A reputation management is a process of building and maintaining relationships with all strategic audiences to generate bonds of trust that boost businesses and careers and preserve achievements and legacies in times of crisis.
Contrary to what many think, the reputation management does not only concern situations of risk or of crisis. A positive and strong reputation generates numerous benefits:
- Increase in market value
- Higher turnover
- Brand awareness and recognition
- Power of influence
- Lower costs: financial, hiring and retaining people
- Protection in times of risk and crisis
Why is managing reputation strategic for the company’s survival?
Have you ever noticed how expectations regarding the role of companies in society have increased? Did you realize that people not only want to know the quality and price of products and services, but they also question companies about how they produce, how they treat their employees, what impact they have on the environment and how they contribute to the collective? It is in this context that reputation today is a strategic differentiation asset, regardless of the type and size of the business.
Until recently, expectations regarding a company were limited to its business, at most, its sector. But many things have changed in a short time. Changes in habits and behaviors, the speed of communication flows and high exposure on social networks and other digital media have a major impact on reputation of companies and their leaders.
What is important for the company's reputation?
To manage reputation Today, it is no longer enough to have a relationship plan for the audiences identified as strategic for the business. It is necessary to go further, get involved and take a stand in society on topics that go beyond the limits of the business's operations. In reputation, now, everything that happens inside the company and outside it matters.
Therefore, the first step towards managing reputation it is being aware that it is not possible to have complete control over it. This applies to companies and for leaders looking to build a personal brand and influence.
The reputation is formed based on information and perceptions from third parties. An increasingly important point is that silence and everything that is not said or evidenced also influence. Being is the first step, but it is also necessary to appear. Why reputation It's the other person's gaze. Although it is not possible to control 100% from reputation, it is possible to manage it, through signals that we intentionally emit to our audiences.
How to manage your company's reputation well?
Managing the company's reputation involves a range of disciplines and actions modulated according to each stakeholder, the organization's current situation and the context in which it operates.
In practice, it is a continuous journey and intentional to gain, maintain and expand the trust of all audiences that in some way relate to a company, whether as employees, suppliers, consumers, customers, public authorities, authorities, the press and society, among others. To achieve this, it is essential to know who your stakeholders are and how they think and also to be aware of the demands of society beyond your business.
One reputation strong, which boosts the business, is consolidated in the long term, but is built day by day, with coherence, consistency and recurrence, bringing the history of the organization and its purpose to exist, everything it does and how it does it, with evidence and impacts communicated in a strategic way.
How do you know for sure what the company's reputation is?
Opinion surveys, feedback, call center services, websites that gather consumer comments and many other tools are useful in providing clues about the public's assessment of the company. However, to truly know the company's reputation, it is necessary to have in-depth knowledge of the information and perceptions of each strategic audience.
ANK Reputation specializes in reputation management and has developed its own methodology that provides for interconnected steps. In the ANK methodology, the reputation management starts with Reputation Diagnosis, which will provide information about the company's maturity stage in its journey of reputation and its alignment with the strategic objectives of the business.
Diagnosing requires immersion in the company's reality, knowing what its internal and external stakeholders think about it, analyzing its market and competition, in addition to understanding how it positions itself and communicates. Through the Reputation Diagnosis, strengths and points of attention are identified, which will be stimulated and addressed in the strategic planning of management and reputation.
What is reputation planning?
The planning of reputation management provides that the company can tell its story, share its purpose, values and beliefs, wclearly communicating your position and the evidence that gives coherence and consistency to your speech about what you do and how you act.
Good planning contains action plans with initiatives aimed at each audience, in addition to preparing leaders and spokespersons to disseminate the culture of reputation throughout the organization and in the way of relating externally.
The proposed actions must be connected with the business strategy and respond to a strength or the treatment of a gap identified in the Reputation Diagnosis. Evaluate and adjust the plan reputation based on indicators that make sense for the organization, are also success factors for the efficiency of the reputation management.
