Do not think that only unscrupulous companies that deceive customers can earn a bad reputation. You may not have done anything wrong, but even then, your business reputation may be damaged due to third-party factors, such as:
- dissatisfied customers who did not like something, regardless of whether their complaint was justified;
- fired employees who want to take revenge on the company, even if the dismissal was their own fault;
- competitors ordering negative reviews and “exposing” articles.
There may also be attacks from Internet trolls, who sometimes spread negativity about people, companies and phenomena solely for fun. Even an awkward video from a corporate event, unsuccessfully posted on the Internet, or a seemingly harmless post on a social network can undermine a business reputation. In addition, it is important to understand: a dissatisfied client or employee is much more likely to write a review about a company than a satisfied one - this is a feature of human thinking. To avoid problems arising from stupid misunderstandings or the machinations of attackers, you need to take time to protect your reputation. And the most important thing here is well-structured communications.
How to protect your reputation on the Internet
When dealing with negativity, it is important to understand that the future business reputation of the company depends on your reaction. Both the negative review and the reaction to it will be visible not only to you, but also to potential clients who come across the discussion on the Internet. Successful protection of reputation on the Internet is based on the following rules:
- You need to react quickly to negativity. An untimely response will look not only suspicious, but also stupid and will only turn customers away from you more;
- You need to talk to people spreading negative information calmly and politely, even if they are rude or use obscene language. Too emotional responses will quickly provoke an escalation of the conflict and will only worsen the situation;
- you should answer truthfully. If a person talks about a situation that actually occurred, or points out a real shortcoming in the company’s work, you should not pretend that this did not happen. A much better way out would be to admit the mistake and promise to sort it out soon.
A serious problem that companies face when protecting their business reputation on the Internet is the diversity of communications. If the business is small, it is almost impossible to track all mentions of the company on the Internet and respond to them in a timely manner on your own. Of course, large companies can afford this, but for those who do not have such an opportunity, professionals offer business name protection services. Online reputation protection specialists work according to the following principles:
- help track information related to the company’s activities;
- expose slanderers, custom reviews and online trolls;
- help resolve real conflict situations;
- promote up-to-date information about the company and attract satisfied customers.
With their help, protecting your business reputation on the Internet becomes much easier.
What not to do
Some companies, when faced with negativity, instead of trying to solve the problem, begin to isolate themselves from it, pretending that negative reviews do not exist, or explaining all conflicts solely as black PR. This behavior is detrimental to business reputation: users, seeing that the company disavows any negativity, begin to consider it suspicious and form a negative opinion about it. If you are faced with negativity, under no circumstances should you do the following things:
- ignore negative reviews and not respond to them at all - the problem, if you do not pay attention to it, will not disappear;
- be rude and react aggressively - sometimes angry clients and employees can indeed behave defiantly, but you should not further undermine your business reputation with rudeness;
- delete negative reviews - this behavior will make your customers think that you are an unreliable company that does not want to be held accountable for its actions;
- make excuses - instead of promising to correct mistakes or offering compensation, you should not try to absolve yourself of responsibility and blame outside factors.
If you do not make mistakes, but begin to confidently and competently process incoming negativity, your business reputation will creep up and your profits will increase. It is enough to follow simple tips on communicating with clients and try to improve the quality of service.
Importance reputation protection It’s hard to overestimate – a crisis in social media can begin for any company. There can be many reasons for this: fired dissatisfied employees who have a lot of time and a thirst for revenge, and who write negative reviews on all sites and forums, and production errors due to which low-quality goods were supplied to the trade, and you have just launched advertising campaign - all the reasons cannot be listed.
To understand how to act in a crisis situation, and protect your reputation online, we propose to consider the situation in which the retail chain JC Penney found itself last year.
Retail chain JC Penney has come under fire from social media users after someone pointed out that new kettle company bears slight resemblance to Adolf Hitler.
Everyone understands that this is an innocent mistake and a matter of personal perception, since not everyone would see the similarities here, and God knows what crisis. However, if you don't respond appropriately to an innocent situation, a small social media commotion can turn into a major crisis, just like how a teapot went viral and spread to news sites and print media.
How did JC Penney respond to the allegations?
Their strategy was to prepare standard responses and use them to respond to ALL mentions of Teapot Hitler on Twitter and elsewhere.
