How Online Reputation Management Works?

Online reputation management uses the tools of the Internet to monitor and analyse a brand’s reputation and to engage in conversation so as to influence its reputation.

On the Web, reputation matters. Many communities have their own reputation management for members, such as eBay, Digg and Reddit. This is based on the feedback given by other community members, and affects the success of that member’s ability to transact within the community. Generally, participation, engagement and response are all used to rate a member’s reputation.

Web sites which place an emphasis on the reviews of the community, such as IMDB.com for movies or Amazon.com for books, have algorithms which determine their most trusted reviewers, and they base some of their rankings on the opinions of that part of their community.

When shifting to the greater community of the Internet, participation, engagement and response remain key factors in determining a company’s reputation.

step 1:listening – monitoring the buzz
Focus groups are not required for gauging customer sentiment on the Internet. It’s all out there, connected via hyperlinks and crawled regularly by search engine spiders. Keywords – the foundation to categorising and indexing the web – make it relatively simple (though possibly time-consuming) to listen to the chatter online. Customers are not using channels designated by a company to talk about that organisation, but the good news is that the Internet makes it easy for a company to use the channels that customers have selected.

ORM keywords

ORM allows a company to track mentions of itself, its staff, its products, its industry and its competitors. In fact, the tools allow for the tracking of anything; it just comes down to deciding what is relevant to you.

Company

• Brand name
• URL
• Key products
• Key personnel (names, job titles, etc)

Industry

• Conferences
• Patents
• News

Competitors

• Brand names
• Product launches
• Web site updates
• Job vacancies

For example, if Apple were to use these tools to monitor reputation, some keywords used might be:

Company

• Apple
• “apple.com”
• Macbook, iPod, Macbook Air, iTunes
• “Steve Jobs”

Industry

• Consumer Electronics Show Las Vegas
• CEBIT

Competitors

• Microsoft, Creative

It is also important to track common misspellings, all related companies and all related web sites.

Tracking the names of people key to a company can highlight potential brand attacks, or can demonstrate new areas of outreach for a company.

Brand names, employee names, product names and even competitor names are not unique. To avoid monitoring too much, identify keywords which will indicate that a post has nothing to do with your company, and negative match that keyword in your searches.

For example, “apple” could refer to a consumer electronics company, or it could appear in a post about the health benefits of fruit. Finding keywords that will indicate context can help to save time. So, you could negative match words like “fruit”, “tasty” and“granny smith”.

how to track: CGM and search

Thankfully, ORM does not entail hourly searches on your favourite search engine to see what is appearing on the SERPs. Although, being aware of your search space is vital as well. There are a number of search engines that allow for narrowing a search to particular media or industries. And RSS means that these results can be updated regularly and kept conveniently in one place.

Monitoring all mentions means that the following need to be tracked:

• Blogs
• Twitter
• News
• Forums
• Comment boards
• Photos
• Videos
• Job listings
• Events
• Patents
• Web site changes
• And many more!

There are a number of different tools that monitor these areas, and supply the results via email alerts or RSS feeds. Below are some free tools that are available.

Google has several bespoke search services, and periodically adds more to the list. With the services below, an RSS feed is available for the search (Google Alerts sends weekly or daily emails with updates), so that all updates can be available through a feed reader.

Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts

• Google Alerts will send an email when the keyword is used in either a news item or a blog post.
  

Google News: news.google.com

• Google News searches all news items for mentions of a keyword.

Google Blog Search: blogsearch.google.com

• Google Blog Search searches all blog posts for mentions of a keyword.

Google Patent Search: www.google.com/patents

• Google Patent Search allows you to keep track of all filings related to an industry, and searches can be done to see if there are patent filings which might infringe on other patents.

Google Video Search: video.google.com/videosearch

• Video Search relies on the data that has been added to describe a video, and will return results based on keyword matches.

There are several search engines which focus solely on tracking blogs, news and other social media, and can provide trends for searches. As well as providing regular updates of new postings, these search engines can also provide an overview over a certain period of time.

Blogpulse: www.blogpulse.com

• Blogpulse tracks conversations and trends and supplies an RSS feed for updates.

Technorati: www.technorati.com

• Technorati tracks blogs and tagged social media.

Keeping track of blogposts is one thing, but mentions of a company can also appear in blog comments and on forum postings. The following two services assist in monitoring comments and forums.

Boardtracker: www.boardtracker.com

• Boardtracker monitors popular forums and provides alerts via SMS for keywords mentioned in a thread.

Co.mments: co.mments.com

• RSS alerts can be created for mentions of a keyword in the comments of blogposts.

Yahoo! has a number of social media companies under its umbrella, and most provide the opportunity to monitor mentions via RSS.

Flickr: www.flickr.com/search

• RSS updates for searches on a particular keyword will reveal when a brand name has been used in tagging a photo.

Yahoo! Upcoming: upcoming.yahoo.com

Yahoo!’s Upcoming will alert you via RSS for any upcoming events related to the keyword you have selected.

Del.icio.us: del.icio.us

An RSS feed can be created for URLs tagged with keywords, or for new bookmarking of a URL.

