Are You Monitoring Your Reputation Online
ISSN 1649-8127
Publication Date 14 July 2008
So do you monitor your company, brand or even personal reputation online?
The area of online reputation management was the subject of an interview I did this week with a journalist (I’ll share the article with you once it’s been published).
I shared in the interview that in many of the events and workshops I lead, it’s not unusual for 100% of people to mention that they have searched online for information about a business, a person or a brand in the last 14 days.
I then ask the question of whether they are ‘ego surfing’ and checking what people will find when they search for them by name online or the company and I rarely get more than 10 – 15% saying they have monitored their brand online in the last month.
Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing for BearingPoint has recently released a report about reputation management in today’s world of Web 2.0 and social media in business to business organisations.
Here are the summary statistics:
- 60% of respondents reported their company has a strong understanding
of it’s current reputation
- 63% of respondents to the online reputation survey say their company
does not have a formal policy relating to employee blogs
- 53% of respondents to the online reputation survey agree that measuring
and monitoring their reputation is a strategic priority in 2008
- 58% of respondents reported that their company does not have a
strategic plan in place to manage their online reputation
- 54% of respondents report that they do not use a service to monitor
traditional media
- 63% of respondents report that they monitor social media using free
online tools such as Google Alerts
- 77% of respondents report that they do not use a paid for monitoring
service to track discussions on blogs, forums and message boards
- 56% of companies report that they are leveraging social networks
including Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace as a customer touch point
- 45% of respondents report that they are monitoring their reputation
on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace
- 45% of respondents agree that their organisation is adequately
prepared to manage an online reputation crisis situation.
It’s great to have these as benchmark statistics, though I don’t believe we would find the same results here in Europe – certainly that’s not my experience with the companies I speak with and work with.
The fact of the matter is that your clients are talking about you, your customers are talking about you, your employees are talking about you, the people you have just made redundant are talking about you – and they are all people who have had a personal experience of you, your company, your brands and products.
While I’d love to see more organisations seriously consider developing and implementing social media solutions to support their business strategy, the place we all have to start is by tracking and monitoring our reputation online.
Take note of what your potential brand ambassadors are saying about you – and what they are NOT saying about you.
Is it what you want to hear?
Is it what you expect?
Now what are you going to do about it?
THIS WEEK’S ‘BIZ GROWTH’ ACTION STEPS
If you were to do just one thing this week, I recommend that you establish your Google Alerts account. For details of how to get the most out of Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) read this article I wrote.
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©Krishna De, 2008. All rights reserved. Reprinted from ‘BIZ GROWTH EXPRESS’, a Oneocean Ltd publication. If you would like to receive more articles just like this and enjoy access to free Masterclasses where you will discover how to bring your brand to life through traditional and social media platforms, then subscribe today at http://www.bizgrowthnews.com
