Does Your Social Media Uphold Your Reputation As A Credible Provider?

The COVID-19 pandemic had a broad impact across industries and economies, but it also changed the fundamental ways in which consumers interact with and consume products and services at both a B2B and B2C level. From the quarantines and forced shutdowns that started in 2020 through the easing of pandemic restrictions in 2021 and even into 2022’s vacillation between economic recovery and recession conditions, consumers have become much more discerning and concerned with a brand’s reputation and the perceptions of other customers. They are doing more research, fact-finding, and reading of customer reviews than in the past.

In response, marketing professionals have increased their focus on reputation management initiatives in order to boost the overall credibility of their brands. Social media platforms have been elevated by many brands as powerful tools for executing their reputation management initiatives. In this discussion, we’re going to explore how your social media management team can leverage social media sites effectively in order to build and maintain your online reputation and boost your brand’s overall credibility in your industry.

Increased Social Media Engagement is Key to Reputation Management in a Post-Pandemic World

Consumers have been adapting to the pandemic for close to three years, and throughout that time period, numerous studies show significant increases in activity on social networks. In only four months from the spread of COVID-19 to the United States in March 2020, there was a 10.5% increase in social media usage year-over-year. Prior to the pandemic, the average daily use of social media networks accounted for about 56 minutes of the average adult user; throughout the pandemic, the average daily usage of adult users increased to 65 minutes per day.

While some of this increased activity can be attributed to a need for social interaction and support, a good portion can be attributed to other activities that also play a crucial role in your brand’s reputation management efforts.

Social media platforms foster social proof marketing and social listening

Maintaining an online presence across social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn provides direct access to your brand for consumers to engage with each other. Engagements with other customers allow potential clients to learn more about the customer experience or the quality of your products and services as well as share information about their experience in the form of official reviews. Ultimately, these interactions and reviews allow the power of social proof marketing to do the bulk of the heavy lifting in boosting your brand’s reputation. This form of learning about the brands they choose to patronize has proven to be a more powerful driver of purchasing activity, as consumers are more apt to believe the feedback of peers and like-minded consumers than they are any form of digital marketing your team might otherwise employ.

Social media channels also play a vital role in social listening, an emerging brand reputation management strategy that has also gained traction in the wake of the pandemic. Social listening, a method of tracking customer perceptions and anticipating customer needs based on their social activity, allows brands access to valuable metrics that they can use to improve customer relationships and engage with new customers, a useful tactic in the current economy for shoring up business against the potential looming recession.

Maintaining a social media presence provides customers with a channel to seek answers

Social channels allow potential clients to engage with your service staff or your automated customer engagement tools such as chatbots directly and in real time, eliminating the risk of losing a lead while they wait for an answer. Messenger and chat functions, as well as direct interactions with posts on social media, give your team a chance to manage your online reputation and improve the customer service experience in a single channel. By providing access to answers and service requests through social media, you present to visitors a customer experience that is responsive and engaged, boosting your reputation over competitors who might not be as active on their social channels.

Maintaining multiple social media accounts facilitates positive public relations and supports your brand’s reputation management strategy

Online reputation management requires engagement with customers and potential clients, as well as visibility of that engagement. With 83% of online shoppers reading at least three reviews before making a purchase, online review management and generation have grown to be prioritized in reputation management initiatives by marketing experts. Review sites aren’t the only places customers tend to leave reviews; social media reviews can be just as powerful and it’s important to engage with reviews left on social channels.

Engaging with positive reviews actively on social channels provides your team with the chance to control the narrative, show customers their patronage is appreciated, and show potential clients your brand’s focus on providing customers with solutions. On the other end of the spectrum, engaging with negative comments or negative reviews on your social channels gives your team the chance to stave off negative perceptions while at the same time addressing customer concerns in a public forum which goes a long way toward building positive brand perception.

Social channels also provide the perfect engagement opportunity for generating reviews. Customers who engage positively with your brand on social channels are often more likely to respond to outreach from your sales team or invitations on your social channels to provide reviews and feedback. Whether direct or through calls-to-action, these social media-sourced reviews are crucial, as they represent organically sourced legitimate and sincere positive reviews. The ability to generate reviews in this manner is especially important due to rules in place across many review sites that disallow incentivized or solicited reviews.

Social media channels support content marketing initiatives

In driving users onto social media, the pandemic caused a massive shift in content marketing strategies. Of the B2B marketers with a content marketing strategy in place, a 2021 survey showed that 70% of those companies made at least moderate adjustments to their overall content strategy in response to the pandemic. Changes included adjusting their editorial calendars to be more aggressive or shifting their content distribution processes altogether. 40% of those surveyed dedicated more resources to social media and online communities. Overall, these changes were designed to boost search engine rankings and improve search engine optimization.

Modern search engine optimization tactics are tricky to execute properly because proper SEO encompasses such a wide array of factors. While social media posts aren’t necessarily indexed and don’t appear in search results, the indirect benefits of posting content on social media channels are massive when it comes to search engine optimization. This makes social media channels an extremely powerful platform for boosting your brand’s reputation.

The key is to cut long-form media content down into shareable pieces of content appropriate for the platform you’re using and then post the customized content as a social media post that includes links back to the long-form informational and educational content on your primary website or blog, driving traffic from social media to your online assets. In turn, your increased content promotion can then lead to increased backlinking from established high-ranking blogs and other media outlets.

This has become an increasingly viable tactic for generating traffic and increasing ranking on search engine results pages (SERP), as it signals your value and creates interest in your products and services while meeting the reader’s requirement that content provides value. You can boost the impact of your content marketing efforts with social media marketing such as boosted posts and other paid ad campaigns that include links to your content and online assets, which all work together to improve your overall engagement.