Bluegrass Consulting: Blueblog

Tuesday: 13 October

Lets cut to the chase: Managing your reputation online is challenging. You need to have an effective system in place to track, listen, engage and respond to any potential opportunities or issues which emerge online otherwise you may be punished for failing to spot them.

Dell certainly didn’t have an effective system in place in 2005 when influential blogger Jeff Jarvis began his “Dell Hell” blogging saga. A simple customer complaint procedure about a fault snowballed into a dramatic mini-series of blog posts that were widely publicised, commented on and linked to. Dell eventually used this event as a catalyst to change the way they engage with customers online ( See www.dellideastorm.com) but not until after their reputation took a big hit.

With the steady grown in consumer generated media through blogs, twitter and other social media platforms and networks the potential and the risk has escalated. Even if you don’t want to engage online with your stakeholders - you can sure bet that they will talk about you anyway. So here is our practical grassroots approach to tracking and managing your reputation online.

#1 : Listen up and track your key search terms

‘Listen’: Yes yes - we know - you’ve heard it before a 100 times before. Listen before you go bumbling into online conversations in forums you don’t understand or participate in. Otherwise you could be in for a rude shock. But as practical is our watch word -so brain storm a full set of key words about your issue, organisation, brand and competitors and use a range of free tools to track them:

• RSS is sweet: Using a combination of search tools and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds is the best way to aggregate and track the information you need to including blogs, news, forums and website updates you wish to track. Firstly setup a google reader account or link it with your gmail account
• Google is everywhere: Google really is king of the jungle and they have a great range of additional free tools which can assist you to track and pipe in your various key word searches into your RSS reader Google alerts, Google News, Google Blog Search, Google Patent Search
• Other sites we use include Blogpulse for online conversations, Technorati for blog tracking and social media tagging, BoardTracker for monitoring popular forums, Flickr for any tagged images, Delicious for social bookmarking and if you’re feeling really adventurous Yahoo Pipes to setup a custom social media monitoring too

#2 : Summarise and assess key ‘mentions’ coming in at regular intervals

Build a list of key mentions coming in. Build a simple table which summarises the Mention URL, Sentiment (positive, negative or neutral), Theme / Tags, Source, Influence and action. Most of the columns are self explanatory but the Influence score is important. It can be difficult to scientifically assess but a score out of 5 or 10 can be given objectively by the reputation manager according to who is making the mention. Usually inspection of the news source, the number of blog comments or subscribers, and possibly even a cross check of site popularity with a site such as Social Meter may be appropriate.

If you are tracking an issue or campaign over a series of months or years, you may wish to compile the key stats into a spread sheet to enable you to analyse the relative proportion of positive / negative mentions over time.

You may also like to visually map the communications flows in and around your company. Draw two axis. The vertical - is influence. The horizontal positive to negative. Map your various specific mentions, sources or topics on the axis. Symbolise different size spheres / circles according to how much chatter is going on particular topics. The more chat, the bigger the circle. Draw linkages and group themes to help you identify key issues and strategic options.

#3: Develop comms strategy and identify communication parameters

After your intial round of analysis you should have a feel for which areas of the web are buzzing about (or not) and allow you to form a plan of attack. Agree who is going to say what to whom and develop a framework of your organisation’s “Rules of engagement” moving forward to allow the authorised spokeperson to comment on your behalf in a timely manner should issues flare.

#4: Engage in conversation : carefully but confidently

After you have agreed your plan of attack and your rules of engagement- dont just peek through the window like a peeping tom. Go out there and engage in conversation. Here are some simple tips which may help you engage better:

• Positive / supportive statements should be acknowledged. Stakeholders appreciate knowing they are being listened to.
• Try to lead the conversation - being on the front foot and creating positive stories via social media and blogs can only help your online reputation and can help keep any negative flare issues low in the google index
• Complaints - particularly product complaints - should be forwarded to your customer service / marketing department who are better equipped to manage these type of inquiries. You can almost always make a complaint right again. Try to take it offline first and if that fails resolve it online.
• Criticism can come from a range of sources. If a criticism includes false information try to correct it. If the criticism is accurate then it should be acknowledged and your proposed plans to address these criticisms moving forward .
• If its a Blog, find the bloggers contact details and email them first. Be aware these emails often end up as blog posts themselves. At a last resort comments form process for their site .
• If a major issue is brewing - look to take some defensive measure such as purchasing  negative name domains, such as www.YOURBRANDsucks.com, to reduce effectiveness of any attack sites and look to buy Pay per click advertising to sit along side any negative brand searches to respond at least partially
• Finally - be open, frank and honest at all times. And make sure your agency (if you have one) is as well. Stakeholders in the digital age can smell bullsh*t a mile away and will rip you to shreds for it. Fake youtube response videos with actors or PR people posing as a pretend supporter or anonymous commenter have led to some of the most spectacular attacks on brands and companies in 2009. Have a look at this breakdown of clothing brand Witchery’s fake “Man who lost his jacket” which caused one hell of a backlash. Don’t let it be you!

NP

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.