Strategy: Online Reputation Management
Strategy: Online Reputation Management
Posted on 01/26/2009, by
DMC
In our continued exploration of all things social media, we thought we would spend some time talking about how these social networking efforts can affect how you & your brand are perceived in the marketplace. This process of discovery is called ORM. ORM is the acronym for Online Reputation Management. ORM is basically monitoring the conversations about your company and prevailing perception online and either notifying you or responding in your stead. Your online reputation is a strange beast. As much as we would like to own our brand, the market owns our brand. If you don’t know what is being said about your brand and responding accordingly you have no control of how you are perceived. ORM is a developing service which has barely been sneezed into existence in the past few years with the critical mass social media & blogging has gained. The problem with social media is that now every who wants to has an avenue to publish what they think, and rarely are they credible experts.
Your online reputation is a double edged sword. It can make or break your business. For example let’s examine the Delta Airlines is Evil Blog. Now this hasn’t been updated in about a year but for the sake of example this is a perfect case of how Delta has failed to manage their online reputation. The author of this blog has a big problem with Delta Airlines and proceeded to share his problem with the world. Delta should have been all over that blog apologizing, and making this author’s life better. Had Delta reached out to the author and given him some free tickets or an apology, etc. The last post on this blog would be a letter saying how great Delta is and anyone who came across it would look more favorably on Delta.
ORM is a service provided by some PR/marketing firms and also a few specialists, although it is just beginning to grow in availability. An ORM service will monitor Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, FriendFeed, Blogs, Ning, Digg, YouTube, Blinkx, etc. And see where people are talking about you, what they are saying, and recommend a proper avenue for response.
Elevation offers an ORM Service for companies as part of an on-going campaign or branding exercise. When you’re a small company a few minutes on Addictomatic or Google Blog Search looking up your company name can suffice but as you become more well known in the marketplace it can take hours a day to monitor your online rep. Plan accordingly.
