Having your online business get banished and shunned out would be any business owner’s biggest nightmare.
This is what cancel culture potentially does. Once an online business behaves in a perceived offensive and socially unacceptable way, that online business gets ostracized from the e-commerce world.
Once that has happened, a brand can choose to remain unaffected and not take any actions or take necessary steps to get un-canceled. The first option is essentially social suicide and is not recommended under any circumstances. So what can you do?
Keep reading below to learn about how brands can remerge after being canceled.
What Happens When an Online Business is Canceled?
Once an online business is called-out or canceled on the internet, its reputation suffers greatly. The brand’s name and image get damaged.
Once this online banishment and humiliation goes viral, the number of online attackers keeps on increasing. Many people have no idea what the brand has done and want to jump on the bandwagon.
A canceled online business could do nothing and die a painful online death here, or it could take some active measures and bounce back into the online world.
How Can Brands Bounce Back After Being Canceled?
The first step would be understanding the problems and analyzing the actions that led to the brand getting canceled in the first place.
This would also include analyzing the seriousness of the situation and hence getting prepared to face this online storm.
The next step would be listening to the consumer. This involves being attentive to what the people canceling your brand are saying. It involves going through customer complaints, looking at the comments section, and paying close attention to the public disapproval.
Once an online business is able to understand exactly what it did or where it went wrong, it can start taking the necessary actions to win back the consumer’s approval.
It can either fix its ‘mistake’ or rebrand its image to better fit consumer requirements.
Another great thing that an online business can do is directly engage with the angry online mob. For example, the business could reply under the comments section or post directly on their website or social media page.
It could ask the people about what changes they would like to see and what the brand should do to please them.
This personalized conversation between the brand and the audience would make the audience feel heard, considered, and respected.
It would also make the brand appear genuinely concerned for its customer base. This would help the brand build back its reputation and sometimes even gain more customers.
An online business could also make a public apology to all those offended.
Final Thoughts
Cancel culture is a modern phenomenon, and its detrimental consequences require that todays’ online brands take it very seriously.
Once an online business is canceled, it needs to find the root cause behind its cancelation. Then it needs to listen to its consumers. Finally, it needs to do everything it can to carefully address its consumer’s concerns.
