Rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment: How to show your best side

“Once a rep­u­ta­tion is ruined, there’s nothing left to lose” is by no means a guiding principle when it comes to good rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true when it comes to the internet, with its ability to quickly spread messages: Online rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment (ORM) aims to make sure that the rep­u­ta­tion of a company, person, or product always cor­re­sponds to the desired image. To do this, you need to recognize and evaluate current as­sess­ments by others in a timely manner and, ideally, influence their own rep­u­ta­tion in the long term. The internet provides plenty of strate­gies for ORM to help you avoid a bad rep­u­ta­tion. These allow you to react ap­pro­pri­ate­ly before you get involved in a PR nightmare. We elaborate on the tech­nol­o­gy of rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment here and give tips about how you can improve your rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment strategy.

Online, every user becomes a potential critic. Whether about a product, a service, or a brand: The prob­a­bil­i­ty that somebody has an opinion and is pro­claim­ing it on the internet is pretty high. There are various pos­si­bil­i­ties online for this:

• Social media: The founding principle of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr is that users can dis­trib­ute their opinions and comments. The various social media platforms are con­sis­tent­ly the trigger for viral movements, which can also be directed against companies.

• Forums: Although classic forums don’t usually have as much range as well-known social media channels, they still have a big influence on the online rep­u­ta­tion of companies: Spe­cial­ized forums often are full of like-minded people as well as experts on a specific topic. These users have a huge influence on each other and on the target group of the company in question. One such case is Reddit: On this website, which is a mix of forums and social media, en­thu­si­as­tic fans and motivated experts meet. At the same time, the platform also has influence on the reporting of classic media.

• Eval­u­a­tion portals: Yelp, Tri­pAd­vi­sor, or Trust­pi­lot are all platforms created solely for the eval­u­a­tion of companies and their offers. On these platforms, users give out rating points (or stars) and leave com­pli­men­ta­ry or critical comments. The ratings appear promi­nent­ly in the Google search results, so they’re extremely important for rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment.

• Shopping sites: If your company sells its own products online, then you also need to keep an eye on reviews from merchants like Amazon. Comments collected there can have a big influence on sales.

• Video portals: On YouTube, Vimeo, Dai­ly­mo­tion, or other al­ter­na­tives, users can share their opinions on and ex­pe­ri­ences with brands and products. Videos enable a com­plete­ly different approach to the subject of the dis­cus­sion than a text: They freely tell of ex­pe­ri­ences – things that went wrong can be shown directly (for example, the design or functions of products). Many of these videos are staged in a humorous way – but also often have a critical, mocking tone.

• Blogs: Blogs are the place where people can ex­ten­sive­ly discuss or deal with a topic. In many cases, it’s just a dis­cus­sion of their own state of mind. But the at­ten­tions of bloggers can also focus on brands, products, and services – es­pe­cial­ly if the bloggers in question are un­sat­is­fied. Monitor the bl­o­gos­phere and step in if there’s an emergency, as a single blog post can bring in an avalanche of criticism.

• Company websites: Under certain cir­cum­stances, your own company website, for example a company blog, may invite users to give their feedback. In principle, this is good! But consider as well that quick in­ter­ven­tion for harsh or un­so­phis­ti­cat­ed criticism is also required here. Customers that search for in­for­ma­tion on your website shouldn’t be directly con­front­ed with a flood of negative reviews.

Rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment has two major work­spaces – one that is more passive, and the other active. A basic pre­req­ui­site for a good rep­u­ta­tion is the tracking of user reviews – and in as many places as possible. On which portals of which websites are users giving their opinions on your company, brand, or products? The answer to this question, as well as the interests and wishes of customers, play a big role. It’s important to find out what the target group hopes of the company.

