Top 3 Reputation Management Best Practices in 2024

“Strategically cultivating and maintaining a strong reputation, both internally and externally, has to be a top priority for nearly all business leaders today.”

Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist in-residence at Weber Shandwick.

In 2015, Volkswagen got in trouble with the revelation of their deceit in diesel-emission tests. This scandal resulted in sharp decreases in brand trust, and the company lost billions of dollars. 

Brand reputation is defined as the overall impression of stakeholders about the company, either through direct or indirect interactions. More than 95% of consumers assert that their buying behavior changes after a bad experience with the company. 

So, in today’s competitive and ever-changing market, building trust and ensuring brand reputation is essential to stand out in the market.

Figure 1. Factors contributing to brand reputation.

Here are the top three practices of reputation management:

1. Automate your reputation management operations

As companies grow, the data to be analyzed also grows exponentially, making it impossible to manually analyze a brand’s reputation through different channels.

As you should consider many metrics to manage your brand reputation, automating the operations through AI-powered methods can help your business in many ways, such as it: 

• reduces your workload
• makes the processes more efficient
• saves time
• minimizes human error
• gives you better insights into the factors influencing your reputation

2. Monitor your online presence

Social media is a great source to understand how people think or feel about your brand. A recent study shows that social media’s emotional word of mouth influences investors’ decisions. Investors decrease their stakeholdings when there is an increase in negative emotional word of mouth such as anger, fear, or disgust. 

Figure 2. Useful online sources to check for brand reputation.

So, by monitoring your online presence, you can understand customers’ sentiments and develop strategies that ensure a good brand reputation. Businesses should keep in mind that this is not a one-time activity but a never-ending process.

Check our comprehensive article on social media sentiment analysis. 

You can also check out our data-driven list of sentiment analysis services to find out which option satisfies your company’s needs.

3. Improve customer experience

Figure 3. How ratings affect customer behavior.

Even though every company aims to provide a good customer experience, few can achieve it. A recent report shows that more than half of businesses believe their customers are satisfied with the service, and only 15% of customers agree. So, to reduce the discrepancy, companies should leverage analytical techniques to understand their customers and improve customer experience with tools and methods such as:

• Personalization
• Multi experience development
• Conversational AI
• Dynamic call routing

You can check our article on digital transformation in customer experience for a more comprehensive account.

Feel free to contact us if you have further questions regarding brand reputation management: