Have you noticed how quickly bad news rises to the top of Internet search results? It’s human nature: People love gossip and scandal. They’ll forward links and post comments on blogs, Twitter and forums. Before you know it, a video of two misbehaving employees “goes viral” on YouTube and turns up just below the company’s official corporate Web site in Internet searches.
That’s what happened to Domino’s Pizza when a gross-out video created by a couple of unhappy workers garnered 1 million views before the company even discovered its existence. United Airlines had a similarly unpleasant experience when a passenger whose guitar was broken by baggage handlers chronicled the incident in a song that became an Internet hit.
Nothing is more precious—and perhaps more fragile—than your company’s reputation. Damage to it can affect everything from sales to relationships with suppliers. And it can have long–lasting impact on consumer attitudes toward your company and the entire industry.
The rise of social media has created what some experts call the “people paparazzi”—the multitudes that stand by ready to broadcast a company’s every slip–up.
“Online reputation management is critical and growing in importance. The fact is, there is so much incivility out there and anyone with a computer and an opinion can go online and malign you,” says Leslie Gaines–Ross, chief reputation strategist at public relations firm Weber Shandwick, headquartered in New York.
Among the potential troublemakers are angry consumers, disgruntled employees and malicious competitors, not to mention “squatters” and impersonators who can hijack your brands or company name online.
What is a company to do?
First, don’t think you can escape by avoiding the online world, reputation experts told BedTimes. That won’t stop others from talking about you, boycotting your products or launching defamation campaigns.
“Many companies worry about engaging, but all they need is one crisis to realize they have not built a community of online advocates and evangelists who will come to their defense,” Gaines–Ross says.
The business–to–business aspect of online reputation management is growing steadily, too.
“Mattress manufacturers will want to keep an eye out for unhappy retailers or other business partners,” says Andy Beal, a reputation management consultant and author based in Raleigh, N.C. “For instance, if someone at a big chain is saying your product quality has gone downhill in the past five years, they may have lots of influence over consumers and other retailers. You’ll want to be able to reach out quickly and address that.”
“Another thing companies need to realize is how online reputation relates to traditional media,” Gaines–Ross says. “Social and traditional media go hand in hand. Something that bubbles up online can easily show up in traditional media. It’s where many journalists are getting their stories today. That type of news can impact all of your business’ stakeholders.”
Plug in
“It is imperative that all companies monitor their online reputations,” Gaines–Ross says. “Create your own baseline audit—or have it done by an outside agency or consultant. At the most basic level, create alerts in the major search engines with your name and brands, mattress industry keywords and your competitors’ names—because anything that happens to the competition can easily spill over to you.”
You can set up alerts at search engines that specifically crawl social media, such as Whos Talkin and BackTalk. Use Technorati to search blogs; for Twitter check http://search.twitter.com. By setting up searches at Boardreader or BoardTracker, you can follow comments on message boards and forums, which are especially difficult for major search engines to navigate.
“Keeping an eye on forums is a great way for companies to solve a problem before it goes public. Many people post to them when they have a gripe, a problem with a product or need to know how to fix something,” says Rhea Drysdale, chief operating officer for Outspoken Media, an Internet marketing, search engine optimization and reputation management agency based in Spring Hill, Fla.
“No matter what your company’s size, I recommend that you begin by monitoring your reputation yourself,” Beal says. “This will give you an idea of what kind of support you need. If you decide to outsource, you are better informed in choosing and directing an agency.”
There are many free and paid listening platforms available for monitoring online reputation.
“I created Trackur because I was disappointed with Google Alerts,” Beal says. “You don’t have to set each search individually and you get an intuitive console for viewing results online.”
Trackur has a basic version available for free. Paid plans begin at $18 per month. If you outsource monitoring to your marketing or public relations firm or have a large budget, you might use a tool such as Alterian, Radian6 or Visible Technologies. Less expensive Scout Labs starts at $199 per month for individual companies and offers a free, trial version.
Use your monitoring platform to gain competitive intelligence and market research insights.
“Look to see what customers like and dislike about competitors’ products and capitalize on that. Track for trends in mattress purchasing. Learn about the phobias and misconceptions within the category and how to better align your marketing,” Beal says. “Pass information on to your retailers: ‘We think consumers will find the experience more enjoyable if you do this.’ ”
Get help
“The prevailing school of thought is that it’s OK to outsource the monitoring of your online reputation, but companies should manage reputation internally. Yet some companies are not ready to take on the responsibility,” says Tom Martin, president and “social media guy” at New Orleans agency Zehnder Communications.