This shows how strongly ORM as well as PR or marketing strate­gies are linked. In all three areas, it’s essential that you know your target group. While the one part of rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment has a lot to do with ob­ser­va­tion and analysis, the active part is dedicated to the con­struc­tion of rep­u­ta­tion. One way to do that, for example, could be through strong sto­ry­telling: An (emotional) brand story that can be dis­trib­uted on all channels can help build a rep­u­ta­tion or con­sol­i­date an existing one.

Both sides of rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment work rec­i­p­ro­cal­ly and cannot be clearly dis­tin­guished from one another.

Before you start to monitor your rep­u­ta­tion online, you should make sure that you’re present on the most important platforms. Two reasons speak for this approach: First, you’re only able to ef­fec­tive­ly track and react if you use the same portals as your target group. Second, to protect your brand name you need to assign accounts to your name before someone else does (the same goes for domains) You should choose account names that are as clear and simple as possible. If you appear on each platform with a different name, this confuses potential customers and decreases the recog­ni­tion value of your company or brand. What you def­i­nite­ly shouldn’t forget – and this goes for all social media marketing – is activity: A social media account is only worth­while if it’s actively tended to. A neglected account throws a bad image on your entire business and provides an easy point of attack for critics. On the other hand, channels that are con­sis­tent­ly main­tained with active community man­age­ment increase the chances that customers speak with you instead of about you. Contact with users is one of the most important pillars of social media rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. Another is finding the right amount: How many channels can you maintain well, taking into con­sid­er­a­tion the available time and resources?

The term “brand mon­i­tor­ing” refers to the ob­ser­va­tion of comments made about the brand, the products, or the company itself. With this, relevant sources are regularly checked. One side effect of this method is that you can also use it to detect trademark in­fringe­ment: If somebody uses your protected terms or images in illegal ways, good brand mon­i­tor­ing will lead you to notice right away, so that you can take legal steps. But the actual goal of brand mon­i­tor­ing (in the sense of rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment) is to gather in­for­ma­tion on how to talk about your company and its offers. On social media, forums, blogs, and online news sites: If you’re marketing, the like­li­hood that people are talking about you is rel­a­tive­ly high – and that is usually in your favor. Using brand mon­i­tor­ing, you can find out who makes what kinds of comments about your business. As part of social media op­ti­mi­sa­tion and community man­age­ment, you’re usually already on the network without it and can get a good overview of customers’ opinions that way. If you also want to set up social media mon­i­tor­ing, you can find out even more quickly when you’re mentioned on social media. Google Alerts can also be helpful: This service from Google shares with you when your defined terms (for example, your brand name) appear on the internet in a new form.

The so-called issue mon­i­tor­ing should yield essential in­for­ma­tion on how you can improve your rep­u­ta­tion as part of online rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. With this type of mon­i­tor­ing, you observe the overall mood of the target group. But smaller opinions about brands and companies also play a role with issue mon­i­tor­ing – they can il­lu­mi­nate an overall image of community opinion. For example, you can determine how your customers stand on social and en­vi­ron­men­tal issues. For this, observe mass media and in­flu­encers. A survey of your customers can also provide relevant insights. The results of the mon­i­tor­ing can be used in two different ways for your rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment: If you know what your customers really care about, then you can adjust your marketing to achieve an improved rep­u­ta­tion. But the mon­i­tor­ing needs to continue con­sis­tent­ly, because opinions and moods of customers can change. Further mon­i­tor­ing also serves to secure your rep­u­ta­tion. Con­sis­tent ob­ser­va­tion allows you to register changes in public opinion quickly enough to respond.

A large part of online rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment is working with the community. Since a rep­u­ta­tion is built by the community, it only makes sense that you must take care of the community to maintain good rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. In some cases, rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment overlaps with customer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment/complaint man­age­ment and customer support.

You can proac­tive­ly build a rep­u­ta­tion in the community through con­vinc­ing sto­ry­telling. But you also need to react ap­pro­pri­ate­ly when a customer from within the community ap­proach­es you with criticism. Develop a strategy on how to react to com­plaints that appear in a (semi)-public area such as a social media community. As many negative examples show, there are two ap­proach­es which are fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong, and some of the re­spon­si­ble companies had to learn about painfully: Ignoring or firing back. Both will almost certainly annoy the community even more.

