The Challenge of Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Management has become the hot term emerging in digital marketing circles. But, like the overused terms Social Media and Crowdsourcing, few marketers know exactly how to use it to their (or their clients') advantage. Thankfully, marketing and media relations technology developers are trying to meet the need by developing tools to monitor companies' online reputations and to help in creating/reinforcing/recovering those reputations.

For example, PRNewswire (which I remember when faxed press releases were their primary mode of delivery--but I'm aging myself) offers a tool called Social Media Metrics that measures mentions in millions of blogs, forums, online news sites and publicly available areas of what I like to call "The Big 3"--Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. In addition to monitoring mentions, re-mentions and potential "followership" (my term, not theirs), the tool tries to code mentions as positive, neutral or negative, which is no easy feat for a piece of technology. Certainly, they may be playing catch-up with dedicated Social Media monitoring tool start-ups such as Radian6, but I have to give them credit for their willingness to evolve. And you can bet there are many more tools from competitors getting ready for launch.

The problem with any of these tools is that you need skilled people who can read and understand the data and craft well-thought-out strategies to build your business through this ever-evolving medium. In other words, the company intern who spends 10 hours a day on FaceBook and has been blogging since the age of 12 may feel the most comfortable in the medium but will not have the business acumen to develop and carry out a long-term, in-depth strategy.

In addition to staffing, several difficulties arise in many companies when trying to monitor and guide brands' online reputations:

1. There is no standard measurement tool for social media measurement or online reputation measurement. It is like the early days of the Internet trying to measure visitors, hits and actions, and there are still to this day discrepancies between ComScore, Nielsen and Quantcast. Now try to measure "Engagement" and "Pass-along Value," and we are all really at a loss.

2. Many companies cannot decide where the responsibility for Online Reputation Management (note that I am trying avoid using yet another acronym to join the ranks of CRM, SEO, SEM, SMM, etc.) should reside. Marketing makes sense with its connection to brand management, which in some companies is a subset of product development. ORM (sorry, I gave in) also crosses into public/media relations, in that the revered publications and defined news channels of yesterday have morphed into the Wild West of anonymous blogs, video chats and powerful social media leaders.

3. That leads me to the final difficulty: there are no rules in the creation of social media. The strength is that anyone, anywhere with a computer (or cell phone) can post. This gives a voice to the masses. Authors can remain anonymous, and there is no fact-checking (heck, they may not even be any facts). Some companies have had great success in finding one-on-one (or one-on-many) conversations with clients and attracting new clients through positive "word-of-mouse." Others have failed miserably in engaging enraged individuals in public debates and trying to control what employees can and can't post online.

So, where does this leave us? The Internet is starting to feel like one world-wide high school cafeteria. There are the popular kids (Apple), the friends of the popular kids (everyone trying to partner with Apple), the unpopular kids (BP right now, but new targets arrive hourly), the nerds (new tech start-ups), the cheerleaders (keep passing on the good news!) and of course, the bullies (be careful about engaging them online; they live for a good argument in Comments sections).

However, the worst option--in business as in high school--is not even showing up. Sure, some days in high school, we wanted to pull up the covers and stay in bed. But we would have missed out on some of the best years of our lives: making new friends, challenging others' ideas about who we are, creating our own identity, and discovering new ways to cope.

If you aren't out there in the Social Media world, everyone else is, and a void is easily filled by the good, the bad, the ugly...and the competition. It takes courage to be brave and try new things, but the opportunities are great. Any company can even the playing field and overtake the competition by planning well and acting quickly. The challenge is in translating your marketing strategies to the online world, building a meaningful relationship with your target audience, and finding a compelling way to measure results.