BrandsEye Blog

No two consumers are the same

Over the years we have tried to come up with clever “one size fits all” strategies for engaging with consumers. In all but a handful, we have realised that this wouldn’t work and thus have had to create bespoke, individual, engagement strategies on a case-by-case, individual-by-individual basis. While quantitative data is certainly very useful for understanding trends and piecing together the full picture, understanding individual’s sentiments and views of a brand are equally critical. Copy/paste responses just don’t cut it (pun intended) and it is the brands who are investing in their stakeholder’s relationships are really reaping the rewards.

Start small and build it up from there

All too often, brands decide to get involved in the “online thing” and throw themselves at it. They apply old-school thinking and then wonder why their stakeholders are disillusioned and not responding in the ways they had hoped. A better approach, we now realise, is to slowly build up an online presence. Make sure that each cog is running smoothly before moving onto the next step. The same applies with the tracking of the conversation online. Don’t begin by trying to monitor, measure and manage the entire conversation, rather focus on a number of key areas within the business and correct those first. It’s always easier to take on more work than to try go back on a promise to your community.

Lawyer’s letters don’t work

Whenever a lawyer’s letter is served and published online the team get excited - it’s a ready-made case study waiting to break. In all cases, certainly that we know of, serving a lawyer’s letter to a pesky blogger does nothing but aggravate the situation. Instead of looking at the negativity as an opportunity to convert the user, this approach halts all conversation and leaves it up the empowered online community to decide the brand’s fate. Unfortunately, it never ends well.

Stakeholders are your brand

I’ve been preaching this for a while but to reiterate; the Brand Manager no longer controls the brand. They are critical to managing perception and carefully weaving it to serve the business needs but they do not own it. Stakeholders, on the other hand, fully control the brand. Their interaction with it defines it both for themselves and for others. Brands which acknowledge this prosper by providing caring steers on the community. Brands which fight it risk undermining the brand itself.

Search phrases don’t always behave

No matter how carefully an Online Reputation Management Service is set up, sometimes phrases just don’t behave. Over the years we have had clients make some terrific mistakes – one even resulted in the crashing of our servers. One user in particular inadvertently put a space into a word and began a search for “a” (as is found in about 50% of all words), they also created searches for Microsoft, Apple, Google and Yahoo. Collectively, this brought in over a million conversations an hour which made for a very unhappy time for our engineering team.

ORM is multidisciplinary

Thinking of ORM as a communication, marketing or branding activity is wrong. It is all three and much more. Reputation cannot be considered the sole responsibility of any of these three departments. Realistically, anything which one does impacts the other two and in this space it’s critical that all three work together to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved. This does require that the natural friction between these departments needs to be put aside of mutual gain. The upside of this is that ORM can be distributed - meaning that a small amount of resource is required from each department.

Pre-emption is cheaper than cure

Trying to dig oneself out of a reputation crisis is never easy. You, as a brand, are on your back foot and everything which you do will be scrutinised and runs the risk of blowing up in your face. This makes for a very stressful and labor intensive way of managing reputation. A better way to approach this situation is to plan ahead. Consider how consumers may respond then either watch out for minor flashpoints (which are quickly resolved) or change the business/campaign itself to elevate the pressure on the flashpoints. In any event, planning and executing on a pre-emptive reputation move is always cheaper and better for the brand.

Social Media shall inherit the earth

Social media is everywhere. When we first started with BrandsEye we were finding that about 50-60% of the conversation was coming from traditional sources (business websites, press etc). This number has changed drastically and we are now seeing that anywhere upwards of 60% of the conversation is coming from Twitter alone. This is a very scary notion if you consider how most companies only care what is said about their brand in the press alone.

Monitoring is no longer enough

Four years ago, monitoring the online conversation was more than often enough. If you were aware of what was happening, then you could run marketing/PR/branding campaigns through traditional means and have them drive the sort of impact you desired. People still trusted businesses and the press. Since the economic downturn, this has changed significantly and businesses now need to gain far more from their ORM tools if they are to survive. The measurement and subsequent management of the conversation is now critical. Off the back of this, the use of the data to maximise the business itself – so as to better meet the stakeholder’s needs – is critical. Engagement and rapid resolution is critical but so too is the use of your ORM service as a market research tool.

The world is in a state of constant flux

The last four years have been fantastic. We have seen the world slowly come to accept ORM and increasingly, businesses are actively integrating their stakeholder’s needs into business decision making. The digital world, however, is not anywhere near settled and it will take many years of constant innovation and development if we wish to continue to provide a world-leading online reputation management service.

As you may have gathered by now BrandsEye is in a constant state of development. The Online Reputation Management industry is still defining itself and we’re always looking for improvements to our service.

In the last newsletter we asked for feedback from our community of users and we have made just about every update requested - so, many thanks to you for your feedback! If there’s anything else, please send us an email on contact@brandseye.com and we will do our best to help.

