Search, Social Media and Brands: Don’t Mess With the Brand Rep – Your Online Rep is Written on Your Superwall
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Written By Noah Mallin | July 21, 2008 | Share This
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Recently MediaPost’s Online Media Daily published a guide written by Reprise Media’s Managing Partner Peter Hershberg on how best to manage your online brand reputation, inspired by taking part in a recent Business Wire panel discussion on social media. Some brand marketers continue to think that online brand management is secondary to their overall reputation management campaigns.
I think the five points that Pete laid out in his article are central to understanding how to get involved in this ongoing conversation in a way that won’t make your brand look bad, and allows your message to come through. He also points out that ss important as it is to engage, it’s just as crucial to do so wisely and on-message. Here are his big five along with his comments on each:
Get to know the particular modes of discourse for the online communities you are interested in before you try to engage them. For example MySpace users, Facebook users and LinkedIn users have very different expectations about how people in their communities interact. Think of it as if you were walking into a cocktail party in someone else’s house, where everybody else knows each other, and started pitching people your products. If you don’t want to be viewed with suspicion (if not outright hostility) sit back, watch and listen. Find out how information is exchanged and who drives opinion in a particular social network.
2) Join the Conversation but Leave the Agenda at Home
To extend the party analogy, when you do begin to venture forth into conversations it should be natural and agenda-free. Really try to engage rather than pitch. It’s important to be honest about who you are. This builds up your trust so that when you have something important to say, you’re already part of the club.
3) Paid Search Gets You Out in Front
When a crisis breaks out for your company, the official statement you post on your website has to fight for search results space with breaking news stories and blog entries, both of which tend to get preferential treatment. In these situations, Paid search is too often overlooked as a key crisis communications tool. Paid search is easy to control and it’s fast and flexible. Paid search gives you the ability to respond and basically guarantee placement in top results immediately, providing short-term response that protects your brand and informs consumers. I used the recent tomato scare in my presentation to show how McDonald’s, despite taking proactive steps in their stores to pull tomatoes, still showed up in the headlines of negative news stories that dominated the top search results on Google. Hunt’s Ketchup responded swiftly however with a paid search ad that clearly stated the safety of their product and helped turn a crisis into a positive brand defining moment.
4) Create Value
If you want people to spread the word about your brand online text-filled press releases alone won’t cut it. Take advantage of the web. Give people things they can easily re-post: Graphs of data that supports your response, infographics, headshots, a list of links to supporting content, even a social media application, anything that will enrich the dialogue and encourage deeper engagement.
5) Integrate Your Approach Across Platforms — Be Consistent
All of this interactive communication between your brand and your customers cannot exist in a vacuum. The brand values that you espouse offline are the same ones you should be reinforcing online. Use your offline media to funnel consumers to the more personal (and measurable) online experience. Use online to help spur your consumers to be brand advocates for you offline. It all ties together.
The tomato example Pete uses is even more ironic in view of the FDA’s recent shift to jalapeños as public food enemy number one but the damage to McDonald’s has already been done. In the meantime, enterprising marketers have taken note of the new scourge and taken advantage of the speedy response time search marketing makes possible:
Topics: Advertising: Online, Google, Reprise Media, SEM: Paid Search, SEO, Search: How-To, Social Media |
Sound advice is ‘listen’… but the flipside of that coin is ‘ask’. If you want to know something and ask people, very often they will tell you!
Brandmaster — that’s a really good point. There’s never anything wrong about simply asking a question to learn a bit more. It’s also a great way to find out who has expertise and is a respected source of knowledge in a social community.