loyal following, but also with an untold number of potential future clients and fans! I personally follow a small ice cream shop in Portland, a city I don’t live in, just because I like their fun and engaging Instagram profile. Customers don’t only care about what you are selling and at what price; more and more, they also consider and care about who you are. People genuinely like stories, and adding a personal element to your brand gives them something to connect with or relate to.

Telling your brand’s story means giving your customers a look into who you are as a company and why your company exists. When deciding to put something on social media, decide if your post answers any of the following questions:

  • Who are you?
  • What do you do?
  • Why do you do it?
  • How do you do it?
  • What’s next?

Deciding what your story is and how you share it can add some much-needed integrity to your social media profiles, and can give you a sense of direction when it comes to navigating how and what to post.

You don’t have to overthink what it means to share your story. It can be as simple as sharing behind-the-scenes stories of the day-to-day work life, giving a sneak peak at a new product that’s coming out, putting a spotlight on one staff member, sharing an infographic or educational article, posting a photo of the inside of your shop before you open for the day, talking about how your business uses sustainably-sourced products and why, or talking about a charitable cause you are raising money and awareness for.

Engage With Your Followers

In our last article, Using Social Media to Improve Your Reputation, we talked about finding and setting a tone for your business. By now, you know that using social media is a great way to keep in touch with your clients, your community, and your potential customers. As we discussed in that previous post, with social media, you are also able to set the tone for how you would like your business to be seen by others. Do you want to be known for your unwavering professionalism, your playfulness, or maybe your approachableness? There’s not really a right answer here, but it is best to decide on a tone and stick with it. By setting the tone, your customers know what to expect from you when they engage with you online, and it is very important to show them that they CAN reach you. This all adds on to the idea of trust and authenticity.

Liking someone’s comment on your picture, or leaving a quick message or response, shows them that you are paying attention, shows them you care, and gives them the sense that you are bought in to them and their experience. Social media makes it fun and easy to connect, chat, and engage with the people who enjoy your business.

In addition to connecting with your client base, social media sites have also become a place where customers can go for their customer service requests or to leave a review of your product or service. No matter what kind of feedback you are getting on social media, you have the chance to respond, so make sure you always do so quickly and directly. Show the public that you are listening, and show them that you care.

Don’t underestimate the power of reviews. According to BrightLocal, 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews from other customers just as much as they would recommendations from peers. It’s important to keep in mind that people take notice of online reviews and your response, or lack thereof, to them.

In a previous article, How to Handle Bad Reviews, we listed out a more comprehensive strategy for handling and responding to the inevitable negative reviews you will get. Make your life easier by having a policy in place when it comes time to craft your response. Remember to always be professional and direct, address their concerns, and move the conversation into DMs, email, or over the phone.

Social media is also a great place to gather positive reviews and experiences from your customer base. When people share a photo of themselves enjoying time in your store, wearing your merch, or enjoying your hand-cut french fries, like their photo and ask if you can use it yourself! Plenty of businesses repost customer photos in their Instagram stories, showing their clients that they are seen and that your business cares about them and their experience. Not only does this make that one customer feel special, but other customers might then go and post photos using your products to get the chance at being featured themselves!

Take the first step towards being in control of your online reputation with Top Rated Local!

Your business’ online reputation is undoubtedly linked to online reviews and the way people engage with you and your business on social media. Top Rated Local has the resources you need to stay on top of your reviews and reputation. Best of all, listing your business with Top Rated Local is free!

Using Social Media to Improve Your Reputation, Part 1

Your online reputation is vital to your company’s success

By now, you have undoubtedly encountered the profile of a brand that has an amazing social media presence. You know the type: it has eye-catching content; they are engaged with their audience; they have a clear voice and tone, and they ultimately come across as trustworthy. In a world where consumers are making their purchasing decisions based on online reputation, it is more important than ever to know how to manage your own.

Social media has become an invaluable tool that can help you reach new audiences, gain reviews, manage your company’s reputation, and most importantly, it provides a space where you can instantly engage with your consumer base.

Luckily, having the kind of eye-catching and reputable social media presence that consumers love and trust is absolutely attainable to everyone, and not just to huge corporations and influencers!

To get started, we suggest first going through the following steps:

  • Find out where your reputation is at right now
  • Decide what you want your reputation to be
  • Create a policy or guide around your social media presence
  • Decide which social media platforms will help you reach your target audience

Find out where your reputation is at right now

Before getting started on the path of managing your business’ online reputation, you need to know where you currently stand. If this is something you have never looked into, it can feel overwhelming or scary to get started. Similar to a credit score or going to the dentist, ignoring your reputation and reviews isn’t going to fix them or make them go away. Also similar to a credit score or going to the dentist, if you are willing to invest a little time into educating yourself and putting in the work, you will be able to take control and get results you can be proud of. There are many sites available for the public to leave your business a review. While it may be tempting to stay in the dark when it comes to your reputation, stepping up and taking control of your listings is the first step towards showing your customers and potential future clients that you care about their feedback. We recommend getting started by claiming your business’ listings. Top Rated local is free, and is a great way to manage your business’s online reputation. It aggregates ratings and reviews from verified review sites online and then ranks businesses based on their overall Rating Score™. By using this incredible tool, you would be able to monitor and manage your reviews across a variety of sites, all from one place!

