A good ORM strategy is internally focused

10 sep 2009

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Suppose you have a perfect Online Reputation Management (ORM) strategy. It’s simple (it fits on the back of a cigar box), it has crystal-clear priorities, visionary ideas, and you are fully aware of what you have to respond to and how to do it. After all, you prepared your buzz basics well, and you developed your ORM strategy so that it dovetails with your organization’s overall strategy. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean you’re there yet: there’s no point in monitoring everything and figuring out how to respond if your staff and management aren’t ready yet. As Martin Kloos indicates in his methodology for developing social media strategies, only 20% of it is about technology and tools, while 80% is about the organization and the processes. The crux of an effective ORM strategy is that you develop a parallel internal strategy.

Where do things go wrong?

The consultant Daniel Dessinger provided an apt example of this in January 2009. In early 2008, he was advising a financial services provider about ways in which the organization could cope with potential crises. Dessinger conducted extensive research, was thanked for his time and after that the company did not do a single thing. Addressing the problem of customer perception was deemed to be too expensive and would take too much time and energy – after all, the economy was already on the downturn. At the end of that year, the company filed for bankruptcy. Now, I don’t know the company in question, nor the quality of his advice. And I don’t know whether ORM could have prevented bankruptcy, but it was nevertheless a missed opportunity. Apparently, Dessinger was unable to completely convince the CEO or did not assess the rest of the organization well enough. Or perhaps he wasn’t sufficiently pragmatic and should have jotted down his recommendations on the back of a cigar box. In any case, his business case was not successful.

Jeff Bullas lists other reasons that may result in failure. He has identified twenty eight reasons why CEOs avoid using social media, all summarized in a ‘bingo game’. It’s a useful game to play because then you’ll know how to influence your CEO.

A rough summary of three reasons why things may go wrong:

Insufficient urgency at the top management level or simply a case of cold feet. A feeling that there is not (yet) sufficient reason to get started with ORM. A notion seems to prevail that working on your reputation will in fact cause even more damage to your reputation.
Internally, people are not sufficiently prepared for it: it doesn’t fit in the current structure, it’s unclear how to do it and there’s a belief that it would be detrimental to employee productivity.
It is not clear what the results and benefits will be.

When is it successful?

1. Develop an internal strategy

Not only does the CEO have to come round, but so does the rest of the organization. It is therefore a good idea to invest in that first. Before you can achieve your strategic objectives and get down to execution, management and growth, you first have to work on your internal image and train employees. In addition, you have to determine how to delegate responsibilities and how to subsequently deal with it. Your company has to be well organized to adopt and execute an ORM strategy. This is especially tricky if your ORM contains both a marketing and a corporate communications component. After all, these responsibilities are frequently vested in different organizational units of the company. And in addition to that, you also have to attend to customer service and legal issues. As for Martin Kloos’ above-mentioned methodology, I believe it’s not entirely true that 80% of the strategy involves people or the organization: he jumps from strategy to the monitor and response level (see figure below).

Figure: Model for social media strategy according to Kloos

2. Create a strategy map that summarizes the success factors

It’s only once you are well aware to what extent your organization is prepared to deal with social media or ORM that you can determine what your realistic external objectives are. At that point, you can also determine which success factors are feasible in order to achieve your objectives. One way of doing this is to create a strategy map. This is a summary of your ORM mission and objectives and the success factors for a variety of scales that fits on one standard-sized piece of paper (okay, so it’s slightly bigger than a cigar box). The ORM strategy’s success is determined from different perspectives. There is the financial perspective, the costs and yield, the customer or target group perspective, the online presence (the sites and forums that you want your organization to actively participate in) and, last but not least, the organization. Since this methodology, derived from the internet scorecard, requires you to simultaneously look at different perspectives, periodically measure to what extent you have achieved your objectives and develop measures for improvement, you can actually strive for effectiveness. It’s a useful idea to develop these tasks together with your employees.

First of all, define your strategic foundation (1), then design an ORM scorecard, in which you indicate what you want to measure (2), subsequently implement your scorecard by determining the frequency of measurement and responsibilities, for example (3) and, finally, start with the actual measuring and improving (4).

Jungle Minds ORM performance cycle

Figure: Jungle Minds: ORM performance cycle

Suppose you formulated the following objectives for 2009 (you won’t start to think about improving your reputation or customer satisfaction, customer loyalty or innovation until 2010 or beyond):

Experiment and determine urgency, develop insight into buzz basics: monitor and respond reactively
Adapt internal perception
Embedding in the organization and structured reporting

You could subsequently establish the success factors below, after which you can combine them with indicators and measures for improvement.

Quality of response
Roles and responsibilities
Consultative structure
Employees’ capacities and skills
Quality of monitoring and reporting tools

It should now be clear that a great deal has to be straightened out internally before you can even think about responding, let alone changing customer perception or preventing loss of reputation. It’s therefore wise to first find out exactly what to expect (monitor) and then see which people are best capable of responding. Subsequently, you have to figure out what the mutual responsibilities are, what a more effective consultative structure would be and whether the level of knowledge of those involved is up to par. And we still haven’t touched on the quality of the systems and tools (the guidelines, for example) or setting up an adequate reporting tool. This may seem self-evident, but you need to think about how to respond before you can actually do it. Moreover, it remains a component that requires constant alertness. It will only be clear during a crisis situation whether the organization possesses sufficient clarity and energy: was it a timely response and was it adequate?

3 Other paths to ORM success: internal motivation programme

A highly practical way of setting up ORM is by means of motivation. Provide cases, conduct training sessions and visit companies that have extensive ORM experience. Communicate results and have a concerted look at what can be improved. Print out your Golden ORM Rules and hang them in the coffee corner. Ultimately, ORM is primarily a question of simply getting it done, but it needs the support of a good strategy.

In short, you’re well on the way if you develop a realistic internal strategy, determine success factors by means of a strategy map and link that to an effective monitoring system. Add to that a solid internal motivation programme, and it’s hard to imagine that you will meet any of the three criteria for why things go wrong!