A 4-Step Guide to Managing Your Brand’s Social Media Reputation
A big marketing takeaway from the last year is this: everyone is online. All. The. Time.
Okay, that may be oversimplifying things a bit. But it’s not too far off. The pandemic sped up adoption of digital tech across all aspects of our life—shopping, entertainment, education and healthcare. Think about it: curbside pickup, TikTok dance challenges, Houseparty group chats and Reels got many of us through quarantine.
At the same time, social media became the de facto spot for consumers to connect with brands—from seeking support and discovering new products to venting frustrations and sharing happy moments. Consumers made it clear they expect lightning-fast responses and pushed brands to use their preferred channels to interact, including messaging apps and texting.
Many brands quickly adapted, bringing joy and humor to social at a moment when the world needed it most. (And then there were some that missed the mark.) But for those that adapted and did it well, the sky’s the limit for building loyalty and bottom-line growth.
The implication for brands? Social media can make or break your reputation. That’s why at Approach we take a four-step approach to managing and building social media reputation.
It’s built on two simple (and very human) premises: listening and engagement. Because when you listen to your community, you learn a lot about them and what makes them tick, which informs how to engage with them in meaningful ways. Here’s how we do it.
1. Establish social listening.
Social listening happens in two parts. First, you monitor social channels for mentions of specific keywords related to your brand, products, competitors and industry. Next, you analyze these mentions to understand what people are saying (or not saying).
This is a qualitative analysis. Unlike social media monitoring, which looks at qualitative data like number of mentions and engagement rate, social listening is all about understanding how people feel. You’re uncovering sentiment about you, your products and competitors–both good and bad.
When setting up a social listening program, you may find there’s a lot of data at your disposal. To make it manageable, set listening goals to focus your team’s efforts. Here are a few objectives to consider:
Uncover customer pain points and/or new usage occasions
Identify surprise-and-delight opportunities
Learn what your competitors are doing
Find brand fans and influencers
Discover new sales leads
Get ahead of potential crisis situations
Ready to get started? Find a social listening tool (like Hootsuite, Brandwatch or Talkwalker) that fits the needs of your business. If you use a social media scheduling platform, check to see if it has a built-in listening capability. Or, talk with us! Approach leads social listening efforts for lots of clients and we’d be happy to help your organization, too.
2. Develop a social media response protocol.
A social media response protocol is a playbook for responding to and engaging with people online in ways that are authentic to your brand. Community managers should be trained on this and have easy access to it at all times. Key elements of a strong response protocol include:
Brand values and voice. Clearly articulate your brand’s personality and how to personify this online. This will help community managers respond with a consistent voice.
Community rules. All social channels have Terms of Use that you must follow—and that apply to your followers. You can build on this with your own set of policies related to making your community a safe space, such as language, photo-sharing and privacy.
Escalation plan and decision tree. This guides community managers on what to do when they discover a relevant social post, including how to evaluate next steps and how to respond.
Approved messaging and actions. Provide community managers with approved copy for common questions (e.g., shipping delays, store hours), as well as suggested responses to both positive and negative interactions.
Crisis response. This is an extension of your escalation plan and outlines what to do when a social post or interaction qualifies as a threat or triggers a brand protect response.
3. Respond in real-time.
With a strong social listening program and response protocol in place, you’re ready to begin building real connections with your community. This is incredibly important today. In fact, new data from Sprout Social shows 91 percent of people believe in social’s power to connect people, and 78% want brands to use social to help people connect with each other.
Keep in mind, every social interaction has the potential to either help or hurt your brand’s reputation. Here are a few considerations to ensure your interactions remain positive:
On- versus off-feed. Know what conversations to keep on-feed and which ones are best served via direct message. Fans want to see brands responding to questions, especially tough ones, but then it’s usually best to move these to a private chat.
Chatbot versus human. People don’t mind being served by a chatbot as long as it can quickly solve their problems. Automating FAQs through chatbots and auto-messages can improve response times and escalate customer service issues to the right parties.
Ratings and reviews. Online reviews are super critical for helping people make online purchase decisions, so show reviewers some love. Thank them and offer gift cards or a coupon for a future purchase. If the review is negative, escalate the issue appropriately.
4. Grow advocacy for your brand.
Responding to people who are already talking about you online is great. But proactively nurturing new, organic interactions and conversations is next-level reputation building. These are some of our favorite ways to do this.
Embrace employee ambassadors. Employees can be a brand’s biggest advocate or worst critic. Establishing a social media policy for employees can align everyone on acceptable social media usage during personal and professional time. Even better, consider an employee ambassador program that empowers teammates to spread their brand love with their social communities. This can include sharing exclusive content or promo codes, early access to products and free swag to giveaway.
Surprise and delight fans. Like Ocean Spray did when it showed some big love to TikToker Nathan Apodaca. After Apodaca’s truck broke down, he filmed himself cruising to work on his longboard, lip-syncing to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” and gulping down Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice. The brand surprised him with a new truck (cranberry red, of course) and TikTokers around the world filmed themselves sipping Ocean Spray on everything from wakeboards to pet strollers. A magic moment for viral brand building.
Solicit reviews. Don’t wait for customers to post these—ask for them! Then make it easy to capture and share on your website and social channels. Don’t forget: Every review—good or bad—is an opportunity to engage with a customer and celebrate successes or right wrongs.
If you’re ready to put these steps into practice, Approach is here to help. We support organizations of all sizes build their reputations online and offline. Schedule a free consultation today to learn more.