Improve your Company's Reputation Online

The reputation of your business is your responsibility.

As we've discussed before, your conversational index is reputation-driven, the experience you have of a business drives their reputation.

The good news is that you can have some help online, for example by hosting a positive and proactive conversation with your customers on a company blog.

While you're fixing your business process so your delivery matches or exceeds your customers' expectations you may want to consider addressing any concerns and criticism in a public forum, online.

Why online? Everyone is online. Online is easy to spot, track and measure. It boggles my mind why more companies are not listening and acting.

While many of your customers may not participate (see Forrester's ladder), you can be sure that the results of your actions will become a permanent digital record for when they will search for services like yours. You want to make those impressions good.

Whether you use blogs, community boards, or are proactive in listening and responding, there are several reasons why you'd want to act:

• The role of traditional media is not to talk about how you are improving, that is yours. Plus, what usually happens is that media may cover your flaws, but in that space you are left on the defensive without an opportunity to design the conversation around what you are doing about fixing the problems. Remember also that public relations means relations with the public, not just the media.

For example, when involved in a crisis, consider implementing a dark site where you have the chance to update the community affected as well as the public at large. How about making that site two-way? The more information you share, the less scrutiny you face - when you can, be open; when you can't, be honest.

• It gives your most vocal critics ways to channel that passion in a space you either host or join. If they did not care, they would not bother talking about you in the first place. It gives you the opportunity to address similar concerns that customers or prospects on the fence have but have not been vocal about. They are watching and keeping score, you can be sure of that.

For example, I know that some of the toughest critics of Comcast are now starting to think differently about the cable giant. That is on the strength of repeated and visible action by one person on Twitter - Frank Eliason, a customer service rep with a team at his service, and yours.

• As you are responding, you may find plenty of solid advice. When you are in a position to shift the conversation to positive, you can then receive permission to create a proactive forum for ideas. Dell has IdeaStorm. Note how they put in place a mechanism to allow the community to vote for the best ideas and a system to show you where an idea is along the process - for example, "in review."

In the end, the most important measure for reputation is trust. We discussed the recent Harris Interactive Annual Survey of US Companies at MarketingProfs DailyFix.

In some cases, the reputation of your business and your personal reputation may be one and the same. Have you looked yourself up? Aside from generating a more positive online footprint as SEO experts would recommend, what should you do to address the negative entries?

There is a crop of older and new companies that can help you keep an eye on your reputation - LexisNexis, Naymz, MyPublicInfo, Techrigy, and more. This is not advice, mind you, they are options available to you. I recommend a broader view of reputation, which is that of what others are saying about you and your business and putting your best foot forward pro-actively.

If you are seeking help in understanding and learning more about your corporate reputation, as well as assistance in measuring and managing it, you might consider also talking to the Reputation Institute. [cowgirl hat tip to Richard Binhammer]

Comments

[Andrew Wilson]

Valeria,

Very good points. I wrote just a few weeks ago (http://justanothercustomer.com/everybody-is-talking-who-is-listening/66/) about how surprising it is that more companies are not paying attention in the digital space - check out the photo ;).

[BJ Cook]

This a good start for companies trying to figure out, "Where do I begin with all of these options for managing my reputation? And what tools should I be using?" The simplest place to start is your own blog for any small to medium-sized business looking for an easy infrastructure for just posting updates, new releases and service announcements.
In the field of listening, I just covered this 2 days ago with a post on Infusing Love Into Your Community - http://blog.suggestionbox.com/2008/06/27/love-your-community-and-theyll-love-you-back/

Dell is being proactive and that's a good model for other companies looking to build trust today with their customers. And one of the core reasons I'd like to think we're building a great "active listening platform" over at SuggestionBox.

Seems to be a trend of "listening" posts this week and if you're a company, listen to Valeria and figure out where to start with her great list above.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Andrew - that photo looks so familiar! Now that you point it out, I remember seeing it a few weeks ago. Low hanging fruit, but then again, marketing and PR groups inside organizations are usually small, underfunded and overwhelmed with a thousand little things that matter none to customers, but a lot inside the walls.

@BJ - I like that! Love your community should be a mantra. Wait, for most corporation, like your customers might be enough. I write all my posts on weekends, when I have time to think, so usually there is a pattern from week to week. Listening + learning = good business. Thank you for the support.

[RichardatDELL]

Hi Valeria

great post as always. Worth remembering what Michael Dell said in the interview with Shel Israel: "You'd have to ask our customers. We don't own our reputation we just own our actions. That's something our customers give to us in return for us exceeding their expectations. For me, the question is has it improved our business performance?"

Meaning that whatever you find online or offline in terms of reputation, what are you doing to move ahead at the business level with that input

Link is here: http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/02/michael-dell-ph.html

[Anthony Johndrow]

Great comments Valeria (and thanks for the mention, Richard). So much of Reputation Management at its essence is about knowing what matters to your stakeholders. Online, you give them the opportunity to tell you what they care about, and you get the opportunity to show that you're listening (which, as mentioned, is probably the most important part). Companies like Dell are starting to see the power of this approach (we call active stakeholder engagement "Reputing") and are working to figure out the equivalent engagement methods offline. That takes a bit more prep, but the same principles apply.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@RichardatDELL - glad you reminded me of that interview, as I have the right visual for tomorrow's post from Sunday. Bottom line, it is about action.

@Anthony - active engagement is a sound idea. I was explaining social media dynamics to someone a couple of months ago. It's very much akin to going back to talking with each other, listening, participating in our lives. All of those things we had moved away from. Offline I call these true conversations - verbals and non verbals quite apparent.