You can manage reputation and brand awareness for job sites, or passively let it sort itself out. Most businesses have an online reputation, whether they have a say in the process or not. But management is active. It lets you help shape the way advertisers and job candidates view your job board instead of hoping for the best.

Your reputation factors into the success of everything that you do. And reciprocally, everything you do affects your reputation. From getting your name out there to building great relationships with job candidates and advertisers, here are 4 surefire ways to make your reputation soar.

RELATED: Why Job Boards Need to Focus on Quality Applicants

#1: Pick Your Social Media Exposure Platforms

You already know about the Big Three in social media. Facebook is easy to use, but Twitter can be confusing for some. Its fast pace might require some getting used to. LinkedIn isn’t as active as the others, but it’s got its own value proposition.

Using Facebook, you can create a thriving community of followers who interact directly with you and share your message. It might seem too personal on the surface. But the people you want to reach use it every day. If you want to reach people who are job candidates and advertisers, reach them where they live.

Twitter is a blizzard of opportunity at 90 miles per hour. And while 140 characters is a bit small for a business message, you can share practically any content that interests your audience. That includes industry news as well as links to your job site.

As for LinkedIn, it’s made for brand building. What it lacks in comparative traffic, it makes up for in a business-centric audience. Ads are more prevalent now, but it’s still the go-to for publishing unique content, finding or creating relevant groups and networking with advertisers as well as job candidates, both of whom make your job site grow and thrive.

#2: Work With a Job Board Partner For an Immediate Signal Boost

It’s certainly possible to build, grow and promote job sites on your own. But when you work with a job board partner, you get the immediate benefit of their experience and exposure. What could take months or years to develop happens when you link up.

A partnership brings you into a network where technology is on the cutting edge, but you aren’t responsible for installing, learning or maintaining it. That’s both a cost-saver and a time-saver.

Job board partners often work on a rev-share agreement without software licensing fees. You get the benefit of their network reach, and they get a small portion of the revenue from your ads. And because a strong job board partner has an existing reach that attracts employers, you find success faster than building everything from the ground up on your own.

The instant signal boost of a partner means you have less time figuring out what works and more time fine-tuning your job board. You’ll also get analytics built in.

#3: Create Content and Become a Thought Leader

If you have the chops to be a thought leader, prove it with unique content. Write articles and blog posts. Pull together informational e-books that your audience can download. Make videos that interest your target audience.

Strong sharable videos are some of the greatest engagement tools available to you. According to Single Grain digital marketing, video simply works. And Diode Digital says it’s more effective than print and direct mailing combined.

Content isn’t just what you create, either. Network with other industry leaders and share their content, too. When your message resonates with your audience, everything that you post adds value, even if it isn’t your content. You might gain a reputation for having your finger on the pulse of the industry.

A great thing about content is that it’s also shareable across platforms. What you post on LinkedIn can also be shared on Facebook and Twitter, and every post can link directly back to your job site.

#4: Watch Customer/Client Reviews Carefully

Whether or not you create it, you will have an online reputation in time. So keep an eye out for customer/client review sites such as Reviews.com, Trustpilot.com and even Glassdoor.com. Every person you work for or with has a chance to give an opinion about your business.

What might surprise you is that reputations are also built through social media. It’s easy for a customer to tweet or make a Facebook post that mentions their experience with your job site in a positive or negative light. But KissMetrics says all reviews, no matter where they’re posted, are opportunities.

The more you know, the more you can learn about what works and what doesn’t. So treat feedback as a positive experience, whether or not it’s positive. Great reviews tell you what’s going well. But negative reviews give insight into what needs work.

Check out this example of a PR fail exchange:

@aprildunford that’s awesome… we are in the coffee business, not the office business. We have plenty of outlets to do what we need…

– Dark Horse Espresso (@darkhorsecafe) January 15, 2010

Ouch. Mr. Dark Horse could have gotten a lot of positive mileage from the customer’s tweet. Addressing concerns instead of battling against a complaint is the way to go for reputation management.

Reputations are built. They aren’t automatic. Whether you build your reputation or let others do it for you, you’ll find that it exists sooner or later. It’s the active role that makes a difference.

It can be a bit time consuming, and there really is some trial and error involved. But the more you work, the more you’ll get in return.

So build a great job site. Carve out your place in social media. Create content that can’t be ignored. Interact with your audience, both job candidates and employers. And treat every piece of feedback as the valuable tool that it is. That’s the path from fledgling job sites to industry leaders.

Ready to take the next step to job board success? Check out our Webinar: The Emergence & Impact of Programmatic Advertising on Recruiting