What can social media do to your reputation?

The answer is, a lot. Nowhere is this more evident than with Tripadvisor’s recent release of the top 10 dirtiest hotels, as well as the top 10 best in the world. The list is based on Tripadvisor’s member reviews of hotels and is one of the best examples of the power of social media to influence your reputation.  Unfortunately for those hotels featured on the naughty list, there’s no easy answer other than improving your hotel and conversing with your customers on these platforms to find and remedy their problems.

It is becoming increasingly important for companies to be aware of their reputation online, especially now we’re in an age when UGC rules. Word of mouth is still the most trusted source of information, it probably always will be, so if you’re a company with a reputation management issue, the best thing you can do is to find the people that are hacked off and start conversing with them to solve their problems. (See my recent post on customer service for more info on this).

With the Tripadvisor example, you would hope that this isn’t the first notification that these hotels have that someone has a problem with them. If they’re continually monitoring their company online they should already be well aware of the issues. The truth may be ugly, but you need to be aware of what your customers are saying. Just because you’re not listening, doesn’t mean that people will stop talking. It’s an unfortunate truth that fear of negative reviews is often one of the  main factors that prevents companies from opening up online and embracing social media. This is understandable, but the alternative – closing the door and pretending you can’t hear, isn’t going to do much long-term benefit for your business.

The importance of owning your web real estate

This is an important factor for every business. Each of the hotel’s listings on tripadvisor is a piece of their web real estate, as is their Facebook page, Twitter account, Google SERP for brand terms or any other area online where people may be looking for you. Owning this is incredibly important. We’re not talking about ‘owning’ something as having complete control over what people say, but owning it as intervening where possible and trying to turn a positive into a negative. Search is incredibly important here. You need to be aware of the first thing people are seeing when they search for your name. And if you don’t like what you see, then you probably need to do something about it.

The issue of reputation management is yet another reason why companies need to stop thinking about their social media activity in ‘campaign’ terms and realise that you need to monitor and act within social media on an ongoing basis. Great if you have a shiny social media campaign for which to sell your product, but once this is over and you forget about social media, it doesn’t mean your customers have. They’ll still be there talking about you and you need to be talking back. It’s no use trying to make social media fit with your traditional marketing activities, because it’s a whole different beast altogether.

The trick, of course, as with traditional PR is to prevent a crisis before it happens. Let me tell you, if you’re waiting for something to hit the first page of Google before you consider getting involved, then you’re far too late. By taking a complaint in hand early, you can hopefully sort the problem before it becomes a bigger issue for you. Take it as a given that now, not saying anything is one of the worst things you can do. Now that consumers are empowered through social media channels, we have many avenues through which to vent frustrations and ultimately influence your customer’s and potential customer’s opinions of you. Everything is up for review now, take Rate My Hospital for example…

What about real-time?

The emergence of real-time search is having the biggest impact on reputation management companies will have encountered in a long time. It can certainly be scary and it’s changing a lot of the old rules that apply. While it typically would have taken a combination of time, inbound links, fresh content etc.. to appear on the front page of Google, now they’re including real-time search results, businesses have more of a need than ever to start listening to what customers are saying. Your reputation can be shot in just a few hours and we’ve seen countless examples to support this. Domino’s Pizza anyone? Habitat UK?

If you’re a company, then take all this as an advantage. It means that you have (free) access to your customer’s opinions and that you can learn the bad about your business early on and start implementing changes. This last point is key and is the most important take-away from this post. It’s one thing to listen but this is ultimately pointless unless you’re acting on this feedback, whether good or bad. Keep the communication going with your customers. Let them know when real change has been affected and recognise the benefits of social media for your business and your reputation.