Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
By leelefever on March 25, 2004 - 2:45pm.
How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
Online discussion forums—commonly referred to as consumer generated media (CGM)—are increasingly being used by consumers to ratify or criticize products and brands. Because consumers use these online discussion forums to check out other consumers’ opinions and experiences—for pre- or post-shopping advice—they are shaping the perspectives of millions of consumers globally.
Good perspectives, and the author provides good advice for companies to be aware of the power of these online discussions in shaping the market. But what about reacting to them? What can a company do to preserve an online reputation?
What is missing is the value of being *involved* in the online discussions. Being aware is only part of the picture- the real issue is being able influence the online discussions and provide resources that enable the company to have a real voice that shapes opinions.
Companies who are concerned about their online reputation need to look for ways to participate in the discussions with a personal and honest voice.
Involvement may mean creating an online community of customers or starting a weblog. Only by being a part of the discussion can a company truly stick up for itself when it's being trashed online.
You can't respond to a weblogger with a press release.
Link Via: Reach Customers Online's RSS Feed
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
Excellent Post, Lee! As Usual. I emphatically agree. It is time for companies to start talking where their customers are starting the conversation. It is easy to do via blogs with sites like feedster, waypath, technorati and daypop indexing and making searchable the blogosphere, but how do you find who is talking about you in a discussion board?
There must be thousands of forums that are not indexed that have active, but isolated communities.
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
Good point about the isolated message boards Peter- and something to which I don't have an immediate answer. However, there are folks like Steve at KDA research who are working on that in a form of Virtual Ethnography.
I would think that if a company is successful in being part of a losely linked community of blogs and other resources, their posts would end up in the isolated forums, posted by members seeking to add to the discussion on behalf of the company.
Of course, this sword cuts both ways. If a company tries to address an issue and fails, the company will be derided in the community, causing further problems.
The key is having a way to get the message out there using new tools and forms of communication that make it easy for news to spread into the isolted communities through members.
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
i definitely get your point about creating an active community of bloggers that will cause the conversation to spill over into discussion boards.
and kda research offers an interesting service.
however, i think the latent need is to search these "dark matter" areas and/or be alerted when the conversation is appropriate to my company.
the chatter between email, IM and chat will obviously never be indexed nor searchable, but there is no reason why discussion boards can't be indexed and searched.
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
Ahh, I see what you're saying. Since using Feedster, I'm becoming more interested in how RSS feeds can be used to alert us of what is being said everywhere.
Eventually, I think most message boards will be RSS enabled, some already are. Perhaps RSS enabled message boards will allow someone to be notified as new things are posted via something like Feedster?
That is assuming, of course, that they are public boards.
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
aha! rss enabled discussion boards!
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
Can we just use an ordinary forum to maintain consumer community? i think a weblog is a kind of journaling utility and not for interactive discussoin, sorry if i was wrong , i'm very new in this kind of topic
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
I think there are quite a few differences between a weblog and a discussion board in terms of creating a community and the community's characteristics.
I believe that discussion boards aren't very welcoming to outsiders. The 2 forums I participate in, are very inwardly focussed. It is similar to a group of friends in an American High School. A forum is like the cool kid's table at lunch. There is a history, standard methods of communicating, slang, intimate knowledge and opinions of others that develop in a forum.
The people in a forum write for each other. The posts are often terse, short and without a lot of context.
A weblog is more welcoming. It is written for someone that may just happen to be strolling by. So, it is written for an unknown audience. Weblog posts are usually more formal, well thought out and structured to make a point.
In forums, threads die and are usually deleted or archived after a period of inactivity. lso, as I mentioned above, forums are usually isolated from the rest of the web: closed off islands. The information is not stored in infinitum either, like in weblogs...
Weblogs have permalinks and they link to outside weblogs, sties, etc. They weave a web of conversations across the web, which serves to unite disparate islands like bridges.
In the world of marketing, I see weblogs as a customer acquisition tool, whereas forums are a customer retention tool.
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
I really like this point Pete:
"In the world of marketing, I see weblogs as a customer acquisition tool, whereas forums are a customer retention tool."
Very true. I had also planned to add that I think weblogs talk "to" customers and discussion forums talk "with" customers.
Also I think it's important to note that it isn't just a matter of adding a discussion forum (or weblog for that matter). Like any tool, it is how you use it that matters.
Online communities don't develop because of tools, they develop when people use the tools to effectively serve an existing need.
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
Good Point, Lee:
"I had also planned to add that I think weblogs talk "to" customers and discussion forums talk "with" customers."
I think that a discussion forum are both excellent tools for building and maintaining a community.
But, as you said, they are just tools. You need the right people doing the right things in order to build the community.
Marketing Profs: How to Manage Your Corporate Reputation Online
I really wish that comments could be edited.
I meant to say:
I think that a discussion forum and a weblog are both excellent tools for building and maintaining a community.
Post new comment