If criticism appears on social media – for example, as a post on your Facebook page – it’s best to react as quickly as possible and with the necessary se­ri­ous­ness. Many companies (for example, Disney) use the H.E.A.R.D. system for dealing with criticism:

• Hear: Listen to the customers when you have com­plaints. Show interest in your customers and convert a bad ex­pe­ri­ence into a good one.

• Empathize: Show your critics that you can empathize with them and un­der­stand where their anger is coming from. Focus on the feelings of the customers rather than down­play­ing them.

• Apologize: Apologize – but obviously not just in general. Your apology should address the concrete point of the criticism, even if the error didn’t lie directly with you. After all, the anger is in­di­rect­ly related to you.

• Resolve: Together with the customer, find a way to solve the problem. This doesn’t have to be done pub­li­cal­ly anymore: Move the com­mu­ni­ca­tion to a private channel.

• Diagnose: Analyze the problem that caused the complaint and develop a strategy so that it doesn’t happen again.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, you can’t always do every­thing right. On the internet, everybody has an opinion: And it doesn’t matter whether it’s justified or not, as some kind of bad review will probably always show up somewhere.

In the first step, you responded to the negative comment or review, presented your view of the issue, and presented a solution or apol­o­gized if the user was angered by an error made by your company. Should the user continue to complain, in the rarest cases deleting the criticism can actually help: But normally, the internet community reacts al­ler­gi­cal­ly to cen­sor­ship by an economic company. Trying to make negative comments disappear will almost certainly result in a flood of new com­plaints. But you can ensure that good content is found in the sur­round­ing search results, and the negative reviews will be perceived less by users.

Users shouldn’t find such negative entries before they have read good reviews and positive feedback about your company. A bad review at a higher position in the Google search results is a rep­u­ta­tion­al disaster, and indicates a flawed SEO strategy. Your own website and social media channels should always be displayed in the top positions when somebody searches for your brand. Po­si­tion­ing in the search engine results also in­flu­ences your rep­u­ta­tion: The first page of the Google results serves as a re­flec­tion of public opinion. So, with skilled search engine op­ti­miza­tion, you can make sure that positive reviews from Google are ranked higher than your web pages where negative reviews are found.

There’s not one right way to obtain a good rep­u­ta­tion online and on social media. Every company is different, and no situation is just like any other. But there are some fun­da­men­tal tips that you should pay attention to for your online rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment:

• Build up your online presence: If you already have channels on the internet (website, blog, or social media), then you can build your rep­u­ta­tion using these as well as react quickly to criticism that shows up online.

• Set up mon­i­tor­ing: Listen when your target group converses. It doesn’t matter whether they’re talking about your company or dis­cussing other topics: In this way, you can gather useful in­for­ma­tion.

• React quickly: Don’t ever hope that complains about your company will just disappear on their own. React as quickly as possible before the negative mood develops its own dynamic.

• Take criticism seriously: Never give your critics online the feeling that their expressed opinions are wrong or unim­por­tant. This only fuels their (possibly even ir­ra­tional) anger.

• Don’t engage in dis­cus­sions: Don’t fall into the trap and start a dis­cus­sion. Even if you’re in the right, you will lose. Your goal is to convert negative moods as quickly as possible. A public dispute only adds fire to the un­pleas­ant situation.

• Behave per­son­al­ly: Dis­cus­sions between people is different than with a faceless or­ga­ni­za­tion. Per­son­al­ize your com­mu­ni­ca­tion so that the critic also tries to practice more un­der­stand­ing.

• Learn from your mistakes: If you are con­stant­ly being crit­i­cized for the same thing, then good rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment won’t help anymore. Instead, get in contact with your target group and explain that im­prove­ments are planned (of course, only if that’s the case), or at least explain why known issues aren’t being changed.

