How to protect your brand from a negative reputation
Priya Mishra
CEO, Corporality Global • Published 15 Dec 2018
Social media provides a great platform to help businesses promote and connect with their audience without any geographical limitations.
The growing popularity of social media has turned many businesses into multi-million-dollar companies, all thanks to the power of social media marketing. Globally, the number of social media users reached 3.2 billion in 2018, with a 42% marketing penetration.
However, social media is not always a positive driving force behind your business. Many businesses have lost potential customers, gained bad reputations and even gone out of business as a result of a negative social media portrayal.
Here are the top 4 ways to protect your business from a negative reputation on social media:
Avoid paid followers
It is not uncommon for businesses to buy large numbers of online followers to appear more ‘popular’ on social media. What many businesses fail to consider, is that the majority of ‘paid followers’ are fake and are run by artificial bots.
This focus on quantity not quality will be highly detrimental to your business’s engagement levels and furthermore, will give an unrealistic representation of the effectiveness of your business’s social media marketing strategy.
Tool Spotlight: The Fake Follower Check
A new tool available in the market that can help you to analyse not only your fake followers, but also the percentage of fake followers on other accounts as well.
Credit: Status People (fakers.statuspeople.com)Cash for comments
Are you fascinated with celebrities commenting on your favourite products? Paying celebrities and social media ‘influencers’ to comment on a product or service is common practice nowadays.
What many of these businesses don’t realise, is that there is growing consumer distrust of celebrity endorsements on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. As a result, businesses can lose their credibility despite gaining more short-term leads and sales. Therefore, it is always recommended that you grow your business’s number of followers and engagement levels naturally.
Use emotion to get more ‘likes’
Whilst it is always a generous idea for businesses to use social media to raise money for charity or create awareness of a natural disaster, this practice does not always portray businesses in a positive light.
Bing Lee, for example, experienced a tremendous backlash after raising money for the victims of the Queensland floods through their “One Like = $1 Donation” campaign. Many people perceived this campaign as a means of increasing their social media following rather than supporting those affected by the disaster.
Fake Reviews
It is estimated in Australia, that over 60% of consumers read online reviews before making purchases. With the increasing number of people who consider reviews as a main factor in making purchasing decisions, a large number of fake reviews can create a bad reputation for your business and drive potential customers away.
Tool Spotlight: TruRating
TruRating is a great tool that specialises in analysing customer experiences and analytics. If you care about what impresses your customers, this data capturing website can provide reliable feedback.
Credit: Tru Rating (trurating.com)Conclusion
Given the growing prevalence of social media in the role of marketing, engaging in dodgy social media practices can cast significant doubt over the reputation and quality of your business.
Therefore, growing your following naturally, remaining genuine in your motives and remembering the power of social media will ensure that your business does not gain a poor reputation.
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Written by Priya Mishra, CEO, Corporality Global
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the Corporality Global Forum.