“I recommend a hybrid approach,” Beal says. “Definitely look outside for help in developing best practices and strategy: Which media channels should you be involved with? What should you do in a crisis? But take ownership internally. The more you outsource, the less transparent you become.”
“We would always prefer that a company takes its reputation management in–house and come to us for assistance at different levels,” Drysdale says. “When companies get more social, they sometimes delegate responsibilities to a marketing intern. Is that person well versed in your brand and industry? Do they have the maturity to be out there representing you?”
Whether outsourced or in–house, community management is a growing field. The community manager is the company’s face in the social media arena.
“If your company is attacked, it’s only natural to feel upset,” Martin says. “But the ideal community manager is able to separate out the emotion and ego and respond appropriately. They must be incredibly diplomatic and cool under pressure, in addition to being a great writer and thinker.”
When the environmental group Greenpeace launched a concerted social media attack on food conglomerate Nestlé in March 2010, the person managing Nestlé’s Facebook page got “snarky with commenters and only added fuel to the fire,” Martin says.
“Choosing someone appropriate internally, with industry experience, and then training them to be more adept in social media is the best route,” Gaines–Ross says.
“They know the terminology, they know the competition, they understand what goes into building a mattress. They can identify the individual benefits of every product you make and understand the rigor of your R&D department,” Beal says. “Think of it this way, social media is just a communication medium. Like with email or the telephone, it’s the person on the other end who’s important.”
Managing a company’s social media space “is a time–suck,” Martin says. “You need someone willing to work all hours. Nights and on weekends they’ll be checking Twitter and blogging, etc. It really helps to find someone who is already into social media.”
Accentuate the positive
Take steps now to insulate your brand from attacks. It’s what Gaines–Ross describes as “inoculating your brand” against future threats. One way you can do that is by dominating search results for your company and your brands in major search engines.
If your online reputation is already suffering damage, expect it to take several months, possibly more than a year, to clean things up, reputation experts say. And don’t rely on vendors who claim they can fix things by asking sites to remove negative content about your company. It doesn’t work. For one thing, it’s in the best interest of complaint sites like Ripoff Report and Epinions’ to keep attention–grabbing negative commentary posted.
“Look at Google not as a search engine, but a reputation engine. The good news is that about 85% of Web surfers don’t look beyond the first page of search results and about 95% don’t look beyond the second,” Beal says.
So it’s important for a company to populate that first page with its own content.
“Google is your brand,” says Heather Lutze, a search engine expert, author and chief executive officer of the Findability Group in Denver. “Dominate that first page of search results with your Web site, your Twitter account, your company’s LinkedIn and Facebook pages, your Flickr account, your personalized YouTube channel, microsites, your blog, etc. It will help quiet the criticism and push bad stuff off the page.”
You may want to create additional Web sites for your company. For instance, build a separate site for customer service or to talk about your company’s charitable works, Drysdale says. Make sure the sub–domain name includes your company name: “brandxcustomerservice” or “brandxinthecommunity.” Also, build microsites tied to product launches, special promotions or advertising campaigns.
When searchers type a mattress company’s name or brands into Google, they often refine the search with terms such as “review” or “comfort.”
“Find out where reviews of your product or product category are posting. Is it Epinions, Yelp, TripAdvisor? Encourage the growth of positive content there,” Beal says. “If you do that now and face some sort of reputation attack later, there’s less chance negative posts will reach to the top of search results.”
“Be sure to give your Twitter accounts and blogs personality,” Gaines–Ross says. “Use people from within your company who are able to step out and build relationships and a good reputation around the mattress industry and your company. It may be someone involved in designing or building mattresses who has their own blog and they talk about how the technology is changing. GM created the popular FastLane blog. In a crisis, it has a venue for addressing customers.”
Putting the focus on employees is especially important when it comes to reputation management.
“We think of employees as ‘embedded journalists’, ” Gaines–Ross says.
Disgruntled employees could be among those bad–mouthing your brand online. Unfortunately, company guidelines and online monitoring will not prevent the dissatisfied from becoming anonymous mudslingers.