The answers conveyed the idea that the similarity between the teapot and Hitler was, of course, unintentional, and if they wanted to create a teapot that looked like a character, they would have chosen something more fun, such as a snowman, the answers ended with emoticons to remove seriousness from the discussion and set the interlocutor in an optimistic mood.
This approach made it possible to apologize to every offended consumer and turn the whole situation into a joke, which, by and large, it is.
This is just one example of a correctly chosen strategy for protecting reputation in social networks. What about in more crisis situations?
Let's look at the general rules that will help you make the right decision. about protecting reputation on social networks.
So, the standard action plan for a crisis situation to protect reputation on social networks:
1. Act quickly
Despite the temptation to wait until you are sure you understand what happened and who is to blame, you need to respond quickly to a crisis. It is certainly better for your company to express its position before anyone else does.
2. Take responsibility
You must show that your company will manage the crisis, and not vice versa - the crisis will control the company. There are risks associated with both tactics - responding quickly or holding off, but still respond as quickly as possible without waiting for more information.
3. Be truthful
It is important to rely on real facts and truthful information. In the era of social media, any deception is revealed very quickly. Don't try to maintain a farce that could collapse at any moment.
4. Deal with opponents immediately
With social media, you can deal directly with any critics you have. The old style of PR suggested “laying low” until the fire of criticism subsided. In the age of social media, criticism will spread like wildfire, and the Internet gives maximum visibility to the opinions of critics, so it is much better to deal with criticism as soon as it arises.
5. Maximum coverage
To avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations of the situation by others, your company should use every means of communication at its disposal to communicate what happened and what you will do about it. This includes your website, blog, social pages, review sites, forums, and more.
6. Encourage defenders
Any successful company has defenders among its counterparties, including clients. Give your supporters an online space where they can express their views on what the company means to them and how they see the situation, and don't forget to thank them.
By encouraging positive sources of information about your company, you can ideally achieve good opinions will significantly outweigh all negative opinions even without additional effort.
7. Keep your word
At the heart of any crisis, there is a real incident that acts as a trigger. It is important that your company responds realistically to this incident and that others recognize that your company handled this situation well.
This is, of course, only the most general plan. The main thing you must remember is not to wait until the threat to your reputation becomes visible. Events in a crisis move quickly online and only through preparation can you successfully protect your company's reputation.
» — reputation management in search engines (Search Engine Reputation Management), ousting negative or untrue reviews about a brand, company, information, news, or public figure, political party from search engine requests.
Why online?
The image must be good everywhere. But if a seedy newspaper with a circulation of 2 thousand copies publishes material with unpleasant information about your company, then you will probably lose 2-3 real clients. But if something similar appears in a community of the same small number of subscribers, then one potential buyer will make it available to almost the entire target audience that uses the “global web.”
Also, everything that appears offline is almost always duplicated online today. But monitoring the virtual world and responding to any attempts to denigrate you is easier and faster!
The main tasks of protecting a company's reputation on the Internet:
- formation and maintenance of a positive image;
- creating transparent relationships with partners and clients;
- preparation of the necessary information field;
- sales promotion;
- growth of economic performance indicators;
Where and from whom should you protect your reputation?
The Global Web is a living organism that can give a lot to modern business. At the same time, this is where a powerful reputational threat lurks. New reviews and custom articles are constantly appearing, which may not even correspond to the real state of affairs.
Forums, blogs, social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Instagram, news resources - all these are places where defamatory rumors, facts or personal opinions about your brand, products or services may appear at any time.
Who can negatively influence the brand image:
- direct competitors;
- real consumers of goods and services;
- your staff;
- you yourself - releasing defects or offering low-quality services - giving news sites or clients a reason to talk badly about you.
SERM as the best tool for protection
Today, the functions of protecting a company’s reputation are successfully handled by an online tool such as SERM. Only by competently managing your image can you not only form a favorable opinion about your company, but also reliably protect its name from various attacks.
To avoid losing face, you need to:
- constantly monitor information;
- systematize any negative, distinguishing real consumer dissatisfaction from ordered black PR;
- respond to real problems in a timely manner, deal with slander from competitors;
- displace negativity from the TOP of search results;
- build up positivity about the brand and promote it.
Sometimes they work for years to create the right image, but you can lose it very quickly. And this will immediately affect the number of clients, their attitude towards you, economic indicators activities! To avoid potential problems, it is better to entrust the functions of creating and protecting your reputation to professionals.
