One of the major issues at the social media panel I was a speaker of has been online reputation management. While I prefer the more proactive ways of reputation building instead of the emergency like reputation crisis management nonetheless most of the businesses not familiar with blogging and social media need basic advice on how to deal with bad press online.
So I decided to collect 8 very simple steps of emergency reputation management. These measures should help in cases where a forum or blog post shows up in the Google top 10 for your product or brand.
Most importantly before we start thinking about fending off a reputation issue we have to agree that we do not want to sweep things under the rug. Many people mistake reputation management for just that. Reputation management is about dealing with negative issues, facing not ignoring them.
- Discover negative publicity early via simple tools like Google Alerts or Technorati Watchlist.
- Reply as a representative of your company. Example: “I work at x and we have lots of clients using y with good results.” Do not make these clients up of course.
- Show that you care. Example: “We have contacted our local dealer to deal with your problems, he should call you shortly.” Contact your local retailer to just do that.
- Be matter of fact. Example: “This seems to be a serious issue you have. We will do everything to ensure your and other clients satisfaction. Please give us some time to deal with it internally.” Then be quick to deal with it.
- Offer a refund if the client is too disgruntled already.
- Offer the publisher a way to test the product or a new version of it if he hasn’t before or the last version failed.
- Link to other clients or positive cases studies, even within your reply.
- Contact the publisher directly to research and sort out the issue, do not rely solely on the published part.
While employing these simple measures always remember that you need to address the real underlying issue. Inherently flawed products or services will make others vent their frustration too so make sure you tackle larger issues not one by one but systematically even by discontinuing a product.
Also do not call your lawyers unless this is a evident case of slander. Silencing legitimate bloggers and consumer advocates will backfire manifold. You might end up with lots of negative publicity.
This Tuesday I spoke at the social media panel of SES Hamburg. While I enjoyed the great session for some people in the audience social media and blogs are not as enjoyable. The contrary seems to be the case. The last question asked at the end of the panel was the most striking. A man in a suit asked:
Can I outsource all that social media marketing crap to affiliates?
He really said “crap” and he was not really fond of the idea of having to deal with social media. While I see these websites and ways of publishing as new opportunities obviously others don’t. So let’s take a look at the outsourcing issue. We, all three of the speakers, were quick to warn of the dangers of outsourcing social media marketing to affiliates. Why?
- Affiliates do not care for your reputation, they aim at quick profits
- Affiliates often already fail in ethical SEO, in social media the standards of ethics are even higher
- Affiliates might break local laws in your name and at least in Germany you can be sued for that as well
So the idea of making affiliates your representatives on social media is inherently a bad one. The outsourcing idea by itself is not though! Indeed many people outsource their social media activities to marketing companies specialized in
- dealing with social media in a responsible manner
- creating outstanding content for social media, sometimes referred to as link bait
- offering business blogging consulting
One of my examples on the panel was in fact a blog I manage and write for in the name of a big German client, a shopping search engine. While some other shopping search engines have their blog-like news sites that even get tolerated on social media, my client’s blog really got accepted as a real genuine blog and even got linked by “real bloggers” in their blogrolls. This blog managed several times to get to the front page of the German Digg equivalent so it’s more than accepted, it’s a real blog itself by now.
So can you successfully outsource your social media marketing activities?
Yes you can! If you think it’s crap, I’ll advise you to change your mindset first though.
What are the most important benefits of serious social media engagement?
- Joining the conversation, you talk with the people instead of people just talking about you
- Reputation management and building, people get to know you and your brand, they remember you in a positive light
- Link building, if you offer value people will naturally link to you
Stop ignoring social media and blogging. If you can’t manage it yourself find a pro. You’ll find plenty of them in social media or via their own blogs.
