Especially for brands, social media is an ideal tool for reputation management. This term refers to the positive influencing of the brand image through direct and viral marketing in social media, or the response to negative image influences. The construction of a positive reputation does not only depend on the self-portrayal of the company, but above all, on the posts of social media users. Professional reputation management requires comprehensive social media monitoring with specific parameters.
Reputation management refers to the strengthening of the brand image or the defence against negative influences on the brand. This requires a proactive dialogue strategy. Through actively publishing of posts, companies try to initiate a dialogue about their own brand with users, which will ideally continue to develop virally in the network of the users. Further measures to encourage and control dialogues are, for example, recommendation programmes or the recruitment of brand ambassadors, who are supplied with exclusive information or offers. In order to understand and optimise the development of your own reputation in social media, comprehensive monitoring is necessary. Apart from performance figures, such as direct coverage (e.g. number of facebook fans), shares or the interaction rate, the analysis of specific values, such as the reputation of contacts, the tonality or the share of voice will also be necessary here.

Tonality

It is important to companies, to know in what tone posts are written about their brands, whether positive, neutral or negative. While positive posts are the aim of every company, negative posts may serve to identify risks, which can have a negative effect on the company image. The categorisation according to positive, neutral or negative posts takes place relative to the total of posts. In order to determine the tonality, tools are necessary, that search posts for  key words and analyse the connotation of specific wording.

Reputation of Contacts

Contacts in social media can be distinguished in quality. The higher the reputation of a contact in his network, the more valuable it is for the company. The following factors play a role in the evaluation of a contact’s reputation:

  • The frequency in which he shares company posts or writes his own posts on his profile.
  • The tonality of his posts (positive/neutral/negative).
  • The size of his own network and therefore, his potential direct coverage when sharing company posts or writing his own posts about the company on his profile.
  • The influence on his contacts, which may show through the number of responses to his communication.
  • The reputation of his contacts.

A contact with a large, influential network, who regularly spreads positive posts about the company, is more valuable than a contact, who shows hardly any company-related activity in social media. In order to have a large impact with social media communication, some companies target specific users, who show great influence on their networks or like to recommend the company. These users may be rewarded with incentives. e.g. in the form of discount vouchers. However, there is no universal standard, yet, to evaluate the reputation of users.

Share of Voice

The share of voice indicates how often a company, brand or product has been mentioned in social media and sets the number of mentions in relation to all mentions of similar companies/brands/en/en/products in the relevant market. The share of voice is therefore the proportion of your own company in the total communication in social media in the relevant market.

More information on social media marketing and other digital marketing topics

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