Posts Tagged ‘online reputation management’

   Our research on online reputation management found that leaders worry a lot about what current and former employees might reveal online about their organizations. Not sure they thought about employees who are offered a job but have not exactly started. One such employee at Cisco may have lost his job in a matter of 140 characters. This poor fellow twittered about having received a job offer from Cisco and deciding between a “fatty paycheck” and commuting to a job he’d hate.  It is unclear if Cisco rescinded the job but we do know that Cisco contacted him pretty quickly and soon afterwards he set his Twitter account to private.  There is now a CiscoFatty.com site to keep this Internet tale alive. As an article on this nefarious event said, this fellow violated the cardinal rule of the Internet which is to never write anything that you wouldn’t want your mom or boss to see. Reputations have been ruined by less than 140 characters.

 

My favorite line in the article was this: “The Internet is not your BFF.”

  Regards from Tokyo. I am speaking  later today at the National Press Center on our research on online reputation management that we conducted in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit. Last night we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Weber Shandwick Tokyo  office at the magnificent National Museum of Modern Art.  

 

Our CEO Harris Diamond noted something in  his congratulations speech about understanding the economic crisis that we are all living through.  I thought it  was worth repeating on my blog. He said:  “We can take some comfort from a Japanese poet’s words of wisdom: ‘Since my house burned down / I now have a better view / of the rising moon.”’” The quote is thoughtful reminder that out of crisis rises opportunity. My fellow colleague Tomo said it was haiku. A good one at that.

 

[Note: Mizuta Masahide was a samurai in the Zeze domain of Ohmi Province. Masahide initially studied haiku first under Shohaku but later became a disciple of the famous poet Basho. In 1688 Masahide's house was burnt down, prompting him to write his most famous haiku Barn's burnt down... This haiku is said to have been highly praised by Basho.]

Blizzard of cities. After I last wrote in Barcelona, traveled to Munich, the Hauge/Amsterdam, Brussels and Geneva. Finally back in New York. Barely had time to blog so catching up with my travels now. Each meeting raised different items about online reputation management: How do you manage when you are getting 2, 500 Tweets per day? Should CEOs blog? What do you do when a bad bad bad blogger posting is among the top five hits on Google? How do you manage online reputation management when senior management does not see the ROI?  Why are senior executives less worried about their professional reputations than their corporate reputations? Should CEOs Twitter? How do you convince your senior management that online reputation management is important to follow? What’s ahead three years from now?  Financial institutions have legal restrictions that prevent them from disclosing too much information, what choices are there? Interestingly, no one questioned the value of reputation online or offline. I guess they would not have attended our discussions if they did. But no one mentioned that their CEOs were disbelievers. What became clear is that there are no set in stone rules of engagement when it comes to online reputation management. Just like crises overall, the best prevention is preparation. 

 

In each meeting, I asked people how many people had sent an email to someone by mistake. Nearly everyone raised their hand. Confirms our finding that 87% of senior executives have sent an email to the wrong person or received one not intended for themselves. I also asked how many had social media profiles in sites such as Facebook. The majority raised their hands. Twitter was the dividing line where there were some haves and have-nots. 

 

Few things worth mentioning now that I am back in New York. Fortune came out with its World’s Most Admired Companies survey. They have consolidated the two versions – America’s Most Admired and World’s Most Admired -- into one World’s Most Admired.  Senior editor Geoff Colvin’s article quoted me saying that "The leader still makes or breaks a company's reputation - we should never forget that."

 

Caught up on some reading about managing in a recession by managment guru and writer Jim Collins. He mentions a few important factors that keep some companies great and some….not so great or ungreat (not a word I know). Here are a few interesting thoughts to keep in mind as companies pursue the most admired mantle in these mean times:

 

• The more challenged you are, the more you have to have your values.
• If’s there’s a storm on the mountain, more important than the plan are the people you have with you.
• Turbulence is your friend.

When I came through Immigration last night (early this morning European time), the guy checking my passport said to me, "hey lady, tell your boss you need a rest." I'm taking a nap.

