Online Reputation Management Trends for 2010

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!