-1.svg "Close Icon (3)-1")
.svg "Close Icon (3)")
- Share
-
Your company may not have a Facebook page or a blog or Twitter account. But it does have a reputation. And whether or not you’re ready for it, your company’s reputation can be made and ruined online. If you need proof, just look at the online fury faced by 2GB’s corporate sponsors following Alan Jones’ inflammatory comments recently. The bottom line is that online reputation and risk management simply cannot be ignored.
The rise of social media means that news, both good and bad, travels faster and further than it ever has before. So even if you’re not ready to jump into the ocean that is social media, you do need to have the basics in place to manage your online reputation.
The first step is to Google your company (and key spokespeople). More than 60 per cent of buying decisions begin with a Google search – this is the first point of contact most people will have with your brand so controlling their impression is vital. Review the first five pages of results for any negative content and if it exists, address it.
Secondly, register you company’s name as well as the names of key spokespeople on the major social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. This is an important step even if you don’t plan to be active across these channels. It can help prevent imposters from hijacking your brand’s name and ensures that if you ever do dive in to these channels the names will be there for you to use.
While you’re at it, register variations and parodies of your brand name and spokespeople as well. For example (BlueChip, BlueChipComm, BlueChipCommunication, BlueChipCommunications).
Finally, set up social media monitoring alerts. You probably do it in some form for traditional media and there’s no reason not to keep track of what’s said about you online. Socialmention.com is one free tool that allows you to set up alerts for brand mentions in social media (similar to Google Alerts). Keywords to monitor will be your company name, common misspellings, key spokespeople, key industry topics and your main competitors.
Online reputation management is not all about risk management. It is also about opportunities – opportunities to correct misinformation about your brand, opportunities to learn from your target audience and opportunities to directly engage with your current and future customers.
Stay tuned to the BlueChip Blogspace in the coming weeks for more on online reputation and risk management.
For a copy of the BlueChip Communication Online Reputation Risk Checklist, email us at social@bluechipcommunication.com.au.
