Cyber Talk: Social media reputation management

Hyderabad: A positive reputation builds loyalty and increases confidence in your personality or brand, ultimately driving growth, which could be either sales or followers. Many of us treat social media accounts as a purely social vent, casually updating statuses and posting photos online with a little expectation of how friends and followers on how they […]

Hyderabad: A positive reputation builds loyalty and increases confidence in your personality or brand, ultimately driving growth, which could be either sales or followers.

Many of us treat social media accounts as a purely social vent, casually updating statuses and posting photos online with a little expectation of how friends and followers on how they feel about your social vent. However, your online actions could seriously limit educational, personal, or professional prospects.

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The Internet is the new first impression and people are measured online by likes, comments and reviews. Anyone can say anything, and it shows up online and people don’t ask for references anymore, they search on Google. What happens if there is negative, misleading, inaccurate and damaging content, rumours, lies, hurtful material/images, harmful reviews or anonymous posts from troublesome sites showing up in social media search results belonging to us?

Identity Vs Image: –
Identity is what you say about yourself (i.e. Self-presentation) and Image is all about what others say about you (i.e. Collective representation). Your reputation is what others think about you. Your reputation matters to your success. Those with good reputation grow twice as fast as their competitor. Reputations cannot be manufactured and are largely an effect of the quality you deliver. There are three solutions for reputation management (a) Delivering reputation – building services online (b) Managing visibility (c) Fast and helpful crisis management.

How reputation can be damaged?:
* Negative articles – Online news articles are often the first choice of for people and often we still tend to believe what they read in the news feed is correct.

* Negative online images – Celebrities and ordinary citizens, all have been the subject of leaked photos or other negative online images.

* Wikipedia – It is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and it’s a must place to be on.

* Blog posts – Anyone can write anything they want about anyone they want and this could result in a riot of misinformation and confusion.

* Review sites – Review sites like TripAdvisor, Google Reviews and others exist to help consumers make guided choices based on what other customers have experienced.

* Social media – Social media is the method of choice for people recommending brands, spreading gossip, airing complaints and criticising public figures.

Few points to consider for better reputation: –
* Negative Google Results: We should minimise the damage of unwanted or unsolicited negative Google results by pushing down or suppressing negative results.

* Review Management: We should look for an increase in good ratings and reviews of our services on Google, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, etc.

* Google Suggestive Management: We should remove the negative Google AutoComplete wordings.

Social Media Listening Tools: –
Everyone prioritises paying attention to positive reviews on their social networks by highlighting them in targeted posts, but it is equally important to prioritise and engage with the negative feedback and comments to build credibility among your followers. Negative feedback can be especially damaging on social media if the post goes viral. If not attended to properly, negative feedback can cause some businesses to fail. It’s important for all to use social listening and monitoring tools to track what’s happening around their brand or personality. These tools increase positive reviews and conversations about themselves on social media. A few prominent social media listening tools are listed below.

* https://www.falcon.io/

* https://wwww.brand24.com/

* https://www.digimind.com/

* https://youscan.io/

* https://brandmentions.com/

* https://buzzsumo.com/

Social Media Scheduling Tools: –
Social media scheduling tools aid in the overall management of your social media accounts, allowing you to spend more time creating amazing content and developing real-time connections with your followers. A few prominent social media scheduling tools are listed below.

* https://sproutsocial.com/

* https://coschedule.com/

* https://feedly.com/

* https://www.airtable.com/

* https://planable.io/

* https://skedsocial.com/

Some important points to consider in managing a good reputation online are (a) Post and Engaging with Relevant Content (b) Focus on better Reviews, instead of Likes and Followers (c) Pay attention to negative feedbacks and resolve Issues that affect reputation (d) Transform your social media data into insights. (e) Use social media listening tools (f) Use social media scheduling tools. (g) Follow the trends that are in line with your audience.

Stay tuned to Cyber Talk for more on internet ethics and digital wellness brought to you by Anil Rachamalla of the End Now Foundation, www.endnowfoundation.org

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