Brand-Building & Reputation Management

If reputation management is a headache you’re already encountered, or if you’re one of the many businesses where your reputation could be attacked through no fault of your own, then you should prepare yourself to get busy on social media. The many social media channels are a proactive reputation management gift to anyone who would like to fend off a possible reputation attack, or fix a disaster that’s already happened.

Social media is the cost-conscious way of tweaking your brand in any direction you like: compare a cost of zero with the hefty price tag that comes with traditional media. And if you’re the type who doesn’t like to try anything until the big boys have tried it first, bear in mind that brand-giant Pepsi has decided to forgo its traditional superbowl ads on TV in favor of social network promotion online. The saving? Word is they’ve put aside $20 million to use as prizes for social media campaign, which involves competitions. Could that have been their previous budget for the superbowl ads?

Of course you can launch a paid social media campaign, which can set you back up to $10,000.00 per tweet. But I wouldn’t recommend it. This is missing the whole point of social media in my opinion, and if you do it right you could get exactly the same result without the disapproving looks (yes this kind of advertising can actually get you unfollowed on Twitter) or the hefty price tag.

Let’s have a brief look at how you might create a social media campaign

Facebook

All social media campaigns begin with opening an account and following best practices to make sure you don’t alienate your new network.I haven’t found a better or more comprehensive guide to using Facebook than Mashable’s. Highly recommended whether you’re new to Facebook or a seasoned user.

Create a Facebook Group and Fan Page for your product or service. Don’t beat people over the head about it, but share useful content and build friendly networks and your reputation will take care of itself. If you do a good enough job of this you could even find that a few of your friends are prepared to put themselves on the line to defend your reputation.

Twitter

Personally I consider Twitter the best reputation management tool of all. You can monitor what people are saying about you through the many Twitter search tools and address the comment if they’re bad. You can build fantastic friend networks, and like Facebook, if you’re a good Twitter friend, your contacts will likely do a great job of defending your honor online. Twitter conversations are often indexed, so can be searched through the engines, and not just through 3rd party Twitter tools.

Digg

If you can come up with a story or event that is so newsworthy that it hits the first page of Digg, you’re basically made. Online this is like making the front page of the NYTimes. Digg is not as much fun as it used to be though, and getting a story to hit the front page can be stressful. Personally I prefer to use Facebook and Twitter for fun and effectiveness.

What Else

There are many other social media channels that you might like to explore. Used together they can help you build a truly amazing social media campaign for brand building or reputation management.

Blogging is a new industry, and while it is already huge, it seems the surface hasn’t really been scratched yet. Learning how to use blogging to enhance business might be something you’ll want to do in order to establish your online brand. One of the latest forms of blogging is micro-blogging, as in Twitter or Plurk.

There are lots of reasons why opening an account with Twitter is a great thing to do for your business:

1. Joining Twitter is free, easy and takes only seconds (OK you’re right, that’s two reasons right there).
2. You can create a Twitter network that links you up with some really impressive people in your niche. We even have celebrities like Britney Tweeting now. You can find best selling authors like Scott Allen and towering business personalities like Guy Kawasaki.
3. Twitter is one of the best ways there is to keep abreast of trends in your niche. Communication is essential for anyone wanting to succeed in this information age, and if that information can be had in real-time on a breaking news basis, just imagine what an edge that would give you compared to your competitors who have not yet discovered Twitter. Many times we hear important news before it breaks in print and broadcast media. There have even been instances where they’ve taken queues from us–not always successfully. Jill Whalen calls it the ‘water cooler aspect,’ and that about sums it up.
4. Even if you don’t feel like it now, grab your Twitter ID (especially your name) now in case you really regret it later when you see that everyone’s using Twitter, (chances are you will).
5. Twitter is a fantastic way of getting inspiration for your blog or website, or any other project you’re working on. Users often use it for feedback, canvassing the market and a lot more. Here’s just one example of how bloggers get material for posts as well as business development ideas.
6. Have questions about business? Give them up to the Twitter universe. Chances are you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results.
7. Used correctly Twitter can be a superb reputation management tool both for getting the good word out and suppressing the bad. But that will only work if your Twitter network is already well established when you have a reputation crisis to contend with.
8. Some really interesting writers/artists are easy to link up with.
9. Itinerary coordination: Obama‘s presidential campaign made extensive use of social media channels including Twitter for announcements and coordination.
10. Twitter makes a very effective mode of communication and coordination if there’s a crisis, or heaven forbid, a disaster. But if you’re not already established on Twitter with an effective network, when a crisis erupts it’ll be too late.
11. If you choose to you can keep an eye on your market/network anonymously by signing up for Twitter in another name. You can have as many accounts as you want, and if you use an Twitter client like Twhirl, Spaz or Tweetr for Mac you can tweet in more than one profile at once.
12. You can Tweet from your PC, laptop, handheld or smartphone.
13. Twitter takes far less effort to keep up with than some other social media platforms, such as FaceBook, for example. You are in complete control of how much interaction you choose to take on.
14. All the coolest bloggers like Tech Crunch, Problogger, Copyblogger and lots more, are on Twitter. And before all my blogger-friends raise a howl of protest, I cannot list all you cool and notorious bloggers on here I want to finish some time today.
15. You can post your Twitterfeed to your blog or website to increase your network and provide enhanced interactivity for your clients/customers.
16. Join a multitude of entrepreneurs who are actively promoting their goods or services via Twitter in the form of special offers and so on.
17. There are a multitude of Twitter applications such as Twitter Grader, or Mr Tweet that will help you gauge your popularity, market reach and even shortcomings. All vital for social media marketing in any form.

