Your digital reputation can be altered in several ways, from what you post to social media sites to your published content. In addition, your website’s functionality, reviews, and comments can all influence your digital reputation.
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram play a key role in influencing your digital reputation. According to SavaMelnik, a digital marketing company, Twitter is used by 66% of companies, which is the most used social media network.
Twitter is a digital venue where you can interact directly with consumers, engage with customers, and solve problems. However, the downfall of Twitter is the volume of content it generates, with 495 tweets being sent per second.
This makes it difficult to filter out the noise.
Facebook is becoming the leading social media platform for businesses, as it now represents 93% of the world’s total social media users. In addition, according to Hubspot Insights, 90% of marketers consider Facebook a useful way to reach their audiences.
Facebook is effective because it reaches the most amount of people at once and provides a low cost-per-impression. In addition, Facebook’s content cannot be filtered, and posts are automatically displayed to its 1.4 billion users.
Social media platforms are becoming the fastest growing digital medium, with 36% of the marketing budget spent on this medium.
Finally, Instagram is a visual media site. According to Buzzfeed, 57% of millennials trust social media posts and brands that include visuals and text.
Instagram is the third most popular social media site, with 1.5 billion users. The app has a higher number of users and users’ time spent on it, which means they will receive higher rankings.
All of the three social media platforms have similar traffic levels. According to Statista, Twitter receives an average of 452 million monthly users, while Instagram has more than 700 million, and Facebook gets over 1.3 billion monthly users.
Instagram has a higher traffic rate and volume than the other two platforms due to the ability to scroll through posts and have immediate access to information. As stated in a PwC and Equifax 2017 digital trends report, Instagram is expected to grow 45% annually by 2021.
In addition, Instagram is more likely to have a higher engagement rate because the image is a “visual social platform” rather than a text-based one.
“I think Instagram has the potential to become the biggest platform in the next few years. In general, consumers want to see what you’re doing, so Instagram is a big way for you to show your life and lifestyle to your audience,” says Scott Berry, VP of Marketing at Litmus.
Other digital platforms, such as LinkedIn and Pinterest, have similar usage levels, yet Facebook is the leader. Regardless of these trends, the platforms and the use that they provide to organizations will dictate what will become your digital reputation.
Digital reputation is about to be integrated with many digital strategies. But, the truth is, if you want to impact your digital reputation, you have to know how your digital actions and strategies influence it.
Digital reputation is still a young industry, but it is fast becoming a critical part of your marketing efforts.
“Digital reputation is critical to the success of marketing. The big difference between Facebook and Instagram is that they are visual platforms and used differently. In addition, Facebook is very involved in public life, whereas Instagram’s content is more private,” says Mr. Berry.
Your digital reputation influences your brand visibility, and the platforms you choose will determine the impact you make in the social media space.
“If your company is developing a strategy around the digital reputation for your brand, it is important to have a strong focus on digital reputation because it is not something that you can make up. Your reputation is also influenced by how many users you have and how engaged you are in them,” says Mr. Berry.
When creating a strategy for your digital marketing, consider that one of the biggest areas in which your reputation can be affected is how you engage with customers.
“Engaging with your customers and even potential customers is critical. But if you want to have an impact on your reputation, you need to engage with your fans and customers,” says Mr. Berry.
In general, how you engage with customers is measured through various KPIs, which will be affected by the method you choose. So, for example, you can measure the level of engagement by looking at your Brand Trust, and you can measure the level of engagement with a customer by looking at their impact to purchase,” says Mr. Berry.
You can also measure the level of engagement by looking at your fan base. If you have a lot of followers, you can measure how many messages you send per day. If your fan base is more than 1,000 people, you can create an audience report and see which audience you are reaching and how much time you spend with each group.
Similarly, you can also get feedback from your customers, and if you know how to engage with them, you can better measure how much impact your activities have.
The biggest challenge to digital reputation is that companies do not have a detailed view of it. They often get one snapshot of their digital reputation when they report to the public, like Twitter, Facebook, or Google, or during an external, third-party organization audit.
“Knowing the value of your reputation is important because if you do not have a clear understanding, it is difficult to know if you are on the right track with your digital strategy. You can gauge it on the degree to which your reputation is growing,” says Mr. Berry.
How can companies have a better understanding of their digital reputation? Well, that’s where technology comes in.
There are several tools that you can use to measure your digital reputation. For instance, you can use an online reputation tracking tool.