Business Reputation in 2024: Strategy, Tips & Ryanair Case Study

Ryanair’s reputation was never the best, ranking at -45 at the beginning of 2024. 

Could it be worse? Yes. 

On June 2nd, the Anomaly Detector identified increased critique of the airline due to problematic landings and customer service issues. On that day, Ryanair’s Reputation Score dropped to -62 – THE LOWEST EVER in Ryanair’s history. 

Apparently, funny TikToks and lower costs are not enough to keep customers happy as an airline.

Business reputation encapsulates external perceptions, beliefs, and opinions that stakeholders—customers, employees, investors, and the public—hold about a company. It’s the culmination of experiences, interactions, and outcomes associated with a business. It shapes how companies are perceived in the market and influences decisions made by various parties.
A strong reputation embodies trust and reliability, serving as a valuable asset that can significantly impact customer loyalty, employee morale, investor confidence, and overall business success.

Is reputation management important? 

Of course! 

In today’s digital era, corporate reputation is a crucial asset all businesses should care about. 

Nowadays, public opinion can make or break your success. 

Building and maintaining a positive business reputation isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a critical component of sustainable future growth. 

Just like tending to a garden ensures its blossoming beauty, nurturing your brand’s reputation cultivates trust, credibility, and market value growth over time.

Let’s delve into why managing your reputation matters more than ever in the modern landscape.

• What is business reputation?
• How can you quickly check your business’s reputation?
• Why is a positive reputation important?
• Reputation management strategy:
  • Step 1: Examine your current company’s reputation
  • Step 2: Build positive reputation
  • Step 3: Monitor your reputation 
  • Step 4: Constantly improve reputation
• Conclusion

What is business reputation?

Think of brand reputation like a garden. 

Just as a garden needs the right mix of sunlight, water, and care to flourish, a business needs a mix of factors like trust, credibility, and good customer experiences to thrive.

Business reputation is how people perceive a company – it’s what they say about you when you’re not in the room. 

It can be built over years with consistent effort or damaged overnight by a single mistake. 

In essence, it’s the sum of everything you do, shaping how the world sees you.

Why monitor your company’s reputation?

Monitoring your company’s reputation is like regularly checking the health of your garden. It’s crucial for several reasons:

• Early Detection: Spot and address issues before they become major problems.
• Customer Insight: Understand what your customers love or dislike about your business.
• Proactive Response: Quickly respond to feedback, showing customers that you care.
• Trend Tracking: Keep an eye on trends to stay ahead of the competition.
• Reputation Management: Maintain and improve your reputation over time.

By keeping a close watch, you ensure your business continues to thrive and grow, just like a well-maintained garden.

How can you quickly check your business’s reputation?

One quick way to check your company’s reputation is by looking at the Reputation Score in the Brand24 dashboard. 

It’s like getting a health check-up for your garden. 

With just a glance, you can see how people feel about your business online. 

By tracking this score, you can ensure your business continues to grow and thrive, just like a well-tended garden.

Why is a positive reputation important?

A good reputation is like having a beautiful, blooming garden—it attracts people and keeps them coming back. 

Here’s why it’s so important:

• Trust: Customers are more likely to choose and stay loyal to a business they trust.
• Referrals: Happy customers spread the word, bringing in new customers.
• Resilience: A good reputation can help you weather any storms or mistakes.
• Competitive Edge: Stand out from competitors with a strong, positive image.
• Customer Satisfaction: Satisfied customers mean repeat consumers and long-term success.

In short, a good reputation is your business’s best asset.

Business reputation management strategy:

Step 1: Examine your current company’s reputation

The first step in managing your business reputation is to closely examine where you stand right now. 

Think of it as assessing the current state of your garden before planning any improvements. 

You need to know what’s working and what’s not to have a solid starting point for future actions. 

Measuring reputation can be tricky without the right tools. Just like when working in a garden, you need specialized equipment to support your efforts.

It’s best to use AI tools that gauge sentiment and key reputation metrics. 

These tools give you a clear picture of how people perceive your business. This helps you set the stage for growth and improvement.

Here are key metrics you should keep an eye on:

Check your Reputation Score

Let’s start with the Reputation Score. 

Think of it as the soil test for your garden. It provides a starting point for a deeper analysis of your reputation. 

The Reputation Score in Brand24 is based on reach and sentiment analysis and operates on a scale from -100 to 100. 

A score of -100 means your reputation is in dire straits, while 100 indicates excellent standing. 

Brand24 also compares your scoring with other companies, giving you a complete picture of your market position.

As you can see, Ryanair needs to work on its bad reputation. 

That’s for sure. 

But what are the main issues? Where to start?

Fortunately, Brand24 has a bunch of detailed metrics that give you a deep insight into your online reputation. 

Read further to discover more helpful corporate reputation management metrics.

