The internet has made world a global village. Therefore, international brands perform global SEO to increase their presence at the same level across the globe. However, with the increasing use of social media, the global SEO has become increasingly dependent upon the social media for the results of SEO.

A single mistake on social media platforms while conducting global SEO can lead to a disaster. Therefore, more of the professional SEO services providers try to be cautious in the use of social media, and try to use it as an opinion shaping and rapport building platform in case of any disaster. The lines below explain the factors that could cause SEO reputation disasters, along with the strategy to cope up with such disasters.

Factors Damaging The Reputation:

There are a lot of factors that can damage the reputation of a brand while conducting global SEO. These factors include the language barrier, the social norms of different countries, the culture, the slang, the brand slang, and all such factors that come with the global diversity. These factors if not carefully considered can seriously damage the reputation of a brand online. The affects of these factors increase the damage, if any wrong step is taken at the social media forefront.

Developing A Damage Control System:

To avoid any disastrous situation or even if any disaster occurs, there needs to be a plan setup to cope up with any such situation. Social media stands as the core of any such plan, therefore, the following three step procedure can be followed in developing a damage control system.

1. Creation of Tracking System:

The tracking go global social media activities are not easy, and require a lot of time and attention. Due to the differences in countries, the wise ploy is to track every country separately. Moreover, when tracking every country separately, the thing that must be made sure is that the tracking is done by the native of the country so that no barrier causes any misunderstanding. In the tracking system, two ‘W’ need to be catered.

What- Determine what needs to be tracked in the social media activities of a particular country? Terms that can be considered include:

• Brand names
• Slogans
• Campaigns
• Competitors
• Business partners
• Brand slang
• Industry terms

Industry conferences

Who-  Besides the terms, you need to track the people which influence the brand reputation. The can be ‘internal influencers’ such as employees, clients, partners and investors. Or they can be ‘external influencers’, like, social network followers, bloggers and other media personnel.

2. Creating Advocates:

Once you have established what and who to track, the next thing is to create and develop advocates, who defend the brand on social media forefront. The greater the number of advocates, more positive influence wills it have on the rankings, and the name of the brand would spread in a positive manner. Thus if any disaster occurs, the advocates would defend the reputation of the brand.

3. Planning:

Once an online marketing company identifies the influencers and builds advocates, it then develops a plan of action. The plan of action could be like:

• The first step would be to immediately respond to the reputation problem in the according manner, whether its apology or provision of facts.
• Secondly, content needs to be developed for the advocates so that it becomes easy for them to share the word.
• Thirdly, instead of giving negative replies to critic’s comments, try using brand advocates and have the positive comments overcome the negative comments in number.

Conclusion:

In short, for brands with global presence, its all about reputation management, and for global reputation management, the SEO and social media go hand in hand.