Everyone has used social media at least once in their life. The newest generations were born with social media being the norm in their everyday communications. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have given everyone the opportunity to connect not only with other people from around the globe, but also to interact with brands, causes and products they like, use or believe in.

Users express their likes and dislikes about products, brands, politics and anything else they feel passionately about via commenting, private messages or creating fan pages or, in a negative case, fake profiles of companies for mocking purposes. What are your reactions, though, when the brand reputation of the company you work for is targeted on e-platforms?

The issue

Whilst working for a medical cosmetics & beauty company in retail, I conducted an analysis of our social media platforms. The platforms we were using at the time were Facebook, Google+ and Instagram. The company also used review sites such as Sitejabber and Trustpilot to attract new clients. The initial results of the analysis indicated that there was a need to improve the company’s online reputation on all social platforms, as there were not enough positive comments on the speed, results and quality of the services provided, and, sometimes, on the employees themselves. As online coupon deals were the business model of the company, any bad review could hurt the sales conversion and could potentially drive new clients to competitors.

The secondary plan included the creation of a new, simplified and educational website for all brands under the Group umbrella, a fully-loaded Google digital strategy, including SEO/SEM ranking plan and Adwords campaigns, as well as the generation of brand ambassadors internally and externally (staff, clients and industry social influencers) to push the company’s credibility and generate content for all platforms.

The solution

My initial advice to myself was always to address negative comments on social networking as if the customer was right in front of you. People will judge on a number of criteria:

• how quickly you respond
• what the reaction was
• what your customer’s reaction was, and
• what was the resolution offered

As a priority, I set up Google Alerts to receive alerts once a day when our brand name is called out. My second job was to create a template of answers to potential comments and pass it onto the Customer Care Manager to confirm the content was in line with the company policies. Next step was to check our social media every couple of hours to make sure whoever comments gets the appropriate reply. Even when the comments are not flattering, they still need to be answered to improve the transparency and integrity of how issues are dealt with by the business. Although there was resistance from the business to “just delete” the negative comments, I disagreed and kept on offering solutions out in the open.

The results

After monitoring the social media accounts and the review sites for 2 months and feeding back reviews weekly to the COO, the results were satisfying. Social media interactions with clients increased approx 15%, whereas the review ratings on platforms increased from 3 to nearly 4 stars. Google+ was our greatest success, as the comments received increased by 20% month on month and the ratio of positive vs. negative comments increased from 1:4 to 2:3.  The social media presence was also increased with creating more posts and offers and starting to use an omnichannel strategy for our e-campaigns which included social media.

In terms of converting reviews to clients, there was an increase in footfall in 4 out of the 9 clinics towards the end of the 2 months of approx. 10% YTD, as most of the new clients were reading the reviews prior to interacting with the brand and purchasing treatments.

Lessons learnt

• There is a need to create a solid social media strategy, cohesive with the branding and vision of the company
• Improve customer relationship through engagement on all social media platforms – if customers use a platform you are not on and can give great ROI, add it to the mix
• Create brand ambassadors internally (customer care expert) and externally (looking for influencers on a local scale)
• Create a new website to improve the brand and be the expert in the beauty & medical cosmetics field. The website and the content will also generate content for social media, PR pieces and e-campaigns
• Create an SEO/SEM strategy to give the company a strong search engine ranking

The above steps are fundamental in creating a solid base for the e-face of the company you work for. You can adapt the steps and create different phases, depending on the budget, the strategy or short-term/long-term priorities of the company. Overall, one step towards the right digital brand strategy was made.

Thank you for taking time to read this post. Any comments, questions or feedback please do not hesitate to contact me on my contact page or via email on vdiamanti@gmail.com. All comments welcome!