Tracking your Reputation Score offers several benefits:

• Clarity: Understand the overall health of your reputation at a glance.
• Actionable Insights: Identify areas needing immediate attention.
• Progress Tracking: Measure the impact of your efforts over time.
• Benchmarking: Compare your score against other companies.

By monitoring your Reputation Score, you can ensure that your business stays on the right path to higher market values and success.

Conduct sentiment analysis

Next, conduct a sentiment analysis of your brand. 

This is like checking which parts of your garden are thriving and which need extra care. 

By analyzing brand sentiment and mentions, you can pinpoint the sources of both positive and negative feedback. 

This helps you detect potential crises early on, address negative mentions promptly, and prevent any reputational risk from escalating. 

Understanding where the praise and complaints come from allows you to nurture the good and fix the bad, ensuring a healthy and flourishing reputation.

Brand24 offers critical features that will streamline and inform your sentiment analysis.

First, in the Metrics Analysis tab, you can check which of your sources gets the most negative reviews. With this insight, you know where to start the work on your online reputation repair.

Another brilliant feature is the Anomaly Detector. It helps you understand why your volume of mentions or reach increase. 

It appears in the form of an exclamation mark on your chart. When you click on it, Anomaly Detector reveals the reason behind a sudden spike.

Thanks to the Anomaly Detector, you can quickly check if the anomaly is triggered by positive or negative reviews and reach. 

This way, you can effortlessly learn if your company is in danger and needs crisis management software or if it’s having a moment of glory.

The last thing you should know about the Anomaly Detector is that it’s our significant feature you won’t find in other media monitoring tools. 

This gives you a competitive advantage over most companies that don’t monitor their reputation.

The Anomaly Detector and the Reputation Score streamline your reputation management, allowing you to do the bare minimum while staying perfectly informed about your performance and consumers’ opinions.

Benefits of sentiment monitoring:

• Early Warning System: Detect potential issues before they become major problems.
• Targeted Improvements: Identify specific areas needing attention or improvement.
• Customer Insights: Gain a deeper understanding of customer feelings and consumers opinions.
• Crisis Prevention: Act quickly to address negative feedback and prevent escalation.
• Positive Reinforcement: Highlight and amplify positive mentions to boost your reputation and sales.

Pro tip: Use your positive reviews and mentions as social proof. Add them to your website or social media. With customers’ testimonials displayed, you attract more potential customers, boost sales, and prove your strong reputation.

Discover emotions around your brand

While sentiment analysis shows if your brand image is positive or negative, emotion analysis digs deeper to reveal the exact emotions your target audience feels toward your brand. 

It’s like understanding not just that a plant is wilting, but whether it’s due to overwatering, lack of sunlight, or poor soil. 

Advanced AI tools can also analyze which channels are the sources of certain reactions. 

Brand24, for instance, detects specific emotions with algorithms that understand nuances like anger, fear, sadness, and disgust.  

This detailed insight helps you address the root causes of negative feelings and enhance the good ones, ensuring a thriving and well-tended reputation.

Check emojis included in discussions about your brand

Internet users do not always put their emotions in words. That’s why monitoring what emojis they use when describing a company is important.

Brand24 detects emojis used in your mentions and counts them. This way, it can deliver a mind map that informs you about the quantity of each icon.

In the case of Ryanair, the plane emoji is not a big surprise. 

However, the skull, broken heart, and angry emojis are also prominent. 

This situation needs close monitoring and intervention in case of a significant increase in negative emojis.

Discover whether influencers talk about your brand in a positive or negative way

The next step is to watch over the tone in which influencers talk about you.

Brand24 identifies influential people talking about you with the division into positive and negative sentiments.

This allows you to analyze the issues and contact your negative influencers. 

Maybe that person had a bad experience with your company and never got compensation. It’s never too late to convert your hater into a brand ambassador. 

It lies in your company’s best interest to solve any bad blood between you and an influencer.

Online reviews hold tremendous importance for corporate reputations, so they should always be addressed.

Looking at Ryanair’s influencer analysis, I’d say they should contact andy_cov93 on X (Twitter), as he accounts for 30% of the company’s negative mentions.

Take a look at the sentiment of the topics

All businesses, brands, or companies naturally spark conversations across various topics and areas within the online sphere. 

It’s crucial to keep a close eye on these discussions to gauge the sentiment surrounding your brand accurately. 

While a company’s overall reputation might seem good, delving into specific topics can uncover pockets of negativity that need addressing. 

Brand24 employs cutting-edge AI algorithms to pinpoint the most talked-about brand-related subjects. 

Moreover, it goes beyond mere detection by providing comprehensive insights into key metrics such as reach, share of voice, sentiment analysis, and many other valuable data points within each topic.

Wondering how to put Topic Analysis into action? 