My good friend and colleague Brendan May heads up our corporate responsibility practice (www.planet2050.com) at Weber Shandwick. He just wrote an article  for Climate Change Corp on why sustainability seems to be surviving the downturn, and even prospering. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to mention here.

 

 

Corporate responsibility is a fundamental element of corporate reputation-building. Reputations may seem to be under water right now but they are in the process of rebuilding the world over from the ground floor up. Don't overlook all the reputation-enhancing activities going on under the radar. Online and offline reputation building never ceases and corporate responsibility has become so integral that it has become like the air we breathe. I was glad that he reminded me that Twitter will play a powerful role in online reputation management (#4) and keeping sustainability honest.

 

As Brendan says: "For those of us who earn our living from sustainability, it’s very risky to assume we are unaffected by the global economic turmoil that graces the front pages and news bulletins on a daily basis. The crisis has implications for the prosperity of the environmental cause, as it does for every product, service or movement. But I would argue that the doomsayers and sceptics who argued that green business would be an early casualty of the credit crunch appear to have been proved wrong." Five reasons from Brendan on why:

1. Yes, they will…There’s little doubt that the political change sweeping the United States partly explains continued corporate attention to issues like climate change. At barely six weeks old, the new administration will take some time to provide a clear sense of what it will and won’t be able to achieve in combating the relentless rise in emissions. There will be many debates and trade-offs ahead. But the ‘chatter’ around the Obama phenomenon is, for now, sufficient for the business community to assume that the old rules will no longer apply, and that scrutiny of their environmental performance will increase rapidly in a way that was inconceivable under the previous regime. 2. Greener is cheaper…There is of course an ironic benefit to the sustainability movement from the current economic caution. Times of austerity and last year’s commodity price volatility have turned many people firmly off the fossil fuel based economy. Combined with the economic stimulus plans being crafted, many of which place the search for new clean technologies at their heart, it is unlikely that people will look back on this global recession as a bad thing for the sustainability movement. 3. Meanwhile, back in Arkansas…Another reason lies in a place called Bentonville, Arkansas, home of course to Walmart’s global HQ. Three years ago, Lee Scott turned the course of that company’s direction. He said all the right things, attracted the right cautious support from NGOs, and certainly secured the attention of the world’s media. Even sceptics conceded that it was a good start, but rightly pointed out the proof of the pudding would be in the eating.  Steadily, Walmart has begun to implement its strategy. The most significant recent development is that all suppliers to Walmart are now being required to step up to the plate on sustainability – rightly so as Walmart cannot possibly reduce and eventually neutralise its environmental footprint without its suppliers doing the same. 4. Tweet tweet…Another reason companies are not abandoning environmental priorities is that they simply cannot afford to take their eye off the ball.  One thing that won’t disappear in a recession is hard-hitting NGO campaigns. Especially now they have the cheap option of social media at their hourly disposal. Indeed, an effective NGO strike on a business is likely to have a far greater impact in a downturn, when there is such intense competition between companies for market share. 5. After the storm…Lastly, the smart company will already be thinking about how it looks when gradually life returns to normal. How wasteful it would be to have to start all over again. Therefore no matter how difficult things look and feel in these long winter months, the smart thing to do is to prepare the recovery strategy, with sustainability at its heart.

When the world returns to financial health, which it surely will, there will be two types of company left: those fit for purpose and those fit for nothing. The fit for purpose company will be an environmental leader, ready to embrace a new world order.

 

   

First stop London. Started the day at our London office talking about online reputation management at a breakfast meeting with clients and colleagues. The question came up about whether CEOs should be blogging.  Someone mentioned that one company does not let its top execs blog while another welcomes the practice. My sense is that it is fine to let senior executives blog as long as guidelines exist and policies are clearly outlined and articulated. I bet  that less than 25% of employees even know that their company has employee guidelines for social media.  As for CEOs blogging, I think it depends on the company’s culture, whether the CEO has anything to say and whether employees think his or her time would be better spent with customers and employees face-to-face. It is a 50-50 proposition since it works for some companies and can be an irritant to others. 

One of our findings in Risky Business: Reputations Online was that the vast majority of executives (87%) have sent or received at least one email that they should not have. My colleague mentioned an incident that happened in London last week. Apparently one company sent its board meeting minutes to the entire workforce. Not a good thing.  Will find out more.

