When it comes to continued growth and success of your organization, the first things that come to mind are typically financial progress and the evolution of company size. However, dismissing the importance of your company’s brand image and reputation can lead to more headaches down the road. Whether you’re company is just starting to identify your brand awareness or you are looking to improve reputation management after a big hit, these tips can help align your organizations.
Promote More Than What You Sell
Although the end goal may be to make more sales, positioning your brand’s voice as one that is always pushing services or products can alienate potential brand advocates and those only in the exploratory phase of the sales funnel. In order to have a well-rounded company reputation, it is essential that you provide value to your customer beyond your products and services. This includes positioning you brand as a thought leader in the industries you work in through digital content marketing like blogs and whitepapers, defining your employer branding and promoting it to potential new employees, and collaborating with community and industry leaders. When your brand has a multi-channel approach to promoting the best parts of the company, it allows you organization to be recognized not only for what you sell, but also for what you know.
Encourage Your Employees To Be Brand Advocates
The reputation of an organization is not something that only top leadership can work on. Having employees advocate for your brand is a great way to provide authenticity to your public mission and values. When employees are proud to work at a company, it speaks volumes about the quality of work that is being done. The first step to having your employees be brand advocates is to gauge employee satisfaction and happiness regularly. Being able to define when your team members are or are not happy in the work life will allow you to adjust before internal issues spill into your company external reputation. Encouraging mutual employee/supervisor reviews, facilitating anonymous feedback surveys and providing ongoing training are all great ways to measure the happiness of your employees.
Become a Community Partner
Although your company may have a strong internal pride, you may not be viewed as positively in your community. One great way to combat a poor reputation or bad online reviews is to do work in the surrounding community you work in. Becoming a helping hand in your community allows members of your community to get to know the brand in way that is not always obvious online. Whether it be through charitable efforts, public speaking engagement, networking opportunities or sponsorships, taking steps to give back to communities you work in creates a stronger bond than the traditional seller/buyer relationship.
Managing your company’s reputation is not something you need a whole PR agency to do. Company’s often lose focus of their mission and values, but taking simple steps to course correct can have a long lasting benefit on your organization’s ability to grow into the future.