Well, imagine being able to uncover the hottest topics surrounding your company and diving deep into the sentiment behind each one. 

By dissecting these discussions, you not only gain insights into what engages your audience most but also unearth potential areas for improvement or crisis management. 

This proactive approach allows you to:

• tailor your strategies
• address concerns effectively
• capitalize on positive sentiments

All while staying ahead of the curve in shaping your brand’s narrative.

Step 2: Build positive reputation

Building a good reputation for your organization involves a combination of strategic actions, consistent behavior, and proactive communication. 

Here are some quick tips to help you achieve this:

01 Deliver quality products and services:

• Consistently provide high-quality products or services that meet or exceed customer expectations.

02 Excellent customer service:

• Respond promptly to customer inquiries and complaints.
• Train your sales team to be courteous, knowledgeable, and helpful.

03 Transparent communication:

• Be open and honest in all communications.
• As a business owner, communicate both successes and challenges with your stakeholders and the general public.

04 Engage with your community:

• Create an online community and upkeep its spirit with engaging posts and updates.
• Encourage employees to volunteer and represent the organization positively.

05 Ethical standards and employees satisfaction:

• Ensure your business practices are ethical and fair.
• Create a code of ethics and internal culture to ensure your employees’ well-being. 

06 Build strong relationships:

• Develop strong, positive relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners.
• Network and collaborate with other organizations.

07 Effective marketing and branding:

• Create a strong, consistent brand identity.
• Use social media and other marketing tools to communicate your brand values and stories.

08 Proactive public relations:

• Have a plan for managing public relations and handling crises.
• Regularly share good news and updates about your company with the general public.

09 Listen to your audience:

• Regularly seek feedback from customers, employees, and other stakeholders.
• Use this feedback to make informed decisions and improvements.

By following these tips, your company can build and maintain a strong, positive reputation, which will contribute to long-term success and sustained earnings.

Step 3: Monitor your reputation 

Have you explored our Comparison feature yet? 

It’s your go-to tool for tracking the evolution of sentiment charts over time. It gives you valuable insights into the fluctuations in your business reputation. 

By keeping a close eye on these trends, you can effectively gauge the impact of your reputation-building initiatives and identify any spikes in positive mentions. 

It’s like having a reputation compass guiding you toward a brighter brand image!

Pro tip: In the Comparison tab, you can also compare your brand with your competitors.

Step 4: Constantly improve reputation

01 Monitor online metrics: 

Keep a watchful eye on reviews, social media mentions, and performance metrics. 

Sentiment, share of voice, Reputation Score, Presence Score, reach, and many more will help you assess the effects of your brand reputation-building efforts.

02 Engage with your audience: 

Track online chats about your company on social media. Master social listening and become one of the business leaders in your niche.

Address any bad feedback professionally and promptly, and highlight positive testimonials to reinforce your brand’s credibility.

03 Deliver exceptional customer service: 

Prioritize customer satisfaction by actively listening to feedback, resolving issues promptly, and going above and beyond to meet customer expectations. 

Leverage social listening tools to never miss out on an online discussion about your brand.

04 Set up a reputation management policy:

Setting up a reputation management policy involves creating a structured framework to proactively monitor, protect, and enhance your brand’s image. 

This policy serves as a foundational document that outlines guidelines, processes, and a marketing strategy for effectively managing public perception and mitigating potential risks. 

It empowers your team to respond swiftly and decisively to reputation-related challenges, fostering stakeholder trust.

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, the online reputation of your business is more vital than ever. 

Think about it – when was the last time you made a purchase without glancing at online reviews or ratings? 

Exactly! 

Your potential customers are doing the same. 

If your business has a less-than-stellar reputation, customers are likely to swiftly swipe right towards your competitors, eager to find a brand they can trust.

In this era of fierce competition and constant digital chatter, companies can’t afford to sit back and hope for the best. 

Nope. They need to roll up their sleeves, dive deep into the world of managing corporate reputations, and start caring—really caring—about how they’re perceived online.

Because here’s the deal: a good reputation isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s your golden ticket to success. It sets you apart, builds trust with your audience, and paves the way for long-term growth and profitability.

Speaking of treading the path to a shining reputation, AI-powered tools like Brand24 are here to help. 

These tech-savvy tools are like your reputation guardians, monitoring, analyzing, and enhancing your online presence so you can steer the narrative and shine bright in the digital realm. 

Trust me, in today’s cutthroat business world, having a bit of AI magic up your sleeve can make all the difference in propelling your brand to greater heights.

Final thoughts:

• Never underestimate the power of reputation management in today’s online-oriented world.
• Monitor, measure, and manage your metrics to achieve a great reputation for your business. 
• Use Brand24 to measure your Reputation Score and many other useful metrics that will inform you about potential threats and your business’s success in the online realm.

Monitor marketing, measure metrics, and make magic with Brand24!