With social media, people are talking to each other and that includes sharing their experiences as customers. Chances are that your customers, former customers, and potential customers are on social media talking among themselves about your business.

• Before You Start: You run a business. You may use social media, or you may not have started using social media.
• Learning Level: 1 | Social Media Basics
• Article Last Updated: Thursday, September 22, 2011

Reputation Management Basics

Reputation management is what you do as a business to listen to conversations taking place on social media about your business, and how you respond to what you hear. You can’t stop people from talking about your business. On any given day, you might here:

• A customer praise your business for outstanding service or products.
• A customer complain that you didn’t offer the quality of service they expected.
• A customer express frustration that you didn’t offer a service or product that exactly met their need.

What your customers say is always their opinion, whether it is praise or criticism. But what you hear in their comments determines how successfully your business will navigate current challenges and future growth. Here are some examples.

• If a customer complains that your products or services didn’t include the option they wanted, do you hear a gripe or do you hear a suggestion for a new product/service?
• If a customer complains that your product or service didn’t meet their quality expectations, do you hear an opportunity to fix a customer service problem that had been invisible to you?

Reputation Management Approach

What you do with what you hear being said about your business is critical to your ongoing success. Before you start listening to customer feedback on social media, you must be prepared to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. The comments you hear from customers provide you with invaluable opportunity to see your business from a customer’s point of view. You can gain:

• Information that helps you evaluate your current business challenges and build for the future.
• Insights into customer needs and expectations that allow you to expand your business.
• Feedback about which parts of your products, services, and strategy are on target and are meeting your customer’s needs.
• Information about individual experiences that point out a pattern of customer service failures that you can fix.

Reputation Management Tools

There are many tools that let you listen to the conversations about your business or brand on social media. In fact, there is a whole industry springing up around providing reputation management tools for businesses. However, with a little knowledge of the social media tools being used by your customers, and a little time to invest in listening, you can start a reputation management program without spending any money. Simply visit the social media sites where your customers are talking about you and listen to what they have to say.

Reputation Management Strategy

When you first start listening to customer comments, be prepared to hear negative comments. It’s important that you start out by listening to what is already being said before you start responding to any comments. Take some time to identify any patterns in the comments. Let the comments sink in.

After you listen for a while, develop a strategy for addressing each type of negative comments you hear. With a cool head, decide on your approach for each type of problem, and develop a written response that you can use for each one. Now, you are ready to start responding to the comments.

Going forward, you want to listen to customer feedback constantly, and respond to negative comments quickly. But only respond quickly when you have a cool head and a prepared written response. You never want to escalate the challenge by responding with anger or counter-attacks.

Your turn: Have you started doing reputation management for your business on social media? What tools did you use? What patterns did you notice? What did you learn from listening before you responded?

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