Managing your online reputation

When a specifier does an online search for your company, what do they find? Is there a negative review or comment on your product, or a positive news item or press release about your recent product launch? Kirstie Colledge of Simply Marcomms and CIMCIG offers advice on protecting your good name online.

Online reputation management, or ORM, is the practice of monitoring and analysing one’s business or industry reputation as portrayed by online media content. If you don’t control your brand reputation, and listen to what is said about your company, products or services, then someone else can and may. Many major contracts are awarded following a process of online due diligence. This is often how companies are located and then invited to tender.

Why manage online reputation?

There are now more opportunities than ever to quickly rank negative results. Many companies get into trouble because an employee speaks on the company’s behalf without proper authorisation. Your employees can easily use social media to say or do something that reflects badly on your company and your reputation. I strongly recommend developing a social media policy that clearly set out to all staff what they can – and cannot – do when it comes to use of social media and mentioning the company online. The media landscape changed dramatically with the rise of the Internet, social media and Web 2.0. With it also came far greater opportunity to attract bad press.

Monitoring your online reputation

As you grow your online presence you will find that there’s more and more to keep track of. You should monitor what is being said about you on social networks, blogs and Twitter. On Twitter you can set up searches for your company and username in your TweetDeck or HootSuite accounts. You can also use RSS feeds and feed services to monitor the buzz.

Fixing problems

So how do you manage negative content? Well, the key is to assess the problem and then decide if you can deal with it directly. In most cases you can and should respond to enquiries or criticism. Be open and honest. Make sure that you already have a presence where your customers congregate online in order to respond and engage with them. That way, if a problem occurs you’ll already be a trusted and recognisable voice within the community, and your message will carry more weight.

Optimise your PR content

All PR and marketing communications, such as articles, press releases, video clips, podcasts and case studies, should be created, optimised and shared online. A blog is the most useful tool in the online marketing toolkit for any marketing professional. With a blog you can self-publish. If you know how to optimise content you can quickly reach page one on Google. You can feed your content by RSS to subscribers, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Groups, TCN and other networks. You only need to publish it once and in one place: your blog.

Integrate with other marketing activity

All your digital communications should mirror your other communications, including offline and traditional forms of marcoms. Remember that online reputation management should not be a standalone activity, or focussed solely around negative activity (see Twelve top tips for integrating social media into B2B selling elsewhere in this issue). Consistency across all marketing channels is, however, fundamental.

 

Kirstie Colledge is a committee member of CIMCIG, the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Construction Industry Group, and managing director of online construction PR agency Simply Marcomms.

Reserve your place on CIMCIG’s Digital Workshop for Construction, being held simultaneously in London, Bristol and Leamington Spa on 17 March 2011, and learn first-hand how digital communications can be used effectively in the construction industry.

 

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