The need that companies have to manage their internal and external reputation has been established for many years, but now it should be raised in a more effective way to introduce this function, since the point of becoming a management policy its reputation. Interest in online reputation came from the acceptance by the marks on the importance of information on the results of the various online search engines, which was increased with the content generated by users in forums, blogs and social networks, affecting search results significantly, what is motivating companies to have a positive influence on them. As I have had the opportunity to experiment with brands online reputation plans arise when it is about to face a crisis, so I tried to establish 4 steps to help prevent and resolve a crisis in the web 2.0.

1. Analyze your environment:

As an initial step, it is important to get all the information we can to establish the fundamental basis to develop our plan ORM (Online Reputation Management). We must bear in mind that we must analyze our target and its stakeholders, the communities they come as a reference, our competence and based on keywords identify the type of conversation that handles about our brand.

2. Develop a diagnosis:

After gathering all the statistics, you have to set goals that lie public, complemented by the message and use the most appropriate digital tools to communicate. Thus it serves as a starting point for all processes that execute and have a clear dimension of the actors who have a degree of influence within them.

3. Plan Digital Tool:

The larger purpose of handling a tool plan is the optimization of existing ones. This means we must make it easier to find our brand, generating credibility and promote the values ​​set forth in a public relations plan. The tasks that must be performed to achieve our objectives are: Improve the architecture of our links, making them optimal for SEO. Generate content to demonstrate the values ​​and stories that we want users to find on our brand online. Search initiate and or maintain good and lasting relationships with our stakeholders.

4. Monitoring:

In this last step we try to do a constant review of our public talks and Stakeholders gather information that will serve useful later. Ultimately I think in a very clear way that there are four aspects that we consider to be monitored: Identify the most influential users of the target within communities. Set the key topics that are of interest to power users and motivate them to share with their network. A set of objectives and KPIs that help us to constantly measure compliance plan ORM.

5. ORM reputation

Following a bit the thread of the previous post and the importance of online reputation, I would like today to share with you some hints and tips to create a crisis management plan of reputation, a document that we should consider in our communication plans (PECI) and marketing, as the effectiveness of its strategy may depend on the resilience, contingency, prevention and management not only possible crisis, but proper planning branding. We know that the majority of SMEs and even companies with a certain organization, lack of it, but it’s time to get to it, it is an obligation as much as they can be in style manual, code of conduct or the Privacy Policy. So let’s step by step.

6. Prevention

Let’s say we have our clear brand message, vision, mission and philosophy, therefore, know what image, what footprint, we want to make our potential customers, end users and customers, not just before and during the purchase, but a posteriori, i.e. not only to attract but to retain, which often forget that “social” makes it necessary to consider if you do not want to lose customers and even worse, having to fidelity with critical and dissatisfied customers. Naturally, the best crisis management plan begins not by the same management, but by the strategic prevention: Discover and audit areas, sectors, issues that could be problematic, i.e., detect critical areas and pay particular attention to them in our plans communication, monitoring, marketing, communication, etc. Special monitoring to customers and users can be considered as potential threats by their attitude, because they are trolls, because their behavior indicates a tendency to free criticism, etc. Not so much to draw up a “black list” as a thorough knowledge of our users and customers, we always tend to follow care and especially the missionaries, but likewise we must pay careful attention to the most critical, not just for prevent possible crisis, but because behind a more or less constructive criticism, there is often a problem, a problem area, we must correct. Recall that one of the main functions of social media and monitoring is to improve our business, SME or enterprise with “collaboration and collective intelligence.” We must always display a dialogue attitude, not only in crisis, nothing haughty or arrogant: do not know everything and we are better than anyone, and above all, the community or the person in charge of talking and publishing, has as its basic principle for the interaction “never take anything personally” a mistake that can lead a company to a crisis of reputation for a reply, a comment unwise or inappropriate. In these cases, we must take steps rapidly to save the situation, apologize and be extremely humble and transparent. And of course, you cannot miss valuable content: one of the worst consequences of a crisis of reputation in addition to the loss of confidence and clients is that can appear in search results on the first positions with criticism and negative comments, something which certainly discourages potential customers to become customers: customers rely more on the opinion of other customers in the corporate messages. It is therefore essential that our content is of value, which is of interest and quality, and there is a periodicity in them, to make it more complicated than a bad comment, criticism, exceed in search engines. Build a house style manual accompanying editorial line and mark the guidelines in communications. In addition, we must have public documents terms of use and privacy policy, users should know and accept to participate in our social ecosystem.

7. Monitoring and identification

Logically, if we do not listen, if we do not pay attention and we monitor, we will not realize what is happening and therefore we cannot react in time. Monitoring is essential to identify a crisis. From detection ideally have a flowchart or workflow showing us how to act quickly in each case. The chart details what procedures we follow in case of crisis and is essential to avoid falling into improvisation and blocking errors. We know a lot of monitoring tools that can help us to detect a problem, as Brandwatch, Google Alerts, Hootsuite, Me on the Web, Social Mention, Icerocket, etc, but better I leave here with the 50 best developed by Social Media Today, which by the way, I recommend you go if you do not do yet.