The online reputation monster

Managing your online reputation has, quite frankly, become a bit of a beast. With the ‘real time’ web, companies need to be reactive and proactive 24/7 and lately this has been taken to the extreme. When the social web first emerged, there used to be some form of best practice that could be followed and adhered to. Negative blog post? Leave a nice reply, get the issue sorted and nip it in the bud. Bad thread on a forum? Try and deal with the issue openly and honestly and better still, get it off the first page of Google in the hope that no-one ever finds it. That however, is no longer the case. The speed with which a crisis can emerge online means that it is near-impossible to control it. It’s no longer confined to one space and before you know it, there’ll be a group set up on Facebook and you’ll find a spoof Twitter account, happily tweeting away.

Now I’m sure the kneejerk reaction to a post like this is to say that companies should just treat their customers well and you won’t have a problem. Nice as that is, unfortunately it doesn’t work in the real world. Sure, there are examples where companies could have done better (think Amazon, Nestle etc..) but in many cases reputations are being tarnished unfairly. I know plenty of examples (both client and non) where companies have fallen victim to reputation management issues that turn out to be a disgruntled former employee, someone just having a bad day, or similiar. And we’re not just talking businesses here, individuals now too can be subject to reputation management problems. The Stephen Fry example demonstrates this, as an individual who, in my opinion, unfairly felt the wrath of online. No matter how good, clean or innocent you are, you can always be vulnerable to a tarnished reputation.

PR as customer service?

There are still of course, areas of best practice to adhere to. How you handle yourself online during a crisis, whether justified or not, is going to speak volumes. The issue for companies is how you control it and herein lies the problem. Do you prioritise those quiet customers with a genuine problem, or the ones wreaking havoc online? The lines of PR and customer service become blurred. And it’s not hard to understand why companies might focus on the loudest tweeters, the most prolific bloggers. Those who are skilled in social media, know how to get the attention of companies and create a rather large storm in a very big teacup.

Bad reputation – so what?

The organisation has a difficult decision to make. Some – invariably, decide to ignore what’s going on. Michael O’Leary deemed the blogosphere irrelevant. Certainly not the best PR move, but considering the amount of people who have heard of the Ryanair incident,  I can count on one hand, those who said they wouldn’t fly with them as a result. In this case you have to ask yourself what is the significance of these crises, when they’re not actually affecting sales? If something like your reputation can be quickly broken, it can just as easily be forgotten. Mike Arrington even went so far as to announce that reputation is dead, and that eventually we will just learn to accept indiscretions. He speaks a lot of sense.

This is a tricky one for brands to handle. Try as you might, some organisations just aren’t going to be able to answer every tweet, blog post or Facebook comment immediately. Is it then just a case of doing what you can at the time, maintain best practice and wait for it to blow over? Traditionally the downside to this would be that a bad review or blog post would be in Google for everyone to see. But this is changing and this is where the real-time benefits companies. If you find yourself in the middle of a crisis management situation, in a matter of days it could be replaced with  new content or a new discussion. Everything that’s made reputation management a moster, also makes it equally liable to run away and claim the next victim.