Reputation Management Being Proactive vs. Reactive

As a business owner or manager, you likely plan for every aspect of your business and your marketing plan. Why should your online reputation management be any different? This is especially the case in cultures where company image ranks very high in importance. Planning ahead and being proactive is much better than waiting until a problem arises before attending to your online reputation. Proactive management can be as simple as using social media monitoring tools, regular media and press releases, and even your own company blog.

There are many reasons you should be proactive about your online reputation instead of reactive. (1)It is much easier to fix or diminish the effects of negativity online if you have already built a positive image. (2)Tending to your online reputation also helps establish your presence which can lead to an increase in sales. (3) Establishing ways to engage with your audience allows you to react quickly and easily to negative comments.

Diminished Effect of Negativity

Once you already have built up your own content and presence online, a problem does not carry the same amount of weight as if it were among the only information about your company online. Press releases, company news, and posts on your company blog are all simple ways to establish a positive presence for your company on the web.  With your company blog and social media accounts, where you control the conversation, you can establish your company’s persona and reputation.  Use these channels to establish your company as an expert in the field, sharing valuable information and quality content.  Share positive stories about fundraising, community involvement,  employee success stories, anything positive.  Offer helpful advice, product guides, useful content about your industry.  Now when your reputation is proactively built, and a negative issue arises, it will have a diminished effect because it is just one problem in a sea of positive examples.  Capitalize on your website and social channels where you control the conversation by adding content constantly.

In most cases, a customer complaint that is addressed quickly and correctly can turn a negative into a positive because your company will look better for caring and addressing the problem. If the reputation management problem is a major crisis issue, it is not as easy to clean up, but having your own platform and reacting quickly are both keys to resolving the problem. Never ignore a problem, it will multiply and may never go away. In fact, it will usually get worse and make it more difficult to resolve the longer time goes by.

Online Social Presence Attributes to Increase in Sales

Your customers are searching for you online, even if you don’t sell anything online. All types of organizations from local businesses to large retailers need to have an online presence. It can be a mobile users searching for a nearby restaurant or hair salon, or a consumer looking for a particular product. If these searchers don’t find you, they will find your competition instead.  Multiple instances of web presence for your company will lead to more visitors and more sales. In addition to your website and Facebook page where you control and guide the conversation, look for additional social channels, local directories, review sites, related industry blogs, etc. These all make up the pieces of the puzzle for consumers searching for what you are selling. Establish an online presence in multiple places by claiming online listings with Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yellow Pages, and other community pages. Search your company name routinely and keep any listings up to date.  Also employ the use of social media monitoring tools to be kept abreast of what is being said about your company.

Social Channels Allow You to Engage with Your Audience

Developing social channels only for the purpose of preventing a negative online reputation is not exactly the way to go about this process either. Social networks are there for your business to be social with consumers and engage them. If you establish your social channels, blog, and website only for the purpose of lying in wait to respond to a negative comment, you are missing the point entirely. It is the conversation, content, and overall positive reputation that you build that defends against negativity. Reward your fans and followers for positive interaction on your social channels. If they share their experience with your company, it is more often positive than not and a chance to spread the word to new audiences. Word of mouth marketing on social media is one of the best referrals your business can hope for. Consumers believe reviews from friends and even consumers they do not know over advertising published by companies. You can expect that most of the engagement with consumers on social media is going to be positive, especially if you reward their positive interactions through online contests, special offers for fans, and providing informative and entertaining content.  

Even more important is having the ability to respond to a negative situation immediately. In most cases, a customer complaint that is addressed quickly and correctly can turn a negative into a positive because your company will look better for caring and addressing the problem. If the reputation management problem is a major crisis issue, it is not as easy to clean up, but having your own platform and reacting quickly are both keys to resolving the problem. Never ignore a problem, it will multiply and may never go away. In fact, it will usually get worse and make it more difficult to resolve the longer time goes by.

Proactive vs. Reactive Approach and Your Company

Being proactive instead of reactive about your company’s online reputation means creating your online presence and controlling it instead of letting customers control the conversation. Many companies make the mistake of thinking that setting up an online presence opens the way for consumers to post negative things about your company and cause a reputation problem. This is a mistake because customers and other people will likely be talking about their experience with your company online whether you are there to hear it or not. But other potential customers will be listening and taking note. Word of mouth and consumer reviews drive such a large portion of sales today, you cannot afford to not be online steering the conversations and monitoring the discussions. You will need a person on your marketing team devoted to reputation management; it can be part of the responsibility of a social media specialist, or a social media monitoring company. Of course, it is also worth mentioning that a hearty customer service program will limit the amount of social media and reputation management issues that come up.

