Online Reputation Management Matters
A new survey, Online-Reputation Management, from Weber Shandwick reports that 67% of top execs feel that their company’s reputation is vulnerable online.
This isn’t news to many PR/Online-Marketing people that work ‘in the trenches’. The social nature of today’s internet allows for many more potential reputation damaging situations, and the fact that execs seem to be sitting up and taking notice is great. The report shows that a majority of execs are worried about e-mails that can end up in the wrong hands, in fact 87% of execs admit to having accidentally sent or received some type of electronic message – and about 27% admitted to doing it intentionally.
Aside from rogue emails and traditional media outlets, companies (and their PR people) should be paying attention to their reputation in social media circles. Especially in rough economic times, when layoffs are at high levels and pensions/compensation often suffer, employees are more likely to be dissatisfied and perhaps be tempted to bad mouth their employers online. Only about a third of execs admitted to knowing about an employee engaging in this type of activity and their response to the problem is to pay attention to employee satisfaction surveys, attempting to resolve the issue before the employee takes action.
Perhaps the most alarming section of the report was that only 10% of execs consider building relationships with prominent bloggers is an effective strategy for online reputation management. Depending on the industry this could be a mistake, bloggers and online personalities can wield a great deal of influence over their readers and having a good relationship with them could lead to great PR opportunities – or at least help to avoid potential online reputation crises.
Online reputation management is an increasingly important component of any company’s PR efforts. While execs obviously realize this, they need to include newer social media strategies, as well as their more traditional strategies, in their efforts to manage the brand’s reputation online.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
For a company that seems to be advocating two-way communication as a form of online reputation management, your Contact Us page is very one-sided. Kudos for allowing strangers to comment on your blog where everyone can see! As a consumer, that makes me trust you. But a Contact Us page with no personal names or numbers (or even email addresses) listed, feels very cold and suspicious.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
You make a valid point. While I wouldn’t choose the word suspicious to describe our contact page, it is doesn’t give out info freely for one reason – spam. We get a lot of it, and having the form instead of visible names/email addresses cuts down on the amount of time we spend sifting through email by quite a bit.
Admittedly it is an imperfect solution, but it does allow us to engage in meaningful communication with people who legitimately contact us. We’re pretty quick to respond to emails or tweets…and blog posts for that matter
February 19th, 2009 at 4:44 am
I think reputation management is something that we’re going to see more and more of. Keeping an eye on Twitter and blog comments is easy, there are so many tools out there to help you – and if someone is talking about you, you need to know!
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Agree. Many tools, online and offline, provide a wide lens through which to view, manage and measure reputation. The value in using those tools can’t be overstated, particularly now. Reputation management — what happens when its present and when it goes lacking — would seem to be one of the big take-aways of the financial crisis. A lot of repair work is needed throughout industry and gov’t to re-instill reputations, trust and goodwill. It will take time, but truly good leaders recognize the necessity of transparency, accountability, etc., and will act swiftly, if they haven’t already, to give reputation management greater organizational priority. On and off net. Thanks for the interesting post.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:42 am
I must say I was a little surprised the other day when I came across a top pr firm who had branched into this arena. They are now offering 4 different packages aimed at professionals who want help with their online reputation management. What really surprised me was the cost of the top end package being offered. They are asking £3500 just for a little blog posting and content writing! This seems an extraordinary amount to me, is it really worth it?
May 7th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
For many past years, the importance of Online Reputation Management has been ignored by many companies and as you said that companies ignoring ORM importance have lost million dollars. I have used a tool for ORM. And it brings good results for me. The AirCheese beta version is available.