Your reputation is much more than a customer opinion. Your online audience now has the capability to react immediately to anything said around your brand in real time via micro blogging sites such as Twitter, social networks and forums – so managing your brand on a minute-by-minute basis is becoming increasingly important.
Keeping on top of what is being said and measuring the value of your reputation has traditionally been a tough thing to do, but thanks to online reputation management (ORM) you now have the ability to gain insight quickly about what is happening, react accordingly and receive vital information to help formulate branding strategies for the future.
Who is talking about you?
Of the one billion Google searches a day, results are dominated by social media. The most expensive advertising campaign can’t compete with the credibility of word-of-mouth – especially when that voice is echoed hundreds of thousands of times. A public complaint simply holds more power than a private letter to a company’s CEO.
Real-time reputation
An outraged audience has the power to destroy your reputation over a weekend. One such instance happened with consumer ibuprofen brand Motrin last November, when the company produced an online ad playfully describing babies as fashion accessories.
There was a huge outcry on Twitter and other social networks – and even though Motrin removed the ads the following week, the damage had been done.
Nielsen mapped out the brand associations linked to Motrin both before and after the event and established that since then the brand has had a much higher association with terms such as ‘backlash’, ‘offensive’, ‘condescending’ and ‘offensive Motrin ad’.
Managing your brand
It is possible for brands to take back control. Take the case of Dell electronics, when respected blogger Jeff Jarvis complained that he was having serious problems with customer service. His open letter to Dell’s CEO resulted in huge support from other customers that had the same problem. Dell’s share prices reportedly dropped significantly in this period.
After a few failed attempts at engaging online, Dell recovered with a great online customer interaction plan. It launched a site called Idea Storm, which now provides Dell with a direct line to complaints and suggestions from their users. Idea Storm is a clear example of how online customer interaction can not only mitigate risk – but can more importantly provide opportunity.
So what should you do?
Broadly speaking, there are a number of phases in ORM that can work in your favour. The processes help you to track, analyse, understand and then respond to conversations around your brand.
1. Track
Given the number of mentions a brand can have online, it is necessary to employ some kind of online mention tracking system.
It is possible to do this with basic free services such as Google Alerts, Twitter Search and Technorati Search.
If your ORM needs are more demanding or you wish to have more in-depth monitoring, paid-for services like Brandseye.com offer a comprehensive view of the entire web and give you the ability to view a holistic picture of your online reputation. You can track your brand, employee and service names – and for some real and sneaky market insight you should track these elements for your competitors as well.
2. Analyse
In order to really gather insight from the conversation happening online, you need to understand the context and meaning of the things people say. Elements like the positive or negative sentiment and the credibility of the source, author and context of any mention should ideally be recorded and analysed.
A mildly negative comment on a blog that has a readership of five probably wouldn’t merit a response from the CEO, while a report – whether true or false – on the homepage of an online magazine with a huge following, might.
This information can be stored manually – but this is time consuming, which is why ORM software not only collects the appropriate mentions, but also rates them according to these factors in order to create data that you can track over time.
3. Understand and respond
Once you have assessed what’s being said you can identify positive pockets of sentiment to leverage for future campaign planning and isolate and address the reasons for negative sentiment.
Responding to both negative and positive comments in real time is the key to building your online reputation.
An immediate ‘how can we help?’ in reply to a negative comment can quickly resolve a situation before it gets out of hand, while a ‘thank you’ to a positive comment opens the door to further discussions.
4. Take back control
By not engaging in conversations happening around you online you’re squandering market insight and leaving one of your most valuable assets – your reputation – to float unprotected in the online – and ultimately the public – space.
A conversation is happening about your brand right now – and there is nothing to stop you from stepping in quickly and taking back control.
