Chapter 11 Online Reputation Management Learning Objectives  Understand that listening to the buzz online is a crucial step in the online reputation management process  Understand how to analyze what is being said online  Learn how to engage in and lead conversation  Learn why it is important to engage in and lead conversation  Understand the importance of constantly evolving your strategy  Learn how brands can best recover from an online threat

The First Step: Monitor the Conversation  Customers do not use channels designated by a company to talk about that organization  The Internet makes it easy for a company to use the channels that customers have selected

The First Step: Monitor the Conversation  Online Reputation Management (ORM) allows the company to track:  Mentions of itself  Its staff  Its products  Its industry  Its competitors

The First Step: Monitor the Conversation  In terms of the company, one can track the following:  Brand name  URL  Key products  Key personnel (names, job titles, etc.)  In terms of the industry, one can track the following:  Conferences  Patents  News

The First Step: Monitor the Conversation  In terms of competitors, one can track the following:  Brand names  Product launches  Web site updates  Job vacancies

The First Step: Monitor the Conversation When monitoring, the following need to be tracked:  Blogs  Twitter  News  Forums  Comment boards  Photos

The First Step: Monitor the Conversation  Videos  Job listings  Events  Patents  Web site changes

The Second Step: Measure What’s Being Said by Whom  Take stock of the messages being sent by your own company, which includes:  Web sites and domains owned by your company  Blogs maintained by employees  Blogs maintained by former employees  Audit — Will give an idea of the content that is available to the public and what that content is saying

The Second Step: Measure What’s Being Said by Whom  Not all mentions are equal online  They vary in terms of positivity or negativity and influence  All mentions do not require action from company  Some mentions require drastic measures from company  All mentions are an indication of consumer sentiment

The Second Step: Measure What’s Being Said by Whom  Whether a post is positive, negative, or indifferent can be quickly assessed by reading it; influence is a little harder to establish  Indicators (traffic, links, and subscriber numbers) can assist in assessing the influence of a blog  Influence assists in establishing the credibility of the author  Factors that indicate credibility  Size of the blog’s audience  Frequency of posts  Age of the blog

The Third Step: Manage—Engaging In and Leading the Conversation  Engaging — The best way to show that you are listening  Positive comments — Should be acknowledged by the company  Neutral comments — Company is in danger of being forgotten  Negative comments — Should be seen as an opportunity for growth by the company and dealt with  Responding — Recognizing that consumers dictate the channels of communication and that a company needs to go to the consumer, not the other way around

The Fourth Step: Maximize — Evolve Your Strategy  ORM provides an insight that can be applied to other elements of the business to maximize on results  In marketing, ORM provides key insights into how particular tactics are performing and how it impacts the overall marketing strategy  These outputs are shared with other departments  The insights are applied to the overall business strategy

Ten Rules to Recover from an Online Brand Attack  Humility  Listen  Act immediately  If what they’re saying is false….  If what they’re saying is true….

Ten Rules to Recover from an Online Brand Attack  Keep the negative pages out of the search engines  Maintain communication  Engage in the conversation  Care  Be prepared