In today’s business world, maintaining a good reputation is crucial for success. Moreover, thanks to the presence of social media and the speed in which news makes its rounds, ensuring your company maintains a good reputation is more difficult now than ever before.
In the past, businesses relied primarily on word-of-mouth to form their reputation.
However, today, it takes much more than word-of-mouth to manufacture a good business reputation.
That is why as a business owner, you should seek to manufacture a good reputation using authority marketing instead of simply managing whatever reputation your business has.
Why Authority Marketing?
In essence, authority marketing helps entrepreneurs leverage their knowledge to gain authority status in their industry. This authority status then allows them to dramatically amplify their message and convert their new audience into higher paying customers.
Reputation management is a term first coined in the public relations industry. It includes the understanding and influencing of a businesses reputation. It used to be based primarily on word-of-mouth as that was a how a businesses reputation was built in years past.
Today, reputation has less to do with word-of-mouth and more to do with what type of nationwide reputation a business has, which is usually formed through management efforts and publicity of various types.
Read below to learn how you can manufacture, or create, a positive business reputation for your company:
Create an Authoritative Online Presence
Having a strong online presence is crucial to creating a good business reputation. You can accomplish this by simply constructing a Facebook page for your company, creating a quality blog or a website, starting a podcast, writing a Kindle book, or all the above.
This online presence for your company allows customers to easily find you and voice complaints or praises.
Although you may feel giving customers the ability to complain would not be a positive aspect, it actually is because when they do express concerns, you then have the opportunity to correct the issue, thus improving your image and reputation.
An online presence also gives you the perfect platform to let your customers know about new advancements in your product or inform them about products soon to be released.
You should also regularly put out press releases optimized for your company name, so Google’s search results always have the freshest news about your business.
Embrace Your Weaknesses, Don’t Try to Cover Them Up
If you ever find yourself faced with a problem regarding your product or business, it is always best to be honest and try to deal with the issue head on, instead of denying a problem exists.
Remember when Toyota owners began having problems with their pedal sticking?
Toyota denied the issue, which is never a good idea. What they should have done was to come clean and admit the problem existed, before any issues came up.
That is how you keep a reputation intact, by admitting to your weaknesses and owning up to your shortcomings. Usually, people admire you for being honest and will give you the benefit of the doubt.
However, if you lie to them or tell them they are crazy for having the issues they are having, that won’t help your reputation at all.
Listen More Than You Respond
You could plug the adage, “measure twice cute once, “ or “listen twice, act once” in here. The premise is the same.
Do not give knee jerk responses to anything and everything you hear about your company, whether it be in person or online. You should give twice as much effort in listening to your customers than you do in responding to their accusations.
It can be really tempting to jump onto Facebook and issue a heated response to a customer who has wrongly accused your company.
However, instead of responding immediately, you should listen to them, look for trends and investigate the validity of what they are saying. Then, you can respond in a calm, rational manner that will help build up your reputation as a professional company instead of tear it down.
Be Aware of Your Reputation and Don‘t Wait till There‘s a Problem
Since you are reading an article about manufacturing a good reputation for your business, you probably don’t have to worry about this point.
However, the importance of actually monitoring your businesses reputation is worth stating. After all, you cannot create a positive reputation for your business without being aware of its reputation to begin with.
Don’t wait until a problem arises to deal with your businesses reputation, because by then, there is usually some damage done, which is often next to impossible to undo. Instead, stay on top of your businesses reputation and ensure it takes the correct path.
To accomplish this, stay informed about your businesses online presence, read reviews, listen to customer feedback, complete studies or surveys and pay attention to the data you acquire.
In Summary…
As a business owner, you know there are so many issues to worry about it regards to running a successful business.
However, you must never overlook the importance of manufacturing and monitoring your businesses reputation, because without a good reputation, your business will more than likely fail to excel. Using authority marketing is a good strategy to maximize effect of creating a positive reputation.
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