With most businesses allotting 35% of their ad budget for digital marketing, having to devote any about to reputation after a crisis could be difficult. With budgets stretched all around, covering up and incident or a crisis could cost you big. A much better investment would be to focus on reputation monitoring now.

After the #deleteUber campaign, the company lost 200,000 members. Even for a huge tech company, this was a massive exodus that was sure to show up on their radar. Without working on their reputation after, they could have gone entirely bankrupt.

Reputation monitoring and management can save a business from the edge of the cliff. If you’ve got a positive online presence already, here are 8 ways that a monitoring service can ensure you stay on the positive side of things.

1. You’ll Have A Relevant Presence

When you’re using reputation monitoring tools, you can see what elements of your online profile your audience is paying attention to. If you’re making consumer goods, you can see where you’re being mentioned and what kinds of impressions work best for your audience.

Once you’ve got a complete picture of what your audience likes about your products and services, you can cater your content to them. Post lots of what your audience responds to and you’ll end up getting lots of valuable reposts and shares.

2. You’ll Make A Strong Social Media Impact

Monitoring your reputation allows you to see where your customers are. Every social media channel has its own distinct style. Facebook has an older demographic, Twitter is great for deploying flash sales, and Snapchat allows you to get in front of young influencers. LinkedIn allows your employees and staff to list professional skills and connect with people from other companies.

Reputation monitoring means knowing what people are saying about you on every major channel and service. If you can keep track of what’s going on with your customers, you can maintain a positive online presence.

The best companies are able to take someone else’s mentions and spin them into positive impressions on social media.

3. Customers Will Know Your Products

Name recognition is hard to get. Even once you have name recognition, you might need customers to have a closer relationship to your products.

Using reputation monitoring tools, you can follow mentions of your products and your competitors’ similar products. See what’s working for other products and what’s working for your own and shape your marketing strategy into a streamlined, high-ranking effort.

4. You Can Protect Your Board and Employees

The last thing you need is for one executive or one employee to make a mistake and damage the reputation of your entire brand. If you’ve got spokespeople for your brand, build a strong reputation for each person.

Consumers and the general public are sure to have problems with someone in your organization. The reasons don’t even have to make sense to you. But if you monitor your reputation, you can check theirs as well.

You can preserve your employees’ autonomy and private life by making a strong professional profile for them.

5. There’s a High ROI

Reputation monitoring requires a lot of resources from any company. You’ll be investing time and money into making sure you’re being proactive and also chasing down any issues. Many companies have to manage their reputations independently on no budget at all.

While you might think it’s not worth the time, the return on your investment is high. Think of management of your reputation as an insurance. Accidents happen, people don’t like a certain product, and you’re sure to hear about it.

People air their dirty laundry about a company in public now. To get in front of any issues will save you in lost revenue.

6. You Can Share Ideas With A Community

Blogging is a great way to communicate with your customers and build brand authority. This can protect you in the case of any reputation issues.

Search engines also respond well to a brand that blogs often with relevant keywords. You’ll find your posts high in search results if you use local SEO strategies when you’re writing.

You’ll be able to build a wider footprint for your brand while also building your reputation with a blog. Share your knowledge and you’ll win valuable brand loyalty.

7. You Can Listen To Your Audience

Part of reputation monitoring is the ability to be alerted when you’re mentioned in the news or in social media. If people are complaining about a product or service, you want to know as soon as their post goes up.

Once their post is made public, you’re playing defense. You can play fake defense or you can keep it real. It turns out the public likes when a company appears to be run by real humans who react sincerely to social media.

If customers are unhappy, get on top of it right away to maintain your hard-earned reputation.

8. You Can Deal With Crisis

If your company makes a mistake or you end up being named in one of those giant data breaches, dealing with the crisis is much better than ignoring it. Reputation management lets you know if the issue isn’t happening on your soil or through your normal channels.

You can pivot your company to get to know how the issue happened and craft a strong response strategy before the internet explodes with vitriol.

Reputation Monitoring Keeps You On Top

If you’ve worked hard to get recognition for the work that you do, you don’t want to lose it all because you’ve upset one high-profile client. Managing your reputation allows you to reroute trains before they crash into one another.

If you’re interested in other ways to build your online presence, contact us for more tips today.