Brand reputation on the web

What does Brand Reputation really mean on the web?

Talking about Brand Reputation is not easy, especially when the web is also involved. You touch the heart of a company's identity, you plunge your hands into the jam. Brand reputation or brand reputation is the very substance for which a company is really successful or not. Brand Reputation is like the criminal record of a private citizen, it is the litmus test of the representative image of a company in all respects. Therefore, "by hook or by crook" those who work on the web sooner or later face problems related to the reputation of a new or existing brand. Whether for one reason or another, the fatal processes that affect a brand during its existence are many and must always be kept very well under control, so, especially on the web, brand reputation is one of the elements carriers that have a positive or negative influence on identity processes and therefore on web marketing strategies.

Wikipedia explains:

The brand reputation or brand reputation identifies the web reputation referred to the name of a product, a company or a brand, or how much and how the name of a product or a brand is known and appreciated on the web.

Brand reputation does not only depend on the company's communication, as it was before the advent of digital marketing, but it is the result of a collective process, in which all the company's stakeholders play a fundamental role and the reputation ends up depending on how they perceive the brand and the actions that the company undertakes on a daily basis. The reputation of a brand becomes a central element in corporate communication strategies.

A positive reputation also generates positive sentiment towards the brand, those involved in this become voluntary spokespersons for the company, they will recommend the brand to their friends and speak highly of it, activating positive word of mouth for the brand. Consumers represent the form of communication that is most capable of influencing purchasing decisions.

It has been demonstrated that brand reputation brings better results than one-way communication of the company in deploying the effect of brand advertising on the results of the value of brand equity.

Non-traditional means of communication, such as social media, increase the value perceived by the consumer with respect to marketing activities and from this derives the importance of the user himself in generating sales and positive word of mouth, which are useful for building and to brand reputation management.

It goes without saying then that the reputation depends on the endogenous factors of the company, including behavior towards employees, collaborators, salesmen and all those who directly or indirectly come into contact with the company itself, transparency, the sense of civil responsibility which in turn invests social responsibility of the company itself committed to competing in its markets and finally, from elements and exogenous factors which are not always controllable including factors of political economy, crisis factors, industrial assessment and macroeconomics.

Therefore, when we talk about branding policies, reputation management becomes fundamental in trying to understand in which environment we operate, who is the interested public (target) and what are the dynamics to control when you come into contact with the public. The matter then becomes more complicated when the channels of communication and relationship with the public are diverse and complex (such as social networks for example). But everything can still be traced back to a healthy and conscientious "behavioral education" towards third parties, whoever they are. Sounds simple and easy, but it's not.

So what does Brand Reputation mean today, in a nutshell, on the web? What are the practical aspects to consider?

Normally they are divided into 4 types of actions which can be summarized as follows:

1. Web Monitoring: all the analysis actions of communication flows, behavioral that directly or indirectly concern a specific brand, its products, its services on all online communication channels and I mean everyone.
2. Crisis Management: here instead we are talking about strategic planning and all the actions aimed at monitoring and managing/resolving the reputation crises generated by the target or by anyone who indirectly comes into contact with the company online, therefore we are talking about analysis, alerting systems in real time and strategic insights regarding the evolution of critical cases.
3. Reputation Engineering: here we get to the heart of the matter. Basically we are talking about the design, construction and management of digital identity starting from the online brand identity strategy, to the creation of channels, content optimization, up to adv, SEO, SEM campaigns.
4. Brand Protection: last but not least, all the actions concerning the true protection of the corporate brand are involved, including analysis and identification of cases of online counterfeiting, defamation on the web, copyright and copyright infringement

Even in the case of small companies where their commercial action is limited to the local level, today, with the explosion of the web and the new methods of online communication, visibility and product marketing, brand reputation cannot be ignored and it is necessary however, consider a more systemic and less empirical approach. Brand reputation is and must be a decisive aspect of web marketing strategies starting from the drafting of the editorial plan up to the management and actual review of the contents generated on one's site and all within social channels.