Crucial Steps for Rebuilding a Damaged Brand Reputation

 According to a Deloitte survey, a whopping 88% of brand executives consider online reputation repair a primary strategic business challenge. When a reputation crisis hits your company, it’s vital to proactively restore your brand’s online image. Otherwise, it may result in a decline in market value and financial setbacks for your business.

So, how should business owners prevent reputational damage that might lead to dire outcomes, such as bankruptcy, insolvency, and liquidation? This article explores the complexities of a brand reputation crisis, providing a four-step process for effectively rebuilding a damaged brand.

4 Steps to Online Reputation Repair After a Crisis

With a specific focus on repairing your online reputation, the priority is on removing or surpassing the negative content instead of extensive online reputation management.

With that out of the way, here are five important steps to cultivate a positive online presence for your company.

Create/Claim Your Business Profile

Before addressing negative online reviews, make sure that your existing and potential customers can easily access information about your company. Establish a positive brand reputation by taking control of your brand’s narrative in diverse areas.

Create a business profile (or claim the existing one) on business review platforms like Yelp and Google. They are crucial for your company’s online reputation. 

On Yelp, customers can give feedback about your company’s products and services, even when you don’t have an official profile.

However, to respond to reviews, you must create a business profile. Once created, engage with customers’ negative reviews by acknowledging their feedback and offering apologies if needed.

Furthermore, social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, constitute the other half of this equation. You need to be active on your brand’s social media profiles and engage with customers.

Moreover, ensure your company information, address, and contact details are complete on each channel. This will boost visibility in search engines.

In addition, if you’re comfortable investing in online reputation management services, go for it. Many online reputation management companies will help you set up your business’s social media accounts and business profiles on relevant platforms. They will also monitor user sentiment and conveniently present findings through a dashboard.

Analyze Core Issues Related to Negative Reputation

The next step is to identify the driving factors behind your brand’s negative publicity. A negative reputation often arises from a series of negative reviews, inappropriate/insufficient content, or viral news cycles. 

Keep in mind that Google uses whatever it finds online to fill its index—positive or negative. Therefore, it’s important to ensure there is enough positive and correct information online to enhance your search engine rankings.

To get the answers, seek help from online reputation management professionals and get a thorough assessment done of your online presence.

Moreover, check social media channels, business review sites, and other platforms where people are talking about your business.

In addition, consider the following questions:

• Are too many customers posting negative reviews?

• Did your competitor post an unfair comparison blog?

• Are ex-employees posting negative Glassdoor reviews?

• Any Defamatory content on Twitter/Facebook?

If you see numerous negative reviews on any platform, that's the root cause. This platform should be your priority when you set up to repair your online reputation.

Get Rid of Negative Search Results from Google

Google is the largest and most popular search engine in the world, capturing around 92% of the search market. It processes approximately 99,000 search queries every second, totaling 2 trillion global searches every year. That’s a lot of people that will come across your company and the services you offer.

Assess the sentiment of customers on the SERPs, especially noting any negative or defamatory articles. If you find your company’s reputation below expectations, it’s time you hire a professional who specializes in delivering the best online reputation repair services. They will provide effective solutions to repair the online reputation of your products and services suffering from negative search results on Google.

Furthermore, if you own the negative content, remove it yourself. However, if any third party has written the negative content, you must reach out to them and request that they take it down.

You can also use Google’s DMCA form for removal. Remember, you have to submit a separate notice for each service with negative content. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee Google will completely remove the content.

Another effective solution to address negative content is creating SEO-focused material and optimizing new and existing positive content. Secure backlinks for visibility, gradually pushing negative items down Google's rankings.

Manage Your Reviews

Balancing both negative and positive reviews online plays a crucial role in repairing your online reputation. You have to encourage your existing customers to leave positive feedback to counter unfavorable, negative reviews.

Follow these tips to garner more positive reviews for your business:

• Simply ask your loyal customers to give honest feedback.

• Find the right moments in the customer journey to request reviews.

• Identify common negative review themes and address them internally.

• Set up your CRM to automatically request reviews after a purchase.

• Request vendors to leave positive feedback.

Conclusion

Once you have followed these 4 steps to repair your online reputation, continuous brand monitoring is important. Odds are new mentions of your brand may appear all the time. Leverage free tools like Google Alerts to automate tracking, monitor what people say about your company, and gain valuable insights into your target audience. 

In addition to these tools, choose the best business reputation repair services to enhance the process of restoring and maintaining a positive online reputation.