Understanding what people think about your company is a great place to start when it comes to figuring out what to do next in terms of your business’ reputation. If you go online and find out that people have had negative experiences regarding your business’ cleanliness or customer service skills, that’s something you’d want to address before you launch into a silly social media campaign.

Decide what you want your reputation to be

Using social media is a great way to keep in touch with your clients, your community, and your potential customers. With social media, you are also able to set the tone for how you would like your business to be seen by others. Do you want to be known for your unwavering professionalism, your playfulness, or maybe your approachableness? There’s not really a right answer here, but it is best to decide on a tone and stick with it.

Take Wendy’s for instance. They broke the mold when it comes to their voice on social media. They have become renowned for their quick quips and harsh humor. Their ability to snarkily torch competitors and fans alike even prompted them to create their own holiday, National Roast Day, where people, competitors, and other companies lined up for the chance to have Wendy’s throw some shade their way and publically roast them. They’ve said that they want their social media feed to be like their food — better than what you’d expect from a fast food place. And it worked! People are following and engaging with their accounts because they have used their social media to come across as more than a faceless corporation.

Now, the Wendy’s tone obviously isn’t the best model for every business, but every small business can take note when it comes to deciding what you want your voice and reputation to be, and sticking to it.

A strategy popularized by L’Oreal is to utilize its employees to highlight the company as an excellent employer, resulting in a better company culture, higher employee engagement, and doubling as a simple but effective recruitment tactic. Through the use of hashtags, L’Oreal employees are able to share what life is like in their offices, showcasing the company’s perks and culture. They are also able to share how they socialize and come together as a community, both at work and outside of the office. Any company can use a set hashtag to showcase its unique culture and community, and can use the resulting posts as free and engaging content on their own page! Does your staff always have the most impressive Halloween costumes? Do a few of your employees volunteer once a week? Do you rock a monthly office karaoke? Show it off! When it comes to forming trust in a company, there’s no better referral than authentic endorsements from its own happy employees!

By utilizing social media, you have the opportunity to show your customers and potential clients what is important to your company. It might be your awesome company culture, your commitment to customer service, your playful nature, or your unwavering excellence. Decide what that is and start to use your social media accounts to share it with the world!

Create a policy or guide around your social media presence

Once you have decided how you want to use your company’s social media accounts, you need to decide who has access to those accounts and what policies they will stick to when using them. As far as managing the account goes, it might be best to limit the number of people who are in charge, so as to best stick to your set tone and policies, and to minimize that potential for mistakes. When it comes down to making a decision about what policies to follow, start by thinking about what will help support your company’s goals, and go from there.

There is no need to overthink the kinds of policies you want to set, they can be really simple, like saying:

“Never share sensitive or confidential data with the public.”

You may not THINK that you have to lay out rules like that, but you would be surprised by what kinds of things people might not consider before sharing something on social media.

Ideally, the policies you set are less of a strict list of rules and are more of a few guidelines that help to direct you. Social media is constantly changing, so keep in mind that it would be beneficial to revisit your policies every once in a while to make sure your company is keeping up with the times. At its best, a set of social media policies is simple to understand, ever-evolving, concise, and straightforward. With a comprehensive and well-thought-out policy, you can stick to your brand identity and tone, outline how to manage social media while remaining compliant with laws regarding privacy, confidentiality, and copyright, and encourage employees to interact with and promote your brand.

Decide which social media platforms will help you reach your target audience

When it comes to social media, a world of ever-growing and ever-evolving options is available to you, so it is important to know about some of the bigger platforms and understand what each one does.

Pew Research has shown that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular platforms, and their users are the most broadly representative of the population as a whole; meaning that those platforms can likely help you reach the widest audience. Facebook’s official stated purpose is that people use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, discover what’s going on in the world, and share and express what matters to them. Based on its intended purpose, Facebook is a great tool for small, local businesses looking to connect within their own communities.

While it may sound tempting to throw your name out where the largest number of people might happen to see it, if you are trying to grow your company or drive more business your way, it might be best to focus on a target or niche audience. If you know your market, you will be more likely to find an engaged, active, and bought-in audience.

Of course, the type of business you have is another indicator of which social media site would work best to reach your target audience. Age demographics also play a role in which platform will reach the people you want to reach. Do your research, understand who uses which social media and why, and find what works for you!

Starting Your Social Media Journey

Utilizing social media platforms gives you the power to directly interact with your most loyal customers, your employees, similar businesses, and potential clients. With proper use, social media can show off what makes your business wonderful and give your customers a place where they can learn more about you.

Remember, start out by finding out what your customers are saying about you across review sites. You can do it for free right now with Top Rated Local! From there, you can start taking control of your online reputation and extending and promoting that reputation across whichever social media platforms work best for you and your business!


Don’t forget to check out the continuation of this article: Using Social Media to Improve Your Reputation, Part 2: Managing Your Profiles