Most large companies have already realised this and make use of Facebook, MySpace, etc. to reinforce their online presence, but a shocking number of PR specialists and business owners are still not using social media to their full advantage.
For every person that “adds” your company, in whatever social website environment, you know that all their friends will see that they have expressed an interest – great news for your online reputation. Some will be curious and check your business out for themselves, and this is the key to social media; if you can get one person’s attention, you can get the attention of their friends without trying.
The first thing to tackle, obviously, is finding people who are likely to take an interest in your company from a social media angle. This might be quite easy if you are a small business – since you probably already have a large number of Facebook friends (or similar) that might be happy to register their interest in your company’s profile page. If this doesn’t sound like it will work for you, why not offer your existing customers an incentive for following your business online? Maybe a link to a printable voucher every week.
Once you have a following, it is only a matter of interacting with them and producing content that will either get them talking or get them interested in what your business has to offer. If you have the sort of business that relies on repeat custom, then you are in the ideal position to offer special deals to your social media followers. If not, simply send individualised messages to your followers until they are willingly interacting with the discussions on your business’s main page – and if you don’t know what to talk about, you can always hire a writer to take care of your online reputation!
Interacting with people is what reputation management is all about at its most essential level. Your online reputation will hinge upon your ability to stay in touch with at least a small sample of your market and keep abreast of what they want. Using Facebook, or Bebo, or any other website to create a small following is a fantastic way of keeping a sample of people on hand to give you feedback about your business. The most important thing of all though, is that once you have gotten involved in social media your reputation (whether good or bad) will become wider.
We can help you build and then manage your online reputation. Simply get in touch, and let us see how we can work together.