An essential part of running a business is protecting its reputation. That is especially crucial for oil businesses, which are prone to negative online press and reviews. While it’s challenging to protect your online reputation, there are a few management techniques that any sized oil company can use to defend themselves against reputational harm.
What is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management searches the internet for negative mentions of your company. Such mentions can include news stories, reviews, or comments left about your company on social media. A reputation manager finds these negative mentions and responds to them.
By responding to those who have posted something negative about your company online, you can organically build trust with consumers. Compared to public relations campaigns, brand management is a more open and transparent way of handling criticism. If your company is still creating a reputation management plan, here are a few tips to help you start.
Tip 1: Post a Few Times a Week on Social Media
One of the effective ways to build a reputation management plan is by being active on social media. Posting regularly shows your users that you care about reaching out to them and being transparent about what’s going on with your company.
Consumers generally have more positive feedback for companies that they feel are actively communicating with them. Social media is a quick way to tell a wide range of customers on different platforms about your company. Using a friendly voice and showing your brand’s personality also helps build a positive connection between your business and its customers.
Tip 2: Be a Step Ahead of Hackers
While much of the criticism you come across online is legitimate, your company may also face reputational harm from a competitor or hacker. Someone who wants to harm your business can easily alter your posts or send negative messages to your customers. Such an attack can be incredibly damaging to your reputation and result in further negative reviews or even a loss of customers.
The best way to avoid such an attack is to find cybersecurity solutions made for oil and gas companies. Many businesses exist whose sole purpose is to help you avoid damaging online attacks. A high-quality cybersecurity company will also provide you and your staff training to identify and prevent cyberattacks that can be deadly to your reputation.
Tip 3: Monitor & Respond Quickly
Finding negative online feedback and potential instances of cyberattacks is essential. However, identifying possible threats to your reputation is meaningless without responding to them adequately.
After you’ve found negative posts, comments, or reviews about your business, you should respond quickly and sympathetically. It may be tempting to delete or hide negative reviews or news articles, but doing so may cause more reputational harm than good. Tech-savvy users may find “hidden” negative items or view a lack of negative reviews as suspicious.
Tip 4: Build a Robust Blog
Social media posts can build a friendly face for your company. Similarly, a detailed blog can add to that personality while also showing your company’s expertise in the oil or gas industry. Social media is excellent for fast connections with customers, but blogs give you the extra room to show off everything your company knows about your field.
A longer form blog post can build your ethos and reputation. By writing posts about common issues in oil and gas and how your company is solving those issues, you can show off the services and products you have and how they can benefit your customers.
If you opt to create a blog, be sure to update it regularly. While you don’t need to update blogs as often as social media posts, you’ll still need to create an upload schedule to ensure readers come back to your blog regularly. You can create a brief content guideline to help your employees if they are ever assigned a blog post. Doing so can ensure your blogs are written in a unique but consistent voice that will show your company’s branding and personality to your readers.
Investing in Your Online Reputation
Every business will face online criticism. Your company must have an online reputation management plan to respond to that criticism effectively. If you suspect that cyberattacks are damaging your online reputation, you’ll want to seek a cybersecurity company to combat it. No matter how big or small your oil or gas company is, investing in your online reputation will help you grow your business and develop a trusting and loyal customer base.
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