Posts Tagged ‘social reputation’

Logos Do Not Talk

28th March
2010
written by Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross

I attended a conference this week on Social Reputation (I mentioned in my last post). A social media expert from Pitney Bowes discussed how the company jumped into the social media fray. She made an interesting statement which was well-Tweeted. She said that being a B2B company made it particularly hard to get messages across and that companies needed to humanize themselves. She then said that one learning from the work they are doing is that no one wants to talk to a logo. She is sure right on that count. Companies need to be good storytellers if they want to improve their reputations, especially in the social media space. They should try not to Twitter in corporate messages but in conversational tones. In the same vein, a communications director from Microsoft said that the 4th estate is important but people also want to hear directly from companies. Possibly this is why Twitter has revolutionized corporate engagement.

On a similar topic, I ran across this article this morning in TechCrunch that says that a Yelp-like product is coming very soon that allows people to rate each other’s reputations anonymously. Just what we need. Anonymous raters telling the world about each other’s discretions and stupid moments. Will be curious to see what this is but I do not have high hopes when it comes to anonymous reputation drive-bys. I am hoping that people show some restraint.

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corporate reputation, online reputation, personal reputation, social media

Social reputation

11th February
2009
written by Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross

  Had a good start to the day. Today was our first event related to the launch of our new research on managing reputation online. Weber Shandwick’s Cambridge office hosted a breakfast panel to discuss “e-defense” or as someone said it should be called “e-offense.” I was joined on the panel by John Carroll, professor of mass communication and senior media analyst at Boston University and WBUR-FM; blogger John Cass, author of Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging; and Brian Kenny, chief marketing and communications officer at Harvard Business School.  As we discussed the state of online reputation management among executives, a whole host of interesting thoughts arose. Some were:

  • Companies need to build infrastructure to manage online reputation and online intelligence. Not everyone will have 40 to 50 people such as Dell but some companies are at least hiring a single individual to be in charge of their social reputation.
  • A generational divide exists in understanding the Web. Older generation leaders are more apt to say “Oh, that’s a Web thing. I don’t really have to worry about that.”  However, this type of attitude is risky and some older generation leaders need to get web 101 training or digital boot camp or they will be left behind.
  • Look for the opportunities as well as the risks.
  • Discussed Web 3.0 technologies that are available that use text analysis to track and monitor reputations online
  • There are several “freemium” products available to help companies manage their online reputations or at least get started (such as Google or Twitter alerts). What is freemium? According to Wikipedia, it was first defined by a venture capitalist as “Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.”
  • Discussed whether J&J reacted too quickly to the Motrin Mom episode. How do you know when criticism requires a response? At what level? One panelist thought they reacted too quickly and another said they responded appropriately.

A woman from the audience asked the last question …“What is a win today? It used to be that an article in the top tier traditional media was a win. Is it now?”  John Carroll’s answer was right on. He said…”There is no finish line anymore.”

 

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Blogroll, online reputation, online reputation management, reputation risk, social media, Weber Shandwick