The Strangest Things That Can Damage Your Business Reputation
Your reputation is incredibly important as many sales are made off the back of it alone.
Consumers are drawn to trustworthy and professional brands, so how do you ensure your image doesn’t take a big hit?
Some of the reputation-damaging things are fairly obvious. A scandal will clearly damage your brand image!
Having said that, some of these things are less obvious and a little bit…strange.
Naturally, you want to avoid a brand disaster at every opportunity.
So, here are some weird ways that you might unwittingly harm your brand.
Business Reputation: Bad Plumbing
How on earth does this relate to your image?
It’s actually very simple: bad plumbing creates an awful experience for anyone that visits your premises.
We’re talking about backed-up sewage drains, foul odors, leaks – you name it.
If any of these things exist, then it screams unprofessional.
Your image plummets deep down into the sewer.
Clearly, you need to solve this problem by working with plumbers and calling in a sewage cleanup contractor to bring everything back to normal.
Don’t let a terrible plumbing system put people off your business by making it look and smell awful.
An Old Social Media Post
This next thing is strange purely because it shouldn’t have any impact, yet it does.
We see this all the time with celebrities that get old tweets or Instagram posts dug up.
Ten years ago they said or did something controversial, and it’s come back to bite them.
If you run a business, then expect people to do some digging on social media.
14-year-old you may have had some pretty extreme and immature views, but that won’t stop someone digging up an old post and making it seem like you still have those views.
Even if you apologize and point out that you’ve matured, the post alone is enough for some people to ‘cancel’ you and your business forever.
Another Company ‘Hijacking’ Part Of Your Brand
There’s not really a term for this, and ‘hijacking’ might not describe it perfectly.
In essence, it’s the idea that another business or organization – possibly even an individual – comes along and ruins your image by using something that looks similar to aspects of your brand.
For example, a company comes along and has a logo that’s very similar to yours. They didn’t do this on purpose, but to the untrained eye, your logos look the same.
Now, this business gets involved in a massive controversy and the public is furious. Instantly, this logo has now been tarnished.
When people see your brand, they think of this other business and associate you with them. As such, your image takes a hit despite you doing nothing.
The same happens when your business shares a name with a company that’s been given some negative attention.
Sometimes, the damage is so bad that you have to do an entire re-brand just to distance yourself from that other business.
The moral of the story is that you should never discount anything when running your business.
These three examples show that your reputation can take a big hit under the strangest of circumstances.