You won’t find any dedicated online rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment tools on the internet – the scope of work in this area is simply too wide. But there are some tools that come from other areas (for example, social media marketing) and are great for use in ORM:

• Hootsuite: The classic tool for managing many profiles on different social media platforms all at once.

• Klout: This service measures the (quan­ti­ta­tive) impact of social media users and cal­cu­lates the Klout score. This tool is therefore very helpful for iden­ti­fy­ing opinion-driven in­flu­encers.

• So­cial­Men­tion: This search engine helps you find keywords (for example, your brand name) on social media and indicates the ratio of positive to negative entries.

• Google Alerts: This service from Google notifies you by mail each time your specified search terms show up in the Google search results.

The internet is full of so-called PR fails: Cases in which the PR de­part­ment fails or falls short. Many of these sit­u­a­tions could have been resolved without any problems with good rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. But in the following examples, the or­ga­ni­za­tions handled every­thing well and reacted quickly and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

In 2010, the Census Bureau was exposed to massive ac­cu­sa­tions, but thanks to good rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment they did not lead to any long-term rep­u­ta­tion damage: The Bureau’s job is to take regular census counts and conduct surveys. To promote the work of the Bureau and increase the pop­u­la­tion’s will­ing­ness to par­tic­i­pate in surveys, a 30-second com­mer­cial was shown during the Super Bowl. The ad­ver­tis­ing spaces during this trans­mis­sion are known to be among the most expensive in the world. In this case, the cost was around 2.5 million US dollars. This led to a great outrage, as many saw the com­mer­cial to be a waste of taxpayers’ money. This negative view was supported by a tweet from Senator John McCain that reached his 1.7 million followers.

The US Census Bureau had a good mon­i­tor­ing system in place, though: The re­spon­si­ble staff members noticed the negative feedback right away and worked on a speedy response. Just a day later, a spokesman for the company was able to publish an answer on the company blog: In fact, it’s assumed that the ad­ver­tis­ing even saved money. The Bureau expected that because of the ad­ver­tis­ing clip, more US citizens would send back the ques­tion­naires and so less staff would be required to collect them. Another day later, the director himself spoke out on his own blog. The Census Bureau also activated their own social media channels to dis­trib­ute this message. This could return public opinion back in its favor.

This example is a way to see how important good mon­i­tor­ing and quick reactions are. The agency had already in­tro­duced all necessary mech­a­nisms. Digital and tra­di­tion­al media were under constant su­per­vi­sion, accounts for the important social media platforms had been created, and there were ad­di­tion­al blogs available for more detailed ex­pla­na­tions. The US Census Bureau could react using these before negative voices took over.

The brand Loft, which offers clothing for women, was subjected to great criticism in 2010 on their Facebook page. To advertise a pair of their pants, the company posted pictures of a model in the pants on the firm’s own social media channel. Shortly afterward, numerous com­plaints came in from customers about the com­men­tary function: The pants presented would only look good on tall and slim women (i.e., those with model di­men­sions). All other women wouldn’t look good in them: A complaint that many fashion brands surely get. But instead of ignoring the criticism or merely appeasing it, the company (Ann Inc. is behind the Loft brand) un­der­stood the complaint as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for good rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment.

In the following days, Loft posted photos on their company profile of their own employees wearing the pants at the center of the con­tro­ver­sy. These women had various body types and the photos weren’t pro­fes­sion­al­ly taken or edited. This quick and personal reaction reached customers so well that many of them commented favorably, even though they still didn’t find the pants to be well suited for the women’s figures. In the new comments, the users reacted pos­i­tive­ly to the fact that the company had taken their criticism seriously. Loft used rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment to turn a po­ten­tial­ly negative situation around and position itself as a company that reacts to the customers and their com­plaints hu­mor­ous­ly but ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.