Tag: reputation management

A few weeks ago, Heather Whaling shared the story of Nationwide and how they responded to what could have been a very difficult situation.

While there was still come criticism about the response possibly being less ?human? than it could have been from the various Nationwide accounts, it was still a great example of reacting quickly to douse potential flames.

It was also a great reminder that social media needn?t be scary for businesses worried about negative statements posted about them online (one of the biggest stumbling blocks for any business owner when it comes to social media).

This is especially true, given the low-cost entry to monitoring your brand and effectively responding to both criticism as well as praise. And yet companies still have a fear factor around social media ? so how can they overcome that?

Cost of Involvement versus Cost of Silence

One of the early phrases that came out of social media?s ubiquity was ?the conversation is happening whether you like it or not?.

This is probably one of the biggest reasons companies got scared to start with ? talk about a statement to put the fear of God in you!

The thing is, it should be the complete opposite ? conversations about brands have always happened. In the supermarket shopping with friends; over a beer in the local bar; chatting on the telephone; picking the kids up from school and talking with other parents.

These are the conversations brands should be afraid of, because they?re the ones they don?t get to see.

Social media, on the other hand, is so open and searchable that smart businesses can create searches based around their brand or products, and see exactly what?s being said; when it?s being said; and what the impact on the brand might be.

And it doesn?t need to break the bank, either, but can save the reputation of the brand in return, which has to worth any investment, no?

Consolidating to Keep Cost and Time Investment Down

Perhaps one of the bigger reasons that many businesses are still staying away from social media is due to the investment costs. Not just financial, but time investment too.

After all, while the tools ? for the most part ? may be free, it still costs money to set up a team (or monitor the platforms yourself). Add to that the fact you usually need to have multiple windows open to have all your networks covered, and it can become overpowering pretty quickly.

Yet it doesn?t need to be.

The rise of social media dashboards in the last couple of years have helped to consolidate several accounts into one area, which helps with the time suck factor.

Additionally, there have been great advances in the way online conversations are filtered, to ensure only the information you want is displayed, versus the blabber that may or may not be about you.

With social media dashboards, you can:

Link multiple social media accounts to keep track off.
Display full social feeds ? Twitter, Facebook, etc. ? to negate the need for separate windows for each account.
Track sentiment ? negative and positive ? about your brand so you can respond quickly (like Nationwide did).
Monitor keywords around your business, product and customer pain points to really connect with your consumers or users.
Track analytics to see where business campaigns are working and where they need more work.

Once you have all that information, you can begin to take control of your brand?s perception again, and grab the advantage needed over your competitor to stay both competitive and effective.

Throw in a social media dashboard that not only gives you all of the above, but lets you create Facebook promotions and marketing videos from within the admin area, and you couldn?t ask for anything more.

Just as well there?s a dashboard that does that, eh?

This post first appeared on the prTini blog.

image: ohmlabmusic

You’re a public relations professional or agency. How are you monitoring your brand and those of your clients?

You are actually monitoring, right?

I ask on the back of an interesting story regarding Michigan-based PR firm Tanner Friedman and their current lawsuit regarding a fake Twitter account.

Back in January this year, an account was set up on Twitter that used the name @TannerFriedman. For anyone seeing the tweets from the account, you might expect them to be the latest company or client news from the PR firm.

Not so.

The account had nothing to do with Tanner Friedman. Instead, it was set up by someone who then went on to post a defamatory tweet as the account’s introduction to Twitter, and then subsequently posted negative tweets about the firm.

To keep things interesting, though, the account also took tweets from the Twitter accounts of actual Tanner Friedman employees to make it look more authentic.

Jump forward to March 27, when Tanner Friedman complained to Twitter about the fake account.

That’s more than two months later.

Despite the fake Twitter account posting about the company. Despite the fact that the tweets are said to be damaging and embarrassing to Tanner Friedman. Despite the company being active on Twitter through its employees.

So why so long? Weren’t Tanner Friedman monitoring their own brand as well as that of their clients?

There are numerous tools available to track what’s being said about you. Some are free, like Social Mention, Google Alerts, Filtrbox, BackType and, of course, Twitter.

There are also premium solutions available as well, like Radian6, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Cision Social Media and Trackur to name just a few.

So it’s not as if the tools aren’t there.

Indeed, Tanner Friedman’s own blurb describes them as, “…an innovative and imaginative communication resource…” with a “…commitment to new technologies…”.

So what happened?

I sent an email to Tanner Friedman to ask their views on the current situation. Kudos to Don Tanner, who was pretty prompt at getting back to me. Here’s what Don had to say about the time lapse:

“We dealt with the problem once we became aware that there was a problem. The problematic tweets did not occur immediately. Once they did and we became aware of them, we acted immediately.”

With regards not having the Tanner Friedman account registered to the company to start with:

“We each had our own Twitter pages along with our own Facebook and Tanner Friedman Facebook pages. Further, as with most professional service firms, we tend to put our clients first. Further (and maybe it is a Midwest thing), Twitter has only emerged here in the past few months.”

It’s never pleasant to be at the centre of negativity when you’re looking after a PR client. It’s even less so when the negativity is about you. Yet one thing you can’t do is let it run.

While it’s clear that Tanner Friedman acted once aware of the account, there still seems to be a time lapse between the first tweet and the complaint, considering more tweets were sent throughout February and March.This is where the obvious problem lies.

Two hours can be a long time when it comes to bad news spreading on social media; two months is a lifetime in comparison.

What this lawsuit shows is the need to be proactive at every turn when it comes to hearing the conversations that are taking place as well as securing your brand early on. Otherwise, you might just find that someone’s been proactive for you.

Of course, Twitter needs to take responsibility as well. Account authorization has to be stepped up (which they are currently looking at) and their customer service currently leaves a lot to be desired. If they really want to take the service to the next level, they need to actually offer a service that looks after its users.

How about you? Do you know what’s being said about you online? How do you monitor the conversations and what advice do you give your clients and employees?

photo credit: Dude Crush