The changes made include:

Language Prediction in the Rules:

You can now use language prediction in order to further automate incoming mentions. This should come in handy when only focussing on mentions of a specific language or when you want to remove languages which are outside of your interest.

This runs across 50+ languages and will significantly reduce your sorting and rating time.

Country Prediction Bug Fixed:

Many of you noted that BrandsEye was making mistakes predicting the country of origin. We have refined our code and removed this bug.

Filter Phrases by Category:

On the Phrases page, a drop down menu now allows users to filter phrases by category. This provides a quick overview of how phrases are grouped for quick editing and management.

View 1000 mentions:

Many users were getting frustrated with only being able to sort 20 mentions at a time. To solve this we have added functionality which allows 1000 mentions to be viewed at one. This is now visible on all pages displaying the raw mentions (such as unsorted, sorted, rated and all).

Larger Font Size:

The Font size on all charts has been increased to make details more visible when the reports are exported for presentations etc.

BrandsEye Firefox Extension Improvements:

We have made significant changes to the user experience regarding the Firefox extension. All changes aim to drastically improve your time spent rating. Our toolbar now has left beta status and is recommended in all accounts. Download it here.

An anti-caching parameter has been added to mention downloads, ensuring that the correct set of mentions will be displayed and not retrieved from cache (as has been a problem with many of our corporate clients).

The URL is now displayed as a tooltip in the extension when hovering over a single mention in the mentions list. This will allow users to quickly assess the URL and helps to immediately determine the mentions’ relevancy, etc.

To further speed up the rating process, the “linked” condition is set to “no” by default and “English” is listed at the top and bottom of the language drop down menu. Both changes aim to reduce the number of clicks required to rate a mention.

To increase usability the extension can be resized further to accommodate smaller screens.

We hope that the above changes address most concerns and go a long way in improving overall user experience. In order to continue improving BrandsEye we rely heavily on your feedback…so do keep that input coming!  

We have all come in contact with the maxim that “what you can’t measure you can’t manage”. It’s been at the very core of most marketing and management decisions and is slowly providing the world with an empirical view of reality. Online is notoriously measurable - there is more data online than has existed in the entire lifespan of humanity, yet it’s only useful when it’s available. In almost all cases, websites don’t make their site details public which means we, as the Social Media Measurement industry, are left with an untold monster lurking in the corner.

Over time I believe this will change. Site owners will be less interested in website traffic and more interested in conversions so we may very well see this sort of information being made public in the near future.

As mentioned, the problem comes in when trying to measure the value of something when you are denied access to the statistics (i.e. you don’t have access to usage statistics). The second great problem with online (offsite) measurement is that nobody seems to be able to agree on what to measure and how to go about it. Below, I will present four different models and explain a bit about each. All are focused on assigning a financial value to conversations online.

Ad Value Equivalent is a relatively simple concept which has only ever applied to offline. It denotes how much it would cost to purchase an advert in a newspaper or magazine of an equivalent size. This number is typically multiplied by a “trust” factor - ranging anywhere between 3 and 10. This is done in order to work out how much it is worth, given that people trust PR more than they do advertising (or so the theory goes). The rough formula is as follows: AVE Value = size of advert x number of readers x some financial value per reader. For online it’s slightly more difficult - this is not because of the math, but rather because we don’t have access to all the information required to make the calculation. We know the size of the advert (number of times the brand is mentioned) and the value per reader (Cost Per Mille average) but the reach is often difficult to measure. To solve this, we have used a combination of a wide range of variables including; Compete rank, mozRank, PageRank and a number of on-page factors to determine reach and activity. This is then recommended to the user and they can update the specific credibility of the author to further influence reach and impact.

The output is simple; a mechanism of benchmarking PR success and a metric which is already understood and accepted by the community.

AVE is all well and good but it’s really been a case of “this is the best we can do” for the traditional offline environment. Given the drastically improved measurability of the Internet, it becomes possible to compute daily conversation value based on its impact on the brands reputation. FTI published a paper in 2007 which stated that 20% of a company’s value was based on its reputation. Furthermore, the Edelman Trust Barometer 2010 states that perception is more important that the quality of product and services. It may vary wildly per brand but a percentage of the company’s value is derived from its reputation. As such, changes to reputation can be extrapolated to provide values in gains and losses for the company.

Consider the following – a brand is worth R1 billion. Its reputation is worth 20% (i.e. R200 million). A 1% change in reputation is R2 million. So, if your reputation went up by 1% in the course of the day, it provides an indication of the value of that day’s conversation. Typically, we find that brand’s reputations change by fractions of a percentage a day and only a couple of percentage a month so this model definitely shows promise.

We haven’t formally integrated this into BrandsEye as yet, although it is possible to manually do it from the daily summary emails which provide reputation analysis reports.

