Reputation Management Damage Control: When Social Media Attacks
December 18th, 2009 | Written by: April Jasmine Stewart
Do you know what people are saying about your business online?
Social media reputation management can be both a constructive and destructive landscape as companies stand accountable to the voice of online consumers, bloggers and journalists. Businesses must now take a more proactive approach in monitoring the conversation on the web, as more online consumers use social sites like Twitter to express their opinions about a brand.
“There is a growing group of highly desirable consumers using social media to research companies: 25- 55-years-old, college-educated, earning $100,000+ –a very powerful group in terms of buying behavior.” [Dr. Ganim Nora Barnes, Society for New Communications Research]
Analyzing the Relationship between Customer Satisfaction & Company Reputation Management in the Age of Social Media
According to a recent study from the Society for New Communications Research:
- 6 out of 10 survey respondents indicated they use social network sites to vent about poor customer experiences.
- 6 out of 10 online consumers make decisions based on company reputation and opinions shared on social media sites, review boards and forums
- 8 out of 10 surveyed consumers regard the quality of customer care as a major influence in their decision to conduct business with a company
When is it time to use Social Media as a combative reputation management measure?
When Google auto populates the search query field with “[Your Company Name] Sucks” and you find your organic rankings are buried under a stack of blogs, real-time tweets and a variety of websites colorfully lambasting the credibility of your company, it’s time to take action.
Be warned that both Google and Bing now integrate Twitter into their search results. Google boldly showcases real time tweets at the top of the search page, meaning you could very well find negative Twitter listings outranking your domain page.
How do I monitor what is being said?
With hundreds of social sites, tracking the chit chat can seem daunting. However, there are a number of resources which will help you get a better grasp of your social media reputation management:
- Google Alerts
Google Alerts are a way for you to monitor any given reference to your company. Using your company name as a keyword, Google will notify or alert you via email any time the term is used on the web, including in tweets, blogs, forums, and even mentions in news articles.
- MonitorThis
MonitorThis is a one-stop-shop research tool that allows you to plug in a search query and returns an aggregate list of search engine feeds from 22 engines including Google, Google Blog Search, Bing, Yahoo, Technorati, Del.iciou.us, and Blogdigger (to name a few).
- Technorati
This extensive blog directory indexes trending topics, and is a great place to stay abreast of everything that is being said in the overall blogosphere. A simple site search will pull up a list of blogs which make reference to any given set of keywords including your company name.
- Twitter Search
Another quick way to manage your reputation and monitor what is being said in the social-sphere is to use Twitter’s tweet engine and subscribe via RSS search feeds.
Responding to trash talk: How do I make them shut-up?
So you’ve pissed off Elmo and now stormy days are sweeping your site away, but all is not lost; there are a number of solutions to repair Elmo’s wrath:
- Make wrong right
The best reputation management solution is clearly demonstrating your commitment to resolving your consumers’ concerns. Responding quickly to negative feedback in an effort to fix the problem will demonstrate to others reading the dirt that you are a reputable company that deems consumer satisfaction a priority.
- Contact the publisher and ask for removal
In many cases, you can resolve the negative listing simply by contacting the “bad mouther” and asking for the content to be removed. Sometimes a simple curl of the lip, modest apology, and “no harm intended” speech will do the trick.
- Tweet back
If you find your company shuffled shamelessly under negative tweets, you can always tweet a few things from your own company Twitter account. Keep in mind that Tweets are in real time, which makes it easy for you to push those tweets further down the results page by simply updating the social sphere with fresh, new content.
What if all else fails?
Assuming your social media reputation management skills aren’t too sharp, you can always create content pages that will outrank the negative search listings. In other words, dominate the search results page by building keyword focused press releases, blogs and company profiles on Facebook and Linkedin. Leverage the power of online video through YouTube, Veoh, and Me.tv, author white-papers and articles through Ezine or build out a company photo deck with Flickr. There are plenty of opportunities to monopolize the search results page for the keyword combinations that attribute bad press for your company.
Social media reputation management can be a tedious, exhausting task. Sometimes the best route is to let a social media optimization company manage your online reputation. However, the best defense is not about damage control, but rather understanding the needs and feelings of your consumer base. Never underestimate the power of the public voice and the importance of corporate responsibility.
Tags: Reputation Management, social media
This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Blog, Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing. 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.
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