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4 Kinds of Social Media Campaigns That Can Improve your Reputation

A bad social media campaign can wreck your reputation. A really good one, however, can revitalize both your reputation and your brand. Here are four examples of social media campaigns that can help you.

These campaigns may be executed in a number of different ways. Some might happen on Twitter alone. Others might include You Tube videos and a variety of interactions across multiple social channels. Be aware that execution matters, even when you’ve chosen one of the four themes below.

1. A campaign which uplifts others.

There are two ways to uplift others through your social media campaigns.

One way is to support a cause or course of action that really matters. For example, if you are heavily involved in a charity you can spend a lot of time tweeting about the things that you and that charity are accomplishing together.

Another way involves encouraging other people to believe in themselves. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign and Pantene’s “No Labels” campaign are two good examples of this phenomenon in action. These campaigns worked because they spoke to serious issues that had an impact on their audience, and they did so in a sensitive, approachable way.

2. Contests, giveaways, and games.

Contests are a great way to inject a little fun into your social media presence. Besides, people enjoy getting free stuff. If they are getting high quality free stuff then they will tend to feel some measure of good will for you and your company.

This works best if the games intersect with your brand. Otherwise they’ll just come across as random and disjointed. If you can work user-generated content into the mix you’ll have even more success. Just check out Chipotle’s “Wrap What You Love” contest.

3. Something cool, unique, or just a bit outrageous.

This one is a tricky one, because sometimes it’s hard to tell what people will think is awesome and what will come across as lame. You also need to put a lot of work into the launch, building up anticipation and teasing people to generate buzz. If you just unveil something it is almost guaranteed to fall flat.

An example would be Cadbury’s giant Dairy Milk Facebook Like Thumb. This article helps to demonstrate how all of their build up and response played into the success of what otherwise might have just come across as an ugly, disturbing chocolate statue.

They used teaser ads to build up to the event and then live streamed from a studio with user-generated content and photos. The Cadbury team also responded to comments made by fans in the video.

Without the build up and the response this campaign would have been dead in the water.

4. Twitter chats with a valuable purpose.

There are twitter chats for all sorts of things: #landscape chats, #mommy chats, and so on. Choosing and hosting the right chat can give people all kinds of reasons to engage with you and your company. A really good talk will generate a ton of positive feelings which go on to feed into your good reputation.

However, make sure that you’re not duplicating a chat that already exists, and take the time to be a participant before you’re a host. That will give you the chance to gain an understanding of what makes a successful Twitter chat and will help you generate ideas for creating your own. This also works best if you stay in it for the long haul, hosting the same chat with a different valuable question or theme every week.

Lay your groundwork before you launch.

Even the best social media campaign can flop if you don’t take the time to really listen to your customers. You might need to spend a month or more monitoring your reputation and what’s being said to really get a sense of what your customers think about your brand. If you have a truly bad reputation then you need to clean that up before you start, or any campaign can backfire. Once you’ve done your homework you’ll be well positioned to turn your social media into a positive force for your online reputation management.

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5 Free Tools to Manage Your Online Reputation

With a strong reputation, you attract new clients, keep the ones you have, and grow. And while in the old days, managing a company reputation meant managing public perception across geography, today the Internet adds another important layer.

Is your brand being talked about on blogs and social media? Do you know what people are saying about you online? You should.

Here’s a look at five of the top tools for managing your online reputation:

1. Google Alerts

Every business should set up Google Alerts for its brand name, if only because the process is so easy and convenient. Simply go to google.com/alerts and fill out your search query (company name) and how you want results delivered. You can filter results to include only certain forms of media (such as blogs or news or video), and you can have results sent to your email address or a feed reader. The results update you every time your brand is mentioned.

2. TweetBeep

What Google Alerts is to the Internet, TweetBeep is to Twitter. Sign up for the free version of this service, and get updated hourly every time you’re mentioned on Twitter. TweetBeep searches for Tweets linking to your website or blog (even within shortened URLs), replies and mentions, brand mentions, etc. It also comes in a premium version for $20/month that provides 200 alerts, a 15-minute-update option, and no ads.

3. Social Mention

SocialMention gathers an enormous amount of data regarding how and where your brand is mentioned online. You give the tool a keyword (your brand name) and it reveals a host of mentions, ranking each one as either positive, negative, or neutral. The only problem is that because the data pull from such a wide breadth of sources, irrelevant results do appear. Therefore, Social Mention is most useful if you’re a huge, recognized brand or have a particularly unique name.

