“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room” – Jeff Bezos
Reputation is the cornerstone of every brand. It affects everything a company does, as a good reputation can help brands soar, while a bad reputation can make every misstep feel more significant in the eyes of their customers.
With billions of people on social media watching your brand’s every move, a single blunder can be a costly mistake, and a damaged reputation can be incredibly difficult to repair.
While this is true on its own, the added factor in the equation are fake profiles on social media, which can escalate every negative sentiment toward your brand, multiplying the damage significantly.
And with the stakes so high, brands must stay alert; any wrong move can attract lurking threats, ready to take advantage of the situation.
What is Digital Reputation Management?
Digital reputation management is the practice of shaping how your brand is perceived online by proactively managing the narratives surrounding it.
It mainly involves monitoring social media conversations and identifying malicious actors trying to insert themselves into genuine discussions about your brand, as even a small percentage of fake profiles can completely shift the public perception of your brand.
These profiles typically won’t attack when things are going well; they lie in wait, ignoring your successes, and strike when your brand is already in trouble (often during a PR crisis), launching a disinformation attack that distorts the narrative and erodes trust in your company.
The long-term effects of a tarnished reputation extend beyond short-term financial losses. Recovering from a well-executed disinformation campaign can take years, and for some companies, it may never happen.
Why Brands Can’t Ignore Disinformation
Gartner projects that by 2028, the financial burden of combating malinformation will exceed $500 billion, significantly impacting enterprise budgets.
Disinformation is a unique threat to brands because, unlike other threats such as cyberattacks or negative reviews, it spreads rapidly and uncontrollably. Once it gains traction on social media, it can fuel negative conversations that can linger long after the initial attack.
This is partly due to how social media algorithms are designed to prioritize viral content, regardless of its authenticity. Since they can’t differentiate between genuine and fake interactions, they often push false narratives to the top of people’s feeds, making disinformation even more widespread.
Each share or like gives it more credibility in the eyes of unsuspecting users, who, even with good intentions, inadvertently contribute to the problem by engaging with the misleading content.
Since all of this happens so quickly, brands don’t have enough time to respond or defend themselves, leaving them stuck in a game of catch-up with malicious actors.
How Your Brand Can Tackle This Issue
With this being such a common and prevailing problem, safeguarding your brand is imperative.
Cyabra’s platform not only detects disinformation but also identifies and maps its spread in real time across all social media platforms using advanced AI and machine learning algorithms, helping you preserve your brand’s reputation.
