Social media plays an important role in building trust with the public. Pharma has a big brand reputation issue (aka trust issue). I often get asked can social media repair a brand or organization that has damaged its trust? And what does an organization need to do?
1) an organization needs to do a brand reputation audit
- Brand reputation audit helps you to see how your brand is performing in the eyes of the consumer
- Findings from a brand reputation audit will help you improve your strategy
- Findings from a brand reputation audit can help you to utilize the social media platforms in the best ways possible
- Findings from a brand reputation audit can help to understand where you need to make corrections
- Findings from a brand reputation audit can help identify strengths and weakness of your online presence
- Some general questions to ask yourself in brand reputation audit:
- What are people online saying about you?
- Are there positive or negative comments?
- What content is working best?
- What is the demographics of followers?
- Are there any brand advocates?
- What is the general sentiment from users?
2) an organization needs to listen to online conversations
- Listen to your audience, what are they saying about you
- Social media has become a channel to vent problems and sharing experiences with others:
- This is a unique opportunity to listen to your customer – don’t waste it
- Don’t get angry or upset about negative comments – there really may be truth to what people are saying
- Negative comments from the past – once on the web you can be sure somehow has seen it and copies and reposts it
3) an organization needs to respond and engage
- Social media has democratized communications & the consumer’s voice is louder than ever
- Remember social media is about being social – it is a two-way dialogue
- Engagement opens a line of communication & shows how your organization interacts with outside world
- Social media is a way of communicating organizational core values to the public
- Remember social media does not sleep:
- Are you responding rapidly to customer requests on social media?
- Are you responding at all to customer requests?
- Young and savvy consumers will not tolerate companies with poor customer service or response
- Are you using automated DM (direct messaging)?:
- Get rid of automated DM people know it is automated and not human
- Auto DM is “inauthentic”
- Auto DM is impersonal and convey no feeling
- Do you have accounts that have been abandoned?
- Do you have accounts with “zombie communities”?
4) an organization needs to empower and encourage employee advocates
- People trust people
- Best employee advocate your CEO
- Employee advocates makes your organization more human and personalized
- Trust comes from core values communicated through your employees
5) an organization needs to understand that “content is king”
- Publish quality content
- Content of quality beats content quantity
- Consumers can distinguish authenticity from advertising & vanity posts
- Focus on content the solves consumer problems