ORM: more than just setting things right

Managing your online reputation is more than just monitoring negative messages in social media and responding to them. Or keeping your search engine results clean of negative reporting (search engine reputation management). Online reputation management is more than merely setting a few things right when problems arise. So following is a summary of all the different options for online reputation management (ORM) to help you optimize your company’s image.

Why use online reputation management?

Every company or organization strives to have a positive image, not only at the corporate and brand levels, but also at the personal level (think of your CEO, for example). After all, a negative image can result in lower share prices and declining sales, fewer applicants, not to mention distrust of management and even lawsuits. Your organization is increasingly at the mercy of public opinion. In fact, you are what others perceive you to be. Skittles’ website illustrates this point well. For a large part, this website contains content about Skittles from sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Flickr. The brand is therefore impacted by other people’s opinions and posts.

The essence of online reputation management

Online reputation management is located in the interface between public relations and marketing. It’s becoming increasingly easy for your stakeholders or potential customers to express their opinions about your organization online and share them with other people. This user-generated content presents organizations with opportunities, as well as dangers, for actively creating an image and reactively responding to other people’s messages.

he model below shows the possibilities available to organizations in the area of online reputation management. On the one hand, communication has either a positive or negative origin, and, on the other hand, there is active or reactive communication. Resulting from this are four categories of online reputation management, within which both your own site(s) as well as external sites play a role.

1. Actively positive: building an image

The first box – actively positive – represents the kind of online reputation management companies traditionally use. They may, for example, initiate campaigns and promotions, publish press releases, write blogs, news items and op-eds, as well as pod- and vodcasts with presentations. These are the most common ways of building an online reputation and are usually sender-oriented.

This kind of reporting, which is generally found on corporate websites, can be supplemented by placing content on external websites. Examples include opening your own YouTube channel, your own Hyves, Facebook or MySpace page or blogging on external blogs. In short, the aim is to establish presence and be active in those places where your potential stakeholders or customers are to be found. All this communication is geared towards proactively informing and engaging them in order to generate a positive image.

2. Reactively negative: issue management

The fourth box, at the bottom right, is a logical next step for many companies. The main focus here is to reactively handle negative reporting, i.e. track down complaints and negative messages and solve, as well as defuse, these statements. Think, for example, of Vodafone or UPC’s webcare teams or external parties such as Web Rep Associates. When facing sensitive issues or unexpected negative reporting, search engine reputation management (SERM) is also an option. Negative reporting on external sites seems to find its way to the top of search engine listings. What causes this? It’s the popularity of user-generated content sites and the many links to and from the sites. As a result, they’re quick to score high with search phrases.

Of course, it’s important to respond adequately to these messages and, moreover, to ensure that these negative messages end up lower in the search results. In the worst-case scenario, you may temporarily employ paid search results (SEA), as Oxxio does, in order to pre-empt the negative search results.
 

Of course, prevention is better than cure. Therefore, ensure that you actively monitor what’s going on in your target group and that you’re constantly building on your image. Actively publish documents about relevant subjects, issues, problems and discussion topics on your and on other site(s), so that negative messages don’t easily get a high search engine listing and so that you can maintain a dialogue with your stakeholders.

3. Actively negative: crisis management

For many organizations, online reputation management doesn’t go further than the previous two phases. It’s increasingly important for organizations to be transparent and communicate clearly what their role or point of view is during certain crises. It’s essential, particularly when it directly involves your organization, to also communicate well online. After all, you are the primary source, which is why people visit your corporate site. Take a disaster such as the recent plane crash at Schiphol, for example. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol immediately launched its crisis site, which contained the most current information about the disaster. The recent banking crisis and all the discussions that ensued led ING to establish a special column on its website called ‘ING and the current financial environment’. The bank used this column to report on current topics such as bonuses for top managers and capital injections. Consider what might constitute potential crises for your organization and how you would like to publish information about them on your site, so that you will be in a position to respond rapidly should the need arise.

4. Reactief positief: verrassen en stimuleren

And finally, there’s the positive response to reports about your organization. Webcare teams are becoming increasingly aware that they should not only devote attention to negative reporting but also to positive reporting. Not only to counterbalance negative reporting but rather to stimulate and reward these ambassadors of your organization. These brand ambassadors are extremely valuable to an organization, since they influence other people with their positive reporting about your organization. It recently struck me that this phenomenon is really taking off on Twitter. For example, I was positively surprised by NRCnext and Coolblue, who responded with a message to a tweet I posted myself. It’s that simple – suddenly I have become a brand ambassador and am again sharing my positive experience!

Reputation management is therefore more than just focusing on negative reporting and setting things right again. It’s about monitoring and managing both negative and positive reporting in an active or reactive way. Many organizations make the transition from actively positive communicating to reactively negative communicating. But to create a positive image, there’s no way organizations can get around using the other elements of reputation management as well.

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