Yahoo! Pipes: pipes.yahoo.com/pipes

Yahoo! Pipes allows anyone to set up a custom buzz monitoring tool with bespoke filters.

There might be web sites that a company would like to monitor for keyword mentions that do not offer RSS feeds. Using a service such as Rollyo (www.rollyo.com) allows the creation of a custom search engine which will search those specific sites only.

Listening is the first step to getting involved in the conversation surrounding a company. Using search tools and RSS feeds means that information can be accessed quickly and in one place, without the need to visit hundreds of web sites.

step 2: analysing – what’s being said by whom

As a marketer, the first step in looking at who is saying what is to take stock of the messages being sent by your own company. This includes: all web sites and domains owned by a company, all blogs maintained by employees (whether company blogs or personal blogs) and all blogs maintained by ex-employees. An audit should give an idea of the content that is available to the public and what that content is saying. With regular RSS updates declaring that selected keywords have been used in some form of social media, a growing list is being created of mentions surrounding a brand.Now what?

Even in the democratised world of the Internet, not all mentions are equal. They vary in terms of positivity or negativity and influence. Not all mentions require action from a company. Some require drastic measures to be taken. But all, no matter how quiet or how loud, are an indication of consumer sentiment.

Whether a post is positive, negative or indifferent can be quickly assessed by reading it. Influence can be a little harder to establish.

Indicators such as traffic, links and subscriber numbers can all assist in assessing the influence of a blog. There are also services such as Blog Influence (www.bloginfluence.net) and Social Meter (www.socialmeter.com) which will show the audience and reach for an entered URL. However, statements, particularly inflammatory ones, should still be monitored as traffic can increase substantially and quickly online.

Influence can also assist in establishing the credibility of the author. Factors which can indicate credibility include the size of the blog’s audience, the frequency of posts and the age of the blog.

The source should also be looked at: is the mention a news item or a tag on photo from someone’s holiday?

To be able to monitor reputation over time, in can be a good idea to aggregate the information into a spreadsheet or database along with the factors mentioned above. It is necessary to determine what is important to the reputation of the company you are monitoring, and perhaps adapt factors accordingly.

Your database might look something like this:

There are also a number of paid for services on the market that will assist in monitoring and aggregating this information.

BrandsEye (www.brandseye.com) is a tool launched in 2008 that does just that. Not only does it track mentions, but it allows the user to assign sentiment and importance to mentions, and provides a benchmark of a brand’s reputation.Trackur (www.trackur.com) is another tool that monitors the volume of mentions, but provides limited analysis.

step 3: influencing – engaging in and leading the conversation

The best way to show that you are listening is by responding. Online, there are many channels available to companies to respond to the conversation and to become an active participant in it.

what if everything being said is nice?

A fantastic position to be in is that every possible mention that includes your company, its employees and products, is overwhelmingly positive. Well done. However, that does not mean that there is nothing to do. Consumers want to know that a company is listening; it needs to respond. Positive comments should be acknowledged.

All of these mentions can also indicate new avenues for marketing and growth.

what if everything being said is neutral?

Then it sounds like the company is very boring. As Seth Godin (www.sethgodin.com) puts it, “safe is risky”. If a company is playing it so safe that no one can be bothered to either send praise or criticism its way, it’s in danger of being forgotten. The next step is no one talking about the company at all.

what if negative things are being said?

Negative statements should be seen as an opportunity for growth. Negative statementscan be complaints or criticisms, and both should be dealt with.

Complaints are from stakeholders who have had dealings with a company. By complaining, this customer is giving the company the opportunity to make things right and is probably indicating where the company can improve. Usually, the skilledcustomer service department of a company should deal with these.

If a complaint is online, the resolution should be there as well, although you can try to have it taken offline first. Even though the customer service will likely take place either over email or by phone, posting a comment in a blog post, for example, will show the community that the company both listens and responds.

Criticism need not necessarily come from customers, but it is important to be aware of it. If a criticism includes false information, it should be corrected. And if the criticism is true, then it should be dealt with as such.

Responding

Responding involves recognising that consumers dictate the channels of communication, and that a company needs to go to the consumer, not the other way around.

In South Africa, vodacom3G is the name of a Vodacom representative who monitors the forum mybroadband.co.za and resolves complaints and queries and offers assistance. Instead of directing customers to an FAQ section on a Vodacom site, Vodacom has followed their consumers to the channel that the consumers prefer.

Not only do Vodacom resolve questions on the forum, but they also use it to provide key information that consumers are wanting.

If you are responding to a blogpost, find the writer’s contact details on the blog and email her directly. At a last resort, use the comments to make contact with the blogger.

When responding, be transparent and honest. Remember that emails can be reproduced on blogs. At all times, remember that you are engaged in conversation, not a dictation.

Influencing

In the chapters on WebPR and social media there are guidelines for companies to lead the conversation using the tools of social media. Influencing and leading the conversation can also have the consequence of there being more results that are lead by your company in the SERPs.

Companies can also get proactive by purchasing negative name domains, such as www.companynamesucks.com, to prevent angry customers from buying these and having them hitting the SERPs.

Lastly, take a look at negative brand name searches on major search engines, and consider PPC advertising to offer the company’s point of view.