Overwhelmingly, and tragically, online businesses approach the subject of reputation management entirely from the wrong angle. That is to say they don’t manage their reputation at all until disaster strikes.

Without any doubt Proactive Reputation Management is the way to go.

If you lay the groundwork your reputation is going to be a lot easier to protect. In fact, if you’re truly proactive in your approach, you should end up in a position where no one single miscreant could possibly affect the way your audience or client-base sees you. The stronger your online network, and the wider your reputation, the more difficult it would be for any entity to affect your status online.

So how do expert reputation management gurus go about protecting themselves? Most professionals talk about ‘strengthening your brand,’ but give very little concrete advice on how you should go about doing this.

Strategies like providing a great product or service are common sense, but it’s not always enough. There’s always going to be the odd person who doesn’t see your product for what it is and raises the roof because he or she feels they have been sold short.

It all starts with a rock-solid network. If you have good connections online, you will have an approachable group of supportive friends and associates who will be happy to help you out with some social media voting-up, and who may even bring along the strength of their networks too.

Creating an interactive blog or website can be a vital tool, as reputation management expert Andy Beal, owner of Trackur mentions in his interview with Martijn Ros.

When a company creates an interactive online profile, it’s effectively telling its stakeholders -customers, investors, employees, etc- that it cares about the community and wants to be a part of the conversation. When an online reputation crisis hits, companies that have an social media profile are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt and more likely to be able to respond quickly, within that channel.

I advise my clients to look for the “centres of influence.” Where are their stakeholders hanging-out online? When you understand the types of social media your stakeholders are using -maybe they prefer blogs over forums -you’ll increase your chances of successfully engaging them.

Social media channels that you may find useful for establishing a thriving social network, depending on your market and your niche, include:

FaceBook
MySpace
Twitter
Plurk
FriendFeed

Next, consider a creating a large amount of press release activity. Certainly you can do some of it yourself, but if you could be mentioned in press releases issued by other companies that’s a whole lot better. If you have been generous with mentions for members of your own network, this shouldn’t be at all difficult to arrange.

Great places to post online press releases are PRLeap and PRWebDirect.

Many social media channels also have associated tools that will help you to monitor your reputation free of charge. Take Cherpa for example. This application allows you to type in a keyword or phrase and you’ll immediately see where the buzz is across Twitter. It’s amazing. Of course it has many other uses, but reputation management is a major one. Personally, I see it as such a useful tool it’s almost worth joining Twitter just for the reputation management possibilities alone.

Another free tool to see where you’re mentioned online is Google Alerts. It has its uses but I find it quite limited, especially when you compare it with a comprehensive tracking tool.

Trackur is not free, but it’s the best reputation tracking software out there. If you have had problems in the past, or if you are expecting reputation management crises, then this would be a modest investment that could really pay off in a big way.

There is a class of social networking sites that is not so much ‘social’ as professional, and while these won’t do you much good if you have a lot of negative stuff directed at you on the Internet, they are still powerful resources for getting the word out about you positively.

LinkedIn
Xing
Ecademy
Ryze
Yorze

LinkedIn has a facility for having your professional associates leave feedback about you. While the system can be abused, it still has it’s uses and the person leaving feedback has to have a LinkedIn account and cannot comment anonymously.
To get the maximum benefit from this kind of site, you need to take a different approach to that you’re used to on FaceBook or Twitter. To get an idea of what’s acceptable and what’s not, you might find these tips for using professional networking sites over at the Washington Post quite useful.