Reputation management

Content can and should be used to build and proactively defend your brand’s reputation. Nowadays you need to have a strong brand story to explain why you do what you do, in line with the usual suspects as sustainability and inclusiveness. With the devil in the details, this is about all your content, not just the polished 'about the brand' pages. 

Strangely enough, most brands do not have this basic content in place. A brand that claims to be sustainable yet doesn't tell about sustainability in their 'about' pages or in the job descriptions. A brand that claims the benefits of dairy consumption, yet they don't even tell why they believe drinking milk is good for you. A brand that is into coffee, yet does not even have the number 1 search query 'how to make a cappuccino' on their ecomm pages. Just a few examples. 

When that sh*t hits the fan in times of crisis, or simply when journalists are just looking for a good story, the press deep dives into your content. Once they smell something juicy they dig even deeper. You better have all your content together because you will never know when this happens.

3 Simple rules 

There are three simple rules for proactive reputation defending content. 

1. In line with your ‘why’. It is your core and explains your license to operate. If you lack this content, you are not credible and do not have the ‘proof’ of your reason for existence. 
2. It takes time to build a solid base. And it is not a one-off or a campaign. Don't wait for the perfect story and the perfect pages. Small steps ahead. Just start, build and expand over time. Most often forgotten: audit and re-evaluate continuously to keep this content up to date.  
3. Non-commercial. No discussion.

Business case

Due to the lack of a solid immediate business case, producing this type of content for your online reputation is a challenge. Keep in mind, the costs of a crisis always are much higher. 

A few tips: developing this type of content is a long term investment and you don’t have to do all at once and go big. Next, this type of content is mostly in line with your help content. Joining efforts between corporate communications, public relations and marketing silos pays off in re-usable content.