SERM services: image development, elimination of negativity
Removing negativity or SERM (or reputation management) is already a fairly popular and in-demand service. The concept has existed for quite a long time; every reputable company closely monitored its reputation.
The concept of reputation management includes monitoring and analysis of mentions of the brand, communications with the target audience, response to reviews and comments.
Key actions in working with online reputation include:
1. Dominance in search engines.
What will the user see when entering the company brand name in search engine? Will this be the company’s website, links to official pages on the social network? Or pages with presentations and company portfolios. Or search results will not contain information about the desired brand at all and the potential client will simply leave with nothing. The user's further actions depend on the search results.
To be visible in the market, it is very important to provide the audience with comprehensive information about the brand.
2. Search and analysis of mentions in search engines.
You can monitor mentions the old-fashioned way manually, entering each query one by one and studying the results. But if a brand has been on the market for a long time, then you will have to spend a lot of time to view all the results. You may also miss comments on social media or forums.
More productive way- use a special service to search for references. Today there are a considerable number of them. They differ in quality of work, depth of monitoring, and tariffs. Therefore, it would be justified to outsource this service.
3. Creation and implementation of a PR strategy
To complement the existing information picture of the brand, it is important to develop a PR strategy for proper positioning and interaction with the audience.
Constant activity on social networks, publications of expert articles in popular sources, and descriptions of new products on the official pages of the brand will increase the loyalty of the target audience. All this will help you maintain a connection with your audience.
4. Working with negativity.
The source of negative mentions can be either a dissatisfied customer or an envious competitor; each of such reviews poses a threat to the brand’s reputation. But a competent reaction from a brand representative can neutralize the negativity. Promptness in reacting to negativity is another important factor. By reassuring the author of the comment, a brand representative can not only neutralize the negativity, but also confirm his expertise in the eyes of the audience.
5. Working with reviews.
Customer reviews serve as direct evidence of the audience's attention to the brand. And positive reviews are an excellent support for the company’s image. If such reviews are found during monitoring, you can place them on the company’s website page; they will only play in favor of the reputation. Reviews from real customers play great value when making purchasing decisions of subsequent potential customers
Social networks, thematic blogs, information resources, forums, etc. help in forming a positive business image.
Regular activity on these platforms will help keep your audience's attention. Creating a reputation as an expert through interactions with these platforms will only help strengthen the brand image.
7. Brand advocates.
The best brand advocates are satisfied customers. If there are any, you simply need to encourage them for reviews and comments regarding the brand. Giving a discount, a bonus, an invitation to a private event - all this will only increase the status of the brand in the eyes of customers.
Creating a reputation management strategy
Yeella specialists have been working with the reputation of companies in various areas for many years. During this time, it became obvious that the reputation of each brand does not depend on the quality of its product, service or professional staff.
First of all, reputation depends on the attention that brand representatives pay to it. Only a company whose image is regularly developed by competent specialists can develop in a profitable direction.
Work on reputation management begins with the selection of a responsible specialist.
A true reputation management specialist is already 50% of the success of the planned tasks.
An expert in Pr and SERM creates a work strategy, approving it with the customer.
In order for the strategy to optimally suit the needs of the company, it is important to initially conduct in-depth monitoring of mentions about the company on the Internet. You can simply enter the brand name into the search engine, or you can use professional services to monitor mentions (at Yeella, specialists combine both options).
Based on the information obtained as a result of monitoring and taking into account the goals that the customer expects to achieve, a set of measures to manage brand reputation is formed.
SERM comes into play, a set of actions through which the brand’s reputation is systematically improved and is under stable protection.
Work with reputation can progress in several directions:
- Saturation of online fields with positive information. Optimally suitable for young companies with little or no information about their brand on the Internet.
- Neutralization of existing negativity and work to prevent negativity in the future for companies that have been on the market for a long time and want to protect themselves from black PR.
- Comprehensive reputation management - active dissemination of positive information, work with opinion leaders; regular monitoring of existing information about the company and prompt response to comments on the network.
To work in each of the areas, a content plan is formed - a list of publications and materials that will be systematically published on trust platforms. Such materials include:
- press releases,
- review articles,
- information materials,
- positive reviews/comments
In the process of publishing the above-described materials, sites with negative information are gradually shifting to those search pages that users simply do not visit. Therefore, the negative will go unnoticed by your potential clients within a few months.