“But companies must listen and respond to employees’ needs if they are to turn unhappy employees into advocates,” she says.
Battle plan
“Theories on how you should react to online criticism are fluid. They are evolving and changing with time,” says Julien Smith, an author, consultant, podcaster and online communities expert based in Montreal.
Don’t be surprised if you’re unsure how to handle your company’s first reputation crisis. It’s best to line up expert help ahead of time. A digital marketing agency or online reputation consultant can conduct an audit of your current reputation, develop a crisis plan and stand at the ready to help you diffuse situations.
“When you are deciding whether or not to respond, you want to figure out if the person being critical is misinformed, if they have a real beef or if they’re just crazy,” Gaines–Ross says.
Gaines–Ross and others hold up the U.S. Air Force’s “Rules of Engagement for Blogging” as a ground–breaking tool for deciding when to respond. Many reputation consultants use the flow chart as a jumping–off point for creating individualized response plans. The original chart can be viewed at www.globalnerdy.com/2008/12/30/the–air–forces–rules–of–engagement–for–blogging.
There are times when you don’t want to respond. For instance, if a complaint is likely from a competitor trying to cause trouble, you may not want to give the comments “legs” or credibility by responding. You also might ignore a minor complaint posted in an individual’s blog.
“But if your company has made a mistake—whether it’s product defects or poor customer service—then you need to respond,” Beal says. “If you don’t, the complainer may take their complaint to Facebook, Epinions or the Better Business Bureau.”
“When you respond depends on the situation,” Drysdale says. “Who is behind it? If it’s a consumer, then you do what you can until you realize they will not accept any apology. Then you let it go. Hopefully, you have built up a community that will rise to your defense in these situations. That is what great brands do.”
Experts say “be human,” not robotic or bureaucratic in your responses. On Facebook, use your real name and a thumbnail photo of yourself—not the company logo—when responding to an irate posting.
“Some people have never learned how to apologize when things go wrong and most companies haven’t either,” Smith says. “Yet the ability to be vulnerable in public is incredibly powerful and can gain you the empathy of tons of people.”
“Responding doesn’t need to be complex,” Beal says. “I’ve distilled it down to three words when you’re facing a crisis: sincerity—offer a sincere apology, often that is all the person is looking for; transparency—be open about how the situation came about; and consistency—make sure this is an isolated incident and fix the problem that led to the crisis.”
“Toyota did a bad job of responding to its recent crisis,” Beal says. “They were slow to react (customers had been complaining about accelerator problems for months beforehand) and slow to take responsibility. Now they’ve lost a lot of credibility. Jet Blue did a good job after having stranded all their passengers. They responded quickly, they apologized and introduced a passenger bill of rights. Dell is the poster child for reputation turnarounds. They went from really bad to having a really good reputation and being very engaged with customers.”
“Making it easy for people to reach your company in the first place goes a long way,” Drysdale says. “Problems arise that are difficult to fix when consumers are unable to get ahold of a real person. Display your contact information online or create a separate customer service site.”
“One thing we always tell clients if an online response is called for, do not go in and use your company and your brand names,” Drysdale says. “It’s correct to give your name and title and establish your credibility as an employee of the company—you want to be transparent. But I’ve seen people mention their company name 10 times in a single post. That shoots the complaint you’re responding to right up to the top of the search results for your company.
Nasty or nice: Claim all your names & domains
Smart companies prevent imposters from “squatting” on their identity by purchasing all domain name variations for their brands and their company. They also purchase different domain name roots—.com, .net, .org, .us, .ca, etc.
But you should take that a step further, reputation experts say. Protect your company reputation by purchasing unpleasant variations of your online identity such as “companyxyzsucks” or “ihatebrandx” and the like.
Whether or not you participate, it’s important to claim your name on social media networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter. The more expensive plans go beyond signing you up and claiming your name at each network. For instance, KnowEm will complete your company profile and post additional information that you supply, such as photos and bios. Pricing is a one–time charge between $99 and $599.
7 traits of the ideal social media manager
- Diplomatic
- Lives and breathes the brand and the industry
- Online extrovert and people person
- Excellent written communication skills
- Customer–service oriented
- Creative—able to proactively manage reputation by building unique content that makes points about the company and its products, services
- Easygoing and egoless