While on the train now to my next market, Paris, I read Lucy Kellaway’s article about recent reader emails that are drifting back to more formal punctuation and grammar. No longer is she opening a message with “Hey there” or “Rgds.”  Today her unsolicited emails begin with “Dear Ms. Kellaway”  and close with “Sincerely.”  I agree with Ms. Kellaway that the recession has sobered up a lot of people: “When people are losing their jobs, correct dress and usage of words seem like a good insurance policy.” People are clearly more conscious of their personal reputation and understand that every impression counts, online and offline.

Will continue to write about my impressions as I travel the continent.

 

   

According to 99% of executives surveyed in our new research on online reputation, the leading source for company information, regardless of region, is the corporate Web site.  Whether executives are searching for information on competitors, vendors, suppliers or partners, company Web sites are the uber-source for informing them about a company’s standing and worthiness.  Executives also believe that having a well-designed Web site is a sure-fire way to keep reputations intact. Despite the pressure to move on to Web 3.0 , it is important to remember that influential decision-makers are checking out your web site to judge your company’s products/services, reputation and overall trustworthiness. My Weber Shandwick colleague Liz calls it digital ground zero and that has always stuck in my mind as the perfect description of what the corporate site is to top executives.

    Why do you think that business leaders worldwide do not search online to see what is being said about their CEOs and bosses? Only 16% in our global study Risky Business: Reputations Online on online reputation say they made such a search in a 30 day period. Do they think they already know everything they need to know about their bosses or do they think their bosses are squeaky clean? I have to admit that I have searched on technorati for my bosses just to see if something critical or surprising showed up.  Business execs are much more interested in their own reputations apparently. Compared to the 16% searching for their bosses' reputation, a much larger 38% are checking out what is being said about their OWN reputations. Leaders cannot manage reputation -- company or professional -- if they are in the dark.

According to the New York Times, potential candidates for Senator Hillary Clinton’s Senate soon to be vacated seat have to fill out extensive background forms for Governor Paterson. All the typical requests appear on the form such as tax returns, spousal business, educational background, arrests, hiring of illegal immigrants, investments (with Madoff, hope not), etc.  But apparently now candidates need to provide urls for their children’s Facebook or MySpace pages. Perhaps the news about VP candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy caused politicians to be more careful in their vetting process.  No one likes surprises. I doubt that McCain’s campaign dug into Bristol’s boyfriend’s Facebook entries at the time. That is now the past but the future clearly indicates that family social media networks will increasingly become an important element of a candidate’s reputational baggage.  I imagine for some of these candidates, they have never been on their kids’ social media sites.  Who wants their parents as friends?

We can soon expect that candidates for high-level business slots will have to provide information on their children’s social network pages as well.  After all, a company officer’s reputation impacts the reputation of the company and his or her family can cause some collateral damage. Why wouldn’t a board ask a CEO-to-be to provide that information as part of the background check on whether they have the right stuff or not.  [Actually board members should be asked to do the same.] Headhunters may already been doing this background checking as a matter of course but fairly soon, it will be SOP (standard operating procedure) at Fortune 500 companies. Poor kids.  They will all need online reputation managers and coaches soon.

A recent article found that a huge 50% of British businesses do not check how their brands are doing online. The research by web hosting company  1 &1 was not encouraging for online reputation management. Nearly half of the 400+ companies surveyed  also reported having no capabilities to manage their online reputation.  The article wisely pointed out that these findings are even more remarkable when compared to the diligence that consumers take in using the Internet to guide their purchase decision-making. Nearly two-thirds of online buyers check  out and research brand and  company reputations before buying something. Contrast this with these British companies are surprisingly lackadaisical about their reputations online.

The 1 & 1 survey also found that nearly one out of every two UK businesses never monitored the web for customer complaints, comments or reviews about them.  When it comes to social networks and blogs, these businesses were even less adept with less than one-third using these sources to check out their reputations online.  As the article says and it seems to be the case is true, “The data would suggest that British firms are undervaluing the impact that online reputation can have on revenues.”