How Yeella experts work with online reputation:
- Regularly monitor mentions of the brand/company
- Neutralize negativity in search engines
- Create and develop a positive brand image online
- Publish articles, reviews, and positive feedback
- Control communication on social networks
- Promptly respond to new mentions of the brand
- They are always “on the alert” when it comes to dealing with reputation.
Would you like to start improving your company's reputation now? Just fill out the application form and Yeella specialists will contact you.
A study by a consulting company found that 92 percent of Internet users read reviews left by other people, and 89 percent said reviews influence their purchasing decisions. Good reviews can help the company, while bad ones, whether true or not, can have a devastating impact. And this is just one reason why you should pay attention to everything that is said about the company online.
Reviews can appear anywhere - on specialized websites, blogs, social networks. Each of them may contain a mention of the company itself or its product and detailed information about it (not always objective) Your managers can learn a lot from this data. In addition, when collecting information, check it for accuracy. And of course you need to see the big picture of what can be reflected on or outside of it.
There are special services that can help you with this - for example Trackur, MarkMonitor and RepTrak.
Trackur.“Social media is free market research. They allow you to keep your finger on the pulse of what customers, businesses, and competitors are talking about,” says Andy Beal, CEO of Trackur, an online reputation monitoring tool. Beal is also one of the authors of the book Total Transparency, which is devoted to the principles of managing the reputation of companies and individuals on the Internet.
There are many reasons to monitor social media, says Beal. “Reputation monitoring costs incomparably less compared to the benefits it brings, from crisis management to competitor research to improve product quality.”
Trackur allows the user to select keywords to be used for monitoring and upload them to the service's convenient web interface. Trackur will be, social networks and blogs. Trackur allows users to add their own RSS feeds to sites that cannot be monitored automatically.
All these sites will search for reviews about the company or any of the words specified by the user. Typically these words include the name of the company, product or service, and their misspellings to account for all variations. The program also determines the tone of the statement, based on certain emotional words or punctuation marks, allowing you to determine whether this review is positive, neutral or negative.
From the web interface, the user can, by clicking a special button, automatically respond to a review or opinion, send an entry by email, or make a note with a comment on a review or article.
Companies using Trakur pay a monthly subscription fee. The basic package costs $27 per month and allows you to monitor 5 keywords; only one profile is available, but several people can use it. Next comes a package for $97 per month with 50 keywords and a premium package for $197 per month with 250 keywords. The Unlimited package costs $447 per month and has no word or profile limits.
MarkMonitor. When it comes to protecting a company's reputation, few things can damage it more than counterfeit products. In addition to lost profits, poor quality or non-functional condition of counterfeit products can become a serious problem for a company.
“People identify with your brand based on what you make,” says Richard Widup, Jr., CPP, senior director of corporate safety who is responsible for brand protection at Purdue Pharma LP, an online pharmaceutical company.
Purdue Pharma frequently encounters counterfeit drugs sold online under their brand name. The company uses MarkMonitor, a proprietary digital brand protection service that scans websites for mentions of company names that may be associated with counterfeit drugs. As soon as a counterfeit or its advertising is detected, legal measures are immediately taken jointly by Purdue Pharma and the Federal Drug Trafficking Commission, as well as other relevant agencies, such as blocking and restrictions on sites until the violations are completely eliminated.
“The success of our work is obvious, we have blocked more than 7,000 similar sites,” says Widup. Moreover, Purdue Pharma shares information directly with government regulators and law enforcement agencies.
The fight against counterfeits can be especially difficult due to the fact that their manufacturers have extensive experience in marketing their goods. They use digital marketing channels, search engine advertising, and social media. In general, counterfeit producers use the best of the strategies of legitimate companies, says Smith.
RepTrak. The Reputation Institute looks at reputation management from a broader angle than the services described above. He works with large businesses to build and manage reputations using a patented technology called RepTrak.
“If we are talking about quantitative indicators of reputation, then everything is simple,” says Kasper Nielsen, managing partner of the institute. First of all, it is necessary to identify those who support the company. "IN modern world“As we know, a company cannot be successful without its loyal fans,” he says. Moreover, their circle may differ depending on the company, usually its employees, clients, authorities, investors or the media.
