Managing your reputation online

Are you customers talking about you?

Main stream media is becoming less influential, less important, less of an effective channel to reach your audience. Social media marketing allows for more targeting; lets your campaign stay around for longer, as all media posted online can be “remembered” by search engines and anyone interested in what you are doing, where you have been and what comes next.

In talking to our clients about monitoring their social landscape, we have found that the most effective way to get “buy in” is to show them that people are already talking about their company online. After seeing that these discussions are taking place they begin to understand how important it is to be a part of the online conversation. Whether it is thanking people for positive feedback on a micro blogging site such as Twitter or responding to a customer query found on a Forum or Blog post.

We explain: Companies will have more control of these social spaces, if they join in and play their part: being helpful, approachable and most importantly honest. 9 out of 10 times companies find that they don’t have the resource and thus look to an agency like ourselves to help them.

Rocktime's role in Reputation Management

We help companies monitor their company reputation online, inline with their corporate objectives we create a social media plan, find their target markets and help them establish their social media tone of voice. As experts in social media we know that it is important to remember that these are “social” spaces and must be respected as such: people don’t want to be directly sold to in these spaces more advised or simply answered.

Along with monitoring social landscapes for clients and talking back to customers on behalf of the client, currently the Flashlight team are reviewing the advanced Reputation Management tools (now available) which provide more detailed reports to help monitor and manage the conversations. We will of course let you know which reputation management tool or tools we choose as a comment in this blog post.

What makes us happy

We are pleased that so many of our clients have embraced the opportunity to monitor conversations on their company in social spaces, under the corporate objectives:

Retaining customer loyalty
Enhancing company moral
Display continued commitment to improve

Monitoring reputations

Right now the Flashlight Team are monitoring their clients reputations in three ways these are explained below:

Search Engine Alerts

Creation of alerts on your company, service or product names by creating Alerts within Google and Yahoo. Results sent directly to email.

http://www.google.com/alerts

http://alerts.yahoo.com/

Blog Search

Review of the blogosphere, monitoring whether bloggers / online journalists are talking about the company, using blog only search engines such as:

http://blogpulse.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch

http://www.bloglines.com/

http://technorati.com/

Forum Search

Keeping tabs on Forum enteries, either by using “Show options” in Google and clicking on Forums or by using Forum and 'Answer Engine' search engines such as the below:

http://boardreader.com/

http://boardtracker.com/

Final tip on reputation management online

Reputation management practices help Companies not only get an edge on the competition, but it will also allow them to keep moving their business forward. Before moving into this practice companies need to be ready to participate in the conversation and be ready to address customer issues and recommendations head on. The Flashlight team at Rocktime can help you establish your reputation monitoring plan and be your voice within the networks, feel free to get in touch.

"Reputation Mangement online is becoming a more and mroe important tool in
order to access what we do line and how it impacts on our brand positioning"

Alex McCreath (Director of Rocktime)

Author: Sarah Griffiths