The last of the mechanisms, and likely the hardest, is to measure the value of a conversation based on the strength of the relationship. The problem arises when trying to find the means to measure a relationship. As a partner mentioned yesterday “I don’t go around rating my friends and family in terms of relationship and if I did, who’s to say I am right? My view of the relationship may be completely different to theirs” - a pertinent point. It was also noted last week that “it’s not about how many people listen to what you say, it’s about how many people care”. There are however, some mechanisms to determine the strength of a relationship. Looking at genuine engagement rates and determining the amount of investment which individuals have invested in a brand is a good measure of this. For example, a blog post about a brand may take 3 hours to write - that time is opportunity cost which therefore defines the value which the author attributes to the post.

Measures such as word count, conscious investment, research etc all contribute to determining the amount of time somebody is wiling to invest writing about a brand and consequently, the strength of the relationship. Incidentally, this same mechanism applies for negative mentions as a measure of “un-relationship” (or hatred, to use a real word).

Social Media Measurement isn’t going to be fully solved in the near future. That is, until websites, somehow, provide everybody with access to onsite conversions and traffic information to trace the full sales cycle. That said; offline has been “accurately” measuring the value of billboards etc for decades. It’s only now that there is an expectation for the Internet to provide measurability that we come against opposition.

This is a journey of discovery and learning for all of us and I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Having a publically accessible reputation is something just about everybody has come to terms with. In today’s highly connected online environment our friends, family, colleagues and potential clients are just a mouse click away from finding out a great deal about us – both good and bad. This has forever altered the playing field and brands are increasingly being defined by their consumers – no longer by the brand manager.

This change in brand control has opened up Pandora’s box. The entire discipline has been shaken and a new set of rules and trends are coming forward.

Trend 1 – Combating Brand Diffusion:

One of the most powerful attributes about online is that content consumers are also creators. This means that brand’s experience so called generations of PR – which typically starts with an event, moves to Social Media, goes to online press, moves to offline press and back to Social Media – and so the cycle continues.

With each generation the brand is slightly diffused - less about what the brand manager wants said and more about what the consumers believe. From an interaction perspective, I believe we will see more corporates using engagements to correct and re-align the brand between PR generations – ultimately providing brand and marketing managers with more control over their messaging.

At the end of 2008, the Edelman Trust Barometer was released which startlingly showed a 23% decrease in trust for companies (down to just 36% in the USA). Thankfully, in their midyear report they found that trust in companies is up by a whopping 12% in 6 months. In terms of online engagement, this certainly bodes well, but the trend is not without its reservations. Brands can increasingly expect to earn the trust of their stakeholders and those which successfully build relationships with their consumers will flourish from a new found trust – ultimately providing a higher success rates with communication activities.

I’m sure you know more than a couple of people who have had their Twitter and Facebook accounts banned at work and I believe the situation will get worse before it gets better. This year we will see more companies either banning Social Media sites all together or putting very stringent rules in place.

While Social Media Protocols are considered Online Reputation Management best practice, I believe companies are yet to develop their understanding of Social Media to a level where they appreciate that their staff are a useful marketing machine themselves.

Trend 4 – Transparently Transparent:

As more of a company’s confidential information finds its way online, brands are going to be forced to either spend their resources routing out and dealing with outbreaks or embracing the trend and providing more information online. This has a number of benefits (if you can stomach this very bold move). These include stakeholders taking an active role in the brand through Wisdom of the Crowds and Crowdsourcing and secondly through the growth of trust through transparency.

Trend 5 – Filling the Information Vacuum:

All too often we find that - while brands provide a great deal of information about themselves - they often talk at their target market not with them. Consequently consumers are left with a knowledge vacuum – the gap between what consumers know about a brand and what the brand says about itself.

As brands spend more time understanding their consumers’ needs, by using Online Reputation Tools, the model for PR and communication online will change to fill the vacuum and empower communicators to perpetuate the conversation more effectively.

Trend 6 – Social Media Measurement (SMM):

SMM is the current holy grail of digital. With the dramatic shift from the impression (traditional media) and engagement (digital media) paradigms, there currently exists no standard means of measuring the value of online activity and PR. That said, online marketing and PR agencies are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate the value of their activities (something which digital typically does very well) and I believe that this need will be sufficient to garner the necessary R&D for a global solution to be found – I believe 2010 will be the year we find a solution.

In 2009 the King 3 Report was released, which included a full chapter (ch. 8) on Stakeholder Reputation Management. From past experience we know that changes in the King Reports take some time to filter into big business, but as the value of reputation becomes more apparent, there will be a dramatic shift, only in part because of King 3, for corporates to be concerned with their online reputation.

Already we are seeing the most successful brands heavily investing in Reputation Management and with the added legal considerations, 2010 is bound to see corporates and individuals taking their reputations far more seriously.

