3 Steps of a Brand Reputation Audit For New Zealand Businesses

With the explosion in popularity of social media sites – online brand reputation management is an absolute must.

If you are a New Zealand Business and you haven’t ever conducted an online brand reputation audit before, then take a moment to read this article and then give it a go.

There are a few tasks to complete before starting, but once you have done these then the entire audit process can be done in just a few minutes.

Preparation

Before you start establishing your goals for your brand management campaign by asking the following questions;

• How do you want your brand to be viewed?
• What characteristics do you want your target customer to associate with your brand?
• What types of customers do you want to reach?
• What actions do you want your customers to take?
• Where do want your brand to appear online?

By understanding who you are trying to target with your brand management campaign, as well as where you expect your brand to appear, you will be able to perform your online reputation audit more quickly and easily.

Doing the Audit

Here is the minute to minute breakdown for the specific steps you will take:

• 1st minute – Check major sites that are relevant to your business, like google, trademe, yellowpages and google places. If you find negative content and can respond with useful information then do so straight away and put things right.
• 2nd Minute– Monitor your social media sites and search within these sites for your company name or brand names.
• 3rd Minute – consider using sites like Klout or PeerIndex that attempt to quantify public sentiment for industry. This can streamline your searches and offer up opportunities for branding.
• 4th Minute – Google yourself and your business and brands. Consider using Google Alerts to give you a heads up in this area.
• 5th Minute – Check out your statistics. Look at your total website visitors, total social shares, total likes on Facebook etc.

Audit Follow Up

After the audit you should now have a comprehensive view of how your brand is perceived within your industry and across your target market.

Hopefully the results of your brand reputation audit will be good and not an unwelcome surprise. You should run your audit regularly as things can change online in the blink of an eye.

If your audit threw up some issues then you need to address them, sometimes taking a pretty tough view on your brand performance.

Managing your brand can be a time consuming job, but by making ongoing brand management work a part of your business’s overall PR strategy, you will keep on top of any issues. Alternatively, using a company, like Mobilize Mail, can be a cost effective option for your business.