4. Kurrently

Think of Kurrently as a search engine to check from time to time for brand mentions. As simple and user-friendly as Google, this tool provides real-time results for the keyword you give it (your brand name). Kurrently won’t email updates the way Google Alerts does, but its results are immediately updated and relevant, making it worth a visit.

5. MonitorThis

MonitorThis is a particularly interesting tool that tracks the mention of your brand name on over 20 different search engines. Simply enter your name in the search box and click the “make monitor.opml” button; the tool then generates a file to import into your feed reader. From that point forward, all mentions of your brand that come up in search results go straight to your feed.

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Online Resources Key To Travel Decision-Making

In January 2013, TripAdvisor conducted its biggest traveler survey ever, with over 35,000 participants from around the globe answering questions about how travelers plan upcoming trips, use social media or mobile devices prior to, during or after their travels. The complete report can be found here on TripAdvisor TripBarometer. Here are some of the major findings from this survey, in this compelling infographic which I have broken down below:

The findings here echo those found by TEXT100′s research last November, which I covered in How Digital Influence Travel Decisions Around The World. North America and the rest of the world seem to share similar patterns in seeking information online, yet it’s clear travel agents remain a stronger reference in countries like Australia or European countries like Spain, Italy and, to a lesser extent, France, the UK and Germany. What comes out, loud and clear though: travel review sites, OTAs and travel operator sites have surpassed family and friends as main source of information, as word-of-mouth is transforming itself into world-of-mouth!

Another huge finding, confirming what many expected or what many won’t acknowledge: free in-room wifi is now considered THE most important amenity when booking a trip, according to U.S. travelers. I am still trying to getting over the shock attending a conference in Atlantic City a couple of weeks ago, where in-room wifi at Caesars Hotel was ridiculously expensive, and it only covered the room, on one given device. Once you went to the conference center, or if you used your phone rather than your laptop, you had to purchase another package, at like US$49 for a four-hour session!

It’s also interesting to see that across the globe, people consider an average of seven properties prior to making the final reservation, thus prompting the ever-important question: what will they think of your property? What’s being said about it on TripAdvisor, Booking, Google Reviews or Expedia? How does your hotel website compare to competitors? Are you mobile optimized or better yet, have a website adapted for smartphones and tablets?

No surprises here either. These findings echo those from the research conducted by PhoCusWright in November 2012, on behalf of TripAdvisor. Other findings from the 2012 Hotel Review survey include:

• 74% state that they write reviews because they want to share a good experience with other travelers
• 67% of users state that, when available, they look at traveler-submitted photos to help them make hotel choices
• 59% of users state that when reading reviews, they ignore extreme comments
• In fact, only 5% of users state that they focus more on negative reviews to check for hotels and avoid potential pitfalls
• 57% of users agree that seeing hotel management responses to reviews generally makes them more likely to book it (versus a comparable hotel that didn’t respond to travelers)

While many people, me included, deemed 2012 the year that finally was the year of mobile, well, turns out we’re not quite there. Yet. Indeed it seems like customer adoption for mobile devices exceeds the speed at which brands and travel organizations are adapting to seize the opportunities within this booming channel. Thus, in 2013, there is still quite a bit of room to grow in and space to occupy for those who want to take a sizeable chunk of the market.

These stats are a great reminder that smartphones are much, much more than talking devices and that, in fact, there is more to mobile than just phones. We now carry tablets, laptops and other wireless devices that allow us to stay connected and share experiences with friends, parents and colleagues via our preferred social networks. As for social media, it may not play a conclusive role in the booking stage of the purchase funnel, but it certainly plays a key role during the experience, when we tend to share prominently, thus affecting our circle of friends, fans and followers.

Last but not least, it’s interesting to see how businesses are embracing social reviews to ensure everyone within companies can play a role to ensure great customer service and positive online reputation for the brand. It’s great to see how brands and travel industry stakeholders in the U.S. have taken the lead with regards to answering online comments, whether they are positive or negative.

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5 Social Media Tools to Help Manage Your Online Reputation 30 Minutes a Day

Social media has become an integral part of a business’ marketing strategy. Reaching out to hundreds and thousands of your audience in a matter of seconds has been made possible by the power of a tweet or wall post.

The idea of managing social media profiles of your business is to maximize interaction with potential clients and increase sales.

However, there comes a time when your social media activity can get overwhelming. Aside from keeping up with the different social media channels you have registered for, you need to deal with posting timely messages on your feed and replying to disgruntled customers to control your online brand reputation. Thus, managing all your online accounts on a regular basis takes up hours of your time at work, leaving you with little for your other tasks.

