Things We Have Learnt in 4 Years Of ORM

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.