It’s been said that perception is everything. And with the growth of the internet, the position of your online reputation and how you handle online reputation management is likely one of the single most important things you do as a company or individual. What good is a incredible advertising campaign if the organic search engine results and social media chatter about your company is skewing negative?
Online reputation management is a vital part to any public relations or branding campaign. You must stay on top of what the customers (and the haters) are saying about you in order to own your own reputation. And a Google Alert isn’t enough. While there are a ton of software solutions out there offering to show you what is being said, none of them are comprehensive enough to cover every piece of information online, and none of them replace the value in human interpretation of reputation and position.
Our reputation management and analysis services allow you to know the complete truth and helps guide you on how to deal with any negative postings. We have services that include:
Social media management is one of our expertise. Unlike some firms that offer a series of profile set ups and a wordpress blog to appease someone’s love of the buzzword rather than a strategy that ties into real business principles, our team approaches social media as it ties to a plan. Most of the time, clients need social media to help with supporting: a current marketing initiative, reputation management, public relations plan extension (80% of writers find their stories online folks,) increased search engine rankings (social media gives Google and Yahoo! more relevant "food" to play with,) or increased market penetration. We’ve also become experts at FDA and SEC compliance in social media. And we can get you out of trouble if you’ve already messed up.
We break social media into four steps:
1. Listening – you have to listen before you talk. Your mom taught you this, as does every business-book-of-the-week. So that’s what we are going to do first. But, we won’t do it for too long. Lurking is NOT okay for long periods of time.
2. Set Up – getting you tools, profiles, RSS feeds, and everything else you need to create a publishing hub so your communication has wings
3."Direct Communications" social media management – community manager type activities to help PUSH your message to the audience (internal blogs, podcasts, whitepapers, etc.)
4. "Responsive" social media – simply put, monitoring and responding to other communications happening in your industry/arena using real people, real fans, and those with real following already
While all of the activities are laden with technology, the newest widgets, gadgets, sites, and mindless tools, they require two things for success: a dedication for ongoing participation in a thoughtful and honest way, and a team that will be the conduit between your company or other stakeholders and the social media world (because really, who has time for all of that content creation AND the ability to know whether today Plurk or Plink....?) Most importantly, we tie these activities into a set of real goals and realities, not just set you up a bunch of social network profiles and a stupid youTube video and say "ok, all done."
Contact us today to see how social media ties into traditional efforts.