Protecting your brand reputation is one of the things that you should have on your priority list because it’ll impact your ability to continue deriving profits from your brand. It’ll also impact your ability to start any other projects later on if you are the face of your current brand and you want to show your face in any other brands you start.
Table of Contents
Why it’s important to maintain your company’s reputation
- If your brand reputation is damaged brands may close the deals they have with you (affiliate and sponsorship deals)
- Your audience may not want to consume your content anymore if your brand reputation is damaged
- If your brand reputation is good, it can increase collaboration opportunities
1. Try not to offend anyone with your content
When you’re creating any content, try not to say or do anything that could offend someone.
Sometimes you have to be extra careful to not offend someone because let’s face it we’re in the snowflake culture now and many things you say or do that don’t seem to carry any insult can still be labeled as an insult by someone who seeks fault in everything.
You can’t really avoid offending a snowflake but you should still try your best not to offend anyone.
2. Don’t endorse questionable brands
Before you agree on any brand deals or seek out any brand deals you should do your due research to make sure there aren’t some shady practices behind the scenes because your brand reputation could be damaged if you were to be linked to questionable brands.
You don’t have to worry about it too much because most brands are not going to do something that could damage their credibility and audience retention. Still, it’s good to do some digging first.
It’s best to only endorse brands that you have experience with already. Say you want to endorse a type of running shoes by a specific brand. It’s best for you to try it out first to see whether the quality is good and if it is something that you’re proud to attach to your own brand. Endorsing a bad quality product can prevent your audience from buying things that you recommend in the future thus affecting your future earnings.
3. Don’t collaborate with bad people
“Bad people” or bad characters can be hard to spot sometimes. With more experience, you’ll be able to pick out bad apples from a crowd pretty easily.
There are quite a few personal development books out there that can teach you how to recognize bad people to stay away from them. Pick up a few of those books if you want to learn more.
Once you have a hunch that someone isn’t good (regardless of whether you have evidence or not), try to do a bit more digging, and if you realize that your hunch was correct, try your best to politely decline a collaboration.
In most cases though, this isn’t something you’ll have to worry about as most content creators and brands try to make sure they don’t do anything that may damage their brands but it is still good to do some research on someone before going full out on releasing a course together for instance.
4. Reframe from commenting too much
Commenting and interacting with your audience can be very helpful if you’re active on social media. However, you should also know when enough is enough.
The more you say, the more chance you have of saying something wrong. Every word you say can impact your brand in some way for better or for worst.
Some people may argue with me that you should always try to comment as much as you can on your social media platforms or anywhere else that has a comment section because active involvement with your audience help your brand. However, you should make sure everything you put out isn’t going to be offensive or be viewed in an unintended way.
Sometimes I delete comments I made because I may have said something that could be read in a way that is outside of its intended purpsoe. It may have been good to explain things further but sometimes it’s better to just delete it without overexplaining yourself.
5. Let the insults go
Doesn’t matter who you are and what you do, you’ll encounter haters. There’s no one who isn’t hated by anyone in their entire lives.
Keanu Reeves may be well-liked by most people but I’m sure some people don’t like him much at all.
You will see horrible comments about your brand or about yourself, it may be tempting to say something back but it’s better to let the insults go, ignore them, and move on.
That way, you can prevent yourself from saying the wrong thing in the heat of the moment and you can prevent yourself from getting dragged into a bigger mess.
6. Don’t engage in confrontations
Say your competitor made an ad to make fun of your brand. It’s best not to confront them and make another ad back because one, your ad can be offensive to more than your competitor, and two, you’re now openly admitting to the world of the tension between your companies and now you are forcing people to pick a side. It won’t end pretty at least not entirely.
Try not to engage in confrontations at all. The best thing to do for any brand when other brands or individuals mention them in an unfavorable light is to not do anything. Most of the time, people will forget about it. Of course, if you feel the need to stand up for your brand and yourself, feel free to do so. Just make sure you keep track of everything you say so as not to offend third parties and not to escalate things further.
7. Don’t follow just anyone on social media
I see some reputable brands follow some questionable accounts on social media. It can damage your reputation if you aren’t careful.
Whether you like it or not, it does happen that your brand just won’t be taken as seriously if you follow random accounts that have nothing to do with your industry or is sketchy or distasteful.
You just won’t be taken as seriously or be looked at with as much respect if you’re associated with certain accounts or person on social media. You can tell so much about a person or brand by who they follow on social media or interact with on social media and some accounts that you follow may drastically alter how you’re perceived by other brands and other individuals.
Once you’re associated with a certain brand or person, the mental connection is made between you and them even if you do unfollow them. It can be hard to shake that established connection in someone’s head once it’s made.
It’s good to be a bit more selective with who you associate with on social media.
Side note about Elon Musk
You can see that Elon Musk really doesn’t think too much about the consequences of his words. Just take a look down his Twitter lane and you’ll see what I’m talking about (as if you don’t know already). However, something Musk has which excuse him from everything else is him being literally the richest person on planet Earth currently.
You and everyone else in this world including me should be a bit more careful with maintaining our reputation than Musk.
Not to mention that Musk has a huge loyal fan base that will agree with whatever he said and does. He could Tweet anything and the whole crowd would like and retweet even if it’s a simple ‘hi’.
Few people dares to cross Musk because his army is there to defend him, share his messages, and help spread his ideologies. For a person to go against him means the rampant spread of defamation that may follow in the form of a meme.
People underestimate the power of meme. Musk is also big in the meme space. Memes have the power to influence and shift judgments in people while being subtle and maybe while even appearing as “cool” and when you have someone as influential as Musk in the meme space, he does hold a lot of power (beyond the power that his money provides).
Final thought
Maintaining your brand reputation is very crucial and can be very exhausting if you want to continue earning money from your brand.
It’s also worth noting that sometimes we may do nothing to deserve the personal attacks that someone may throw at us. Try not to give any reason to invite anybody to do so but if they really want to, they can and they will and there’s nothing you could do about it.
This is why you should invest your money. Let your money work for you. At some point, you don’t need to maintain any brand anymore. You have enough to essentially retire for the rest of your life. Of course, that’ll take time.
In the meantime, try to build up different sources of income. Try to juggle another business on the side. The more money you make, the faster you get to a stage of total financial freedom where you need not maintain any brand, you can sell your business and put the money into things like index funds and use the rest of the time to do whatever you want without worrying about brand reputation.
Of course, some of you do find it fun to maintain brands. And for some people like Musk, they always have to continue doing something so that it’s out of the question that they’d ever not be working on some business. In which case, they’d have to continue protecting their brand image.
Personally, I find it really exhausting to deal with people sometimes and the act of maintaining a business always involves people. I really don’t want to have to be forced to deal with people for the rest of my life so at one point though I’d like to get to a stage in my life where it’s not obligatory to make more money or to maintain any brand. I think to me, that would be true freedom.
In the meantime, protecting your reputation (personal or brand reputation) would be a constant job. One that takes a lot of work but you should also take it easy and take a break should you feel the need to. it’s better than pushing on while increasing the risk of you saying something or doing something that damages your brand out of sheer exhaustion and burnout.
