How to focus on improving your business’ reputation in 2017

In the business world, your reputation is everything. From how you’re perceived by potential customers, to attracting new clients and becoming a more respected and leading player in your industry, a positive reputation is essential.

Here’s a few reasons why 2017 is the year to focus on improving your business reputation:

Awards

One of the clearest indicators of a successful business is being recognised by your industry for important awards and accolades. There are lots of different ways you can win awards, firstly make sure you’re sharing your company’s achievements on social media and keeping up with industry publications so you don’t miss deadlines to enter to be considered for potential awards. Awards like being mentioned in The Sunday Times Top 100 employers can be hugely advantageous, make it an aim for your business to either win an award or be in the running for a major industry accolade this year in order to boost your reputation within your industry.

Support your community

Any type of community support work or volunteering that you can do really helps to build trust with consumers and shows that you care about supporting other local businesses and areas. Take inspiration from Motorpoint, who sent employees to help out in local charity shops for a day, helping to support the community and to challenge the stereotypes of car sales people who are often branded as pushy. Helping your community gives you a chance to show a different side of your company to people and improve your reputation.

Push boundaries

Pushing boundaries can really help your business to make headlines and improve its reputation. Whether it’s by taking on large numbers of new members of staff, different projects, expanding overseas or informing local media of your community work and fundraising efforts, whilst you’re pushing boundaries you’re constantly improving the reputation of your business. Set some targets you’d like to achieve and then plan for when in the year you want to meet them by for some additional structure.

Go digital

Negative posts and comments online can instantly destroy a brand’s reputation, no matter how hard they’ve worked to build it up. Focusing on your digital representation can be crucial to helping to boost your reputation. With more and more customers leaving bad reviews online and instantly turning to Twitter to report a problem, monitoring your social media accounts to respond to these types of comments immediately and repair any potential damage is vital.

By focusing on all these areas, you’ll be able to boost your businesses’ reputation and be on course for a successful 2017.