After identifying this group of people, the company creates focus groups and conducts a series of surveys to collect information to build the RepTrak model. Four basic questions are typically asked: Do you trust the company and to what extent? Do you feel admiration and pride for the company? Do you have any positive impressions of the company? What do you think the company's reputation is like overall?
Once all the information is collected, the Reputation Institute assigns a company a specific score, which allows its management to judge how the company's reputation correlates with a variety of criteria. “Based on these four questions, we can tell how positive a company's reputation is on a scale of zero to 100, and because we've done research among various stakeholder groups, we can find out what the company's opinion is among, for example, its industry peers, market leaders etc.” says Nielsen.
The Reputation Institute also identifies seven types of reputation that a company needs to work on to achieve universal recognition. “If you succeed in all seven cases, you will find yourself in a situation where everyone who knows about you will want to support you.” These seven types of reputation include: products or services, innovation, working conditions, leadership, social responsibility (which according to the institute means “a desire to benefit people, philanthropy, environmental concern”), leadership and financial strength.
“So when we're dealing with low reputation, the first thing we want to do is understand how people rate each of these seven factors and which they think is most important,” says Nielsen. This way we can give the most correct answer to the question in which areas we need to make efforts to improve the company’s reputation.
On average, in the States, people pay the most attention to products and services (19 percent), management, innovation and social responsibility (14 percent each) and working conditions, leadership, financial stability (13 percent each).
Nielsen emphasizes the importance of building trust among key stakeholders when we're talking about about the company's reputation. For everyone associated with the company, for those who support it, it is important to believe that the company’s words will not diverge from its deeds. Trust is the basis of reputation. If you think about the companies you trust, love and respect, you might want to become a customer of those companies too.
By general rule, a post posted on a social network is not the subject of judicial protection in disputes about the protection of business reputation, since it represents a subjective judgment of a person (approved by the Presidium of the RF Armed Forces on March 16, 2016; hereinafter referred to as the Review of March 16, 2016). But there are exceptions to this rule.
However, the court of first instance rejected the claim (decision of the Arbitration Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan dated November 30, 2015 in case No. A07-12906/2015). The higher courts left this act unchanged (,). The publication of information on a social network, according to the judges, cannot be considered defamatory of business reputation, since it represents judgments and subjective opinions expressed by the defendant.
Not agreeing with this position, company "R" turned to Supreme Court Russian Federation with a complaint in which she asked to cancel the acts adopted by the lower courts ().
The court recalled that a legal entity has the right to demand a refutation of information discrediting its business reputation if the person who disseminated such information does not prove that it is true (,).
In this case, the circumstances that are relevant when considering such cases are:
- the fact that the defendant disseminated information about the plaintiff;
- the defamatory nature of this information;
- discrepancy with their reality (clause 7 of the Resolution of the Plenum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of February 24, 2005 No. 3 "").
If at least one of these circumstances is absent, the claim cannot be satisfied.
The RF Armed Forces also emphasized that the dissemination of information discrediting business reputation legal entities, including the dissemination of information on the Internet.
S. did not deny the fact that the disputed information was disseminated. But at the same time, she believed that this information was not defamatory, since it was an expression of her subjective opinion. The lower courts agreed
But the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation noted that when considering cases of protection of honor, dignity and business reputation, it is necessary to distinguish between statements of fact, the correspondence of which can be verified, and value judgments, opinions and beliefs, which are not the subject of judicial protection, since they cannot be check for validity ().
The information disputed by Company "R" represents information about the organization's illegal and dishonest behavior and is formulated in the form of statements. The information presented by S. does not indicate that the facts described are in the nature of assumptions and that she personally assesses the plaintiff’s behavior in this way. The chosen style of presentation of information, the Court emphasized, indicates the presence of the described facts in reality (the fact of underestimation of the cost of work, the fact of setting a dumping price, the fact of incompetence of the compilers of tender documentation, facts of corruption and other illegal behavior, fraud). All these facts can be verified. Therefore, such information is not subjective.
This is confirmed by the position of the defendant himself, who insisted that his statements were true.
In addition, even if the information is presented as the subjective opinion of the author, it may be the basis for (). This is possible in the case where such information indicates the illegal nature of the subject’s behavior and is offensive in nature.
Taking this into account, the RF Supreme Court canceled the acts of the lower courts and sent the case for a new trial.