With Google’s recent addition of real-time results (from Twitter) in their Search Engine Results Pages, we will see a dramatic reduction in the acceptable response latency, by consumers, should a crisis hit. Consumers increasingly expect brands to instantly engage them and failure to do so is causing brands to be tarnished. In 2010, brands which are monitoring the conversation and are nimble in their responses will gain huge favour from their community, not only as a brand which cares, but also as a brand which accepts the role which consumers play in its development.

If history is anything to go by, all major reputation crisises have been lead by a champion: Dell Hell by Jeff Jarvis, United Airlines Breaks Guitars by Dave Carroll and QVC vs. Blogger by Donn Edwards. In all cases the champion became the focus person for general unhappiness towards the brand. As we understand more of how social norms are established online, I believe that brands who are, correctly, monitoring (and engaging) the conversation online will be able to resolve many of these problems before a champion is able to come forward. That said, identifying possible champions and sincerely resolving their problems will begin to provide substantial returns when compared to the downside where brands lose millions through reputation crisises.

If you are planning to engage, there are some key considerations which you need to be aware of. Primarily, your engagements need to focus not only on the marketing and communications needs, but also on branding needs. Engagement is ultimately another touch point, one which is truly one-to-one, and adding a little something special to the conversation (be it a voucher or thought leadership) can certainly help with the perception of a brand. As brand managers, marketing managers and communications professionals get a better grip on this digital landscape, we can expect to see some very cunning brand engagements in 2010 and beyond.

Online Reputation Management is an ever-changing approach to marketing, communications and branding. Focusing on the intersection between consumers and business needs provides a way to empower strategic decision making at all levels within a business.

2010 is going to be a very exciting year as we have tremendous global media attention with the world cup coming to our shores and as the digital environment takes off even further!

May the conversation be with you!

Reputation has been human’s ally for millions of years. We use it to make a judgement on something based on a combination of our own and others experiences with that object or individual. The Wikipedia definition of reputation hints to this: “Reputation is the opinion (more technically, a social evaluation) of the public toward a person, a group of people, or an organisation. It is an important factor in many fields, such as education, business, online communities or social status.”

From a pure sociological perspective it has been theorised that the risk and reward associated with reputation gains or losses has a huge impact on our decisions made (a theory which is fast becoming a business philosophy – as I discussed in my post of the King 3 Report). Take for example the ByStander effect. Given a situation where somebody else requires emergency assistance, the ByStander effect has shown that an individual is more likely to get involved if there are fewer bystanders. The cognitive theory behind this well-documented happening, takes place on two levels; firstly, Social Proof is unconsciously applied in that participants rely on the input of others to validate their action. As such, everybody doing nothing becomes the correct thing to do. Secondly, Diffusion of Responsibility takes place where nobody feels accountable to their actions (as is the case in mob violence etc) and as a consequence nobody takes the initiative.

Reputation can also be explained as a consequence of evolution and as an output mechanism of prejudice. The theory states that prejudice, on an individual level, is necessary in order to make decisions about a group or individuals based on past experience (their reputation) – irrespective of the accuracy of the claims. This applies to all things – ranging from your choice of clothes through to your social circles.

But how does this apply to online and how does one measure it?

With the advent and astronomical growth of the Internet increasingly more information is becoming publically available. As such, a fully representative view of a brand is becoming more accessible through tools such as BrandsEye. We are finding that the Internet is empowering us consumers to research a brand and build it’s reputation from a number of interactions which others (the brand in question included) provide us with. This has resulted in a divergence between what the brand wants you to believe and the now verifiable reality – and with that widespread distrust (Edelman Trust Barometer found that trust of companies dropped by 10% to 17% in 2008).

This does however provide a great opportunity for companies and individuals to step forward and manage their reputations, with potential to reap great rewards. At BrandsEye, we believe that reputation is the widespread view of the brand itself. This is then determined by how all relevant stakeholders feel about the brand – which is itself determined by how others view the brand (see Social Proof).

We then break up stakeholders based on two factors, namely their social influence and view towards the brand in question (and competitor brands when relevant) – their sentiment towards the brand. We then take it one step further and break down their individual conversations into the volume of overall conversation, the rate at which they are passed on (momentum) and finally the origin (which determines trust).

All is driven by conversations online and along with a range of other factors, provide us with a way of recording reputation.

• Page title
• Author
• Date published
• Date picked up
• PageRank
• Alexa Rank
• Media Origin (Press/Enterprise/Consumer/Directory)
• Language
• Credibility (0 to 9; unknown to authoritative)
• Sentiment for each brand (-5 to 5, emergency to celebration, no zero)
• Number of phrase matches
• Is the mention linked to your website: Y/N

* There are a number of other variables which we record for additional clarity.