Ideally, there’s no reason you should spend more than 30 minutes replying and posting on your online profiles. To do this, you will need the help of free social media tools and services to organize your workflow. Below are five highly recommended social media services to make your online work much more efficient.

Hootsuite

One of the problems why people take so long in messaging on social media is because they have to sift through different windows and interfaces just so they can send out messages to their audience.

With Hootsuite—arguably one of the most useful social media tools out there—you can register up to five of your social media profiles so you can interact with your Twitter,Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn followers with ease.

Interface on all accounts is streamlined, so you won’t get confused with the different designs of each site. If you need to dispatch the same message on all your profiles, Hootsuite lets you do that in just one click after selecting the profiles where you intend for the message to appear.

Another advantage of using this tool is the ability to schedule your posts to appear at specific dates and times in the future. This proves very useful especially if you won’t be able to tend to your online profiles due to other commitments. Once you’ve set up the message, they will be posted on the social media sites even if you don’t log in.

InboxQ

There are Twitter users who are simply waiting to become your followers, if not clients or brand advocates. The problem is just they don’t know it yet. These people ask questions about products and services that your business offers such as “What’s the best X?” or “What Y should I buy?” InboxQ, arguably the most helpful when it comes to generating leads for your business, lets you find them.

The app can be installed on your Internet browser or Hootsuite dashboard. Once installed, enter the keywords relevant to your business and InboxQ will search for questions on Twitter. You can input as many keywords as possible, as long as they help return more questions. From there, you can answer questions relevant to your business.

Commun.it

This social media service lets you build more Twitter leads to increase your sales by focusing on your list of high-value members. Users who mention your name will appear on the list, making it easier for you to engage with them and strengthen your relationships. The tool will also automatically populate your different followers into groups for segmentation purposes. Similar to InboxQ, you can list down keywords that will be used to discover new leads for your business.

A free account allows you 30 times to engage with a single user, so be judicious with the posts you will make using this service.

Topsy and Social Mention

Social media is breeding grounds for customer feedback. This will prove valuable to possible clients of your business since they research on the Internet before they do any purchases. Positive reviews draw them in to your business, while negative repels them. What you want is to augment positive feedback, which is why searching for posts on Topsy and Social Mention and retweet, like, and comments on said posts.

For negative comments, make sure to provide answers to the issues they raised on their posts. If possible, find a way to correct your mistakes. This way, even if you received negative feedback on social media, the manner in which you addressed their concerns speaks volume of your customer support.

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If You Want Greater Sales Through Social Media in 2013, Start by Building Your Reputation

The 2102 Social Media Report from Nielsen is out and one thing is clear – social media usage shows no signs of declining thanks to smartphones and mobile apps. In fact, in July of 2012, users averaged 88.48 minutes, a number that jumped 58% to 121.18 minutes in July of 2012.

Most importantly, however, the report justifies investments in social marketing, advertising and engagement. Of those polled, 17% of consumers feel more connected to brands seen on social networking websites. Plus one fourth of social users polled have liked a social ad and 15% have shared a social ad. While from an ROI/conversion point of view, 14% of users purchased products through of a social ad.

Armed with this data, the most pressing issue for brands is how they command the attention of existing and new customers across social media channels. Yet when you consider the data in the ‘Frequency of Social Activities’ (below), the importance of building a strong reputation that drives word of mouth advertising is clear. For only by making an emotional connection with your customers based on shared values will you inspire them to become brand ambassadors that buy your products and promote them to others, and that is when you unlock the true power of social media to build your business.

To build your reputation through social media, you must first ensure leadership in your company has a clear idea of what it stands for and can articulate that purpose in a way that explains how your company is different or better than its competitors.

Second, leadership must make sure that this message is communicated to employees so that they understand what the company’s values. These values must then be translated into social media roles, engagement guidelines and crisis protocols within the company so that customers have an experience that aligns with the company’s marketing.

Third, the entire company must communicate these values consistently through its products, services and advertising. It’s this consistency that ensures customers talk about your brand with friends using their own social media channels. So as we leave for holidays, here’s a simple three-step goal for 2013:

1. Ask leadership to clearly define what the company stands for, its values and what it’s trying to achieve.

2. Educate employees about these values so they can act in ways that match the reputation of the company.

3. Tell customers what you care about and work with them to help achieve your company goals based on values that you share.

Do this and you’ll forge a critical emotional connection with your customers based on shared values that will inspire them to share and buy your products. Only then will the greater social media engagement across PC, tablets and mobile phones described in Nielsen’s Report drive awareness, sales and long term success for your company in 2013.

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