Business Reputation and Social Media Management (Part 5)

Social Media Lawyers: Business Reputation and Social Media Management (Part 5)

How much influence can a company have over what is written about it on the internet? Clearly, it is not possible to police every comment or blog post but still, very often, it is possible to assess the organisation's susceptibility to becoming the target of an online reputation attack.

Evidently, many of the reputation issues that that my law firm deals with on a daily basis find their roots with the lacking of one or more of the three essential elements that we have discussed in this series, namely:

1. Prevention
2. Listening
3. Influencing

When it comes to taking steps to reduce the risk of online reputation crisis - everything counts. How much effort has the company been putting, over time, into understanding its customers, their needs and their reaction to the company's marketing, sales and customer support strategies? How much listening is the company doing? How sensitive the company is to customer's complaints, issues and unhappiness? How influential has the company been in shaping what people see, hear and feel about it online? The answer to each and every one of all these questions could be proved critical to the company's online reputation.

But how much influence can the company really have over what people see about it online?

Influencing your company's online reputation

You can influence what your customers see when they search for your company online. Companies need to get involved in online discussions. They should post articles and comments using methods such as blogs, discussion groups, websites and more.

These are not necessarily marketing tools, but they are forums of discussion where the company can present its views on matters that are important to consumers. Whenever you find negative comments about your company, join the discussion—but not necessarily on the forum where it has been initiated.

You might not want to comment on certain websites and forums for obvious reasons. But you can deal with substantive complaints and objections through your own company’s blog or website and invite your customers to join the conversation there.

Don't simply stay away and hope the complaints will disappear, because they won't. If you feel the situation is starting to get out of control, get expert advice.

You need to ask yourself hard questions. What caused the problem in the first place? What can you do about it? Use such adversities to improve your company’s performance and put customer support high on the company’s agenda.

Dell, a strong multinational company, survived its online reputation crisis, but at a very high cost. Smaller organisations don’t have Dell’s resources or reputation. If they don't follow the advice in this series, they might find it very challenging to survive, let alone thrive, in the months and years to come.

Posted by Social Media Solicitors.

Read part 1 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.
Read part 2 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.
Read part 3 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.
Read part 4 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.

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• Your Online Reputation Management Guide For 2013
• Top PR & Social Media Trends for 2013
• Online defamation Crisis Management
• Social media lawyer gives 5 essential steps to dealing with online defamation

Business Reputation and Social Media Management (Part 4)

Social Media Lawyers: Business Reputation and Social Media Management (Part 4)

The three simple, yet crucially important steps that help prevent online reputation crisis are taken very seriously by CEOs,entrepreneurs and great leaders of companies of all shapes and sizes.

Make sure you have processes in place to regularly search the internet for your company’s name and brand.

Steve Jobs, Willie Walsh, Richard Branson and the business owner of my local printing shop all have acknowledged with their action that obtaining direct feedback from their customers is one of the most important steps they, and leaders can take to reduce the risks of their organisation having to deal with online reputation crisis.

Prevention however is only the first step that business owners need to take to reduce the risk of online damage to their company's reputation.

There are two other important steps that will tremendously help them achieve this goal. As the Dell Hell example shows, the art of LISTENING could also make a significant difference to the organisation's online reputation.

Listening to customers as a preventative measure to reduce risk of defamation against your company

Read and hear what your customers are saying about you. Make sure you have processes in place to regularly search the internet for your company’s name and brand.

If you do not have an in-house or external internet reputation management team, at least use free tools such as Google Alerts or Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com.) These tools will reveal many of the blogs and discussion groups where your company’s name has been mentioned.

This is what your customers will see when they search for your company. Hopefully, you won’t find anything alarming. Even if you don’t, you should continue monitoring any particular websites and forums that might become a hotbed for disgruntled customers.

If you do find unpleasant comments, don’t despair. It’s not the end of the world, and there is plenty you can do to repair the damage. Depending on the number of customers your company serves, it may be inevitable that some negative publicity will appear on the internet.

You cannot do anything about this, but you can certainly manage the information to make sure customers know your company is being transparent and helpful.

Read part 5 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.
Read part 1 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.
Read part 2 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.
Read part 3 of the Business Reputation Management and Social Media series.