Why Social Business is critical to managing your brand's reputation online - #AskBG

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The “whole company” approach to online reputation management

Why Social Business is critical to managing your brand’s reputation online


#AskBG – How not to do it

160 #AskBG negative mentions a minute

11500 mentions within three hours


5 ways Social Business can help you manage your reputation online

Embed a listening culture

Adopt a multi-department strategy

Have a crisis management plan in place

Use social technology to workflow and manage customer comments

Encourage your c-level executives to speak on behalf of your the company


Embed a listening culture

!   We’ve all heard about the importance of listening via social media. But how many businesses have embedded a listening culture throughout the organisation?

!   Social Business is about more than just listening tools. It’s about activating your entire organisation to connect more meaningfully and impactfully with consumers. And the first port of call should be to give key employees (if not all employees) direct access to a live feed of customer comments through social media.

!   If you cant set this up on everyone’s PC or mobile device, how about a tweetwall on a plasma screen in your canteen? It gives your employees a finger on the pulse of what customers are actually saying about your brand and products which in turn makes them more connected to your end consumer.


Adopt a multi-department strategy

!   If British Gas had a multi-department social media strategy, then it is likely that this issue would never have arisen – they would have chosen a different day for their Twitter Q&A.

!   Successful management of social media requires more than just marketing or PR being involved.

!   You need to connect sales, customer service, product planning and development to truly leverage the benefits whilst also be well prepared to mitigate the risks.


Have a crisis management plan in place

How do you start connecting your departments? One way is by pro-actively planning for a crisis scenario by having a crisis management plan in place. This should include:

1.  A definition of different levels of social media crisis. In your industry what constitutes a high enough volume of mentions to be cause for concern?

2. Threshold alerts which alert stakeholders from multiple departments when volume or sentiment of mentions reach a certain critical point. This can be set up via your listening tool in the form of email alerts.

3. A plan for how to manage an escalation in the situation from an amber warning, which may simply require ongoing monitoring to a red alert, which requires a more proactive response.


Use social technology to workflow and manage customer comments

!   You can use a variety of tools to enable you to connect stakeholders across departments (and geographical locations) to instantaneously activate an appropriate and pre-defined response to an escalating online crisis situation.

!   Engagement tools like Spredfast have a workflow functionality which means you can delegate a task to the most appropriate person in your business to deal with a consumer question or query.

!   You can also make specific and relevant online content available via the tool to enable your nominated respondent to action the request in a simple fashion. They can even post to your social media channels via the tool.


Encourage your c-level executives to speak on behalf of your company

!   If a crisis escalates to become a ‘red alert’ you will want to have prepared your senior management team for their role in your company response.

!   It is always powerful to see a fast and ‘in-touch’ response from a senior business leader to an evolving crisis. It shows a company who is in touch with what is happening in the consumer base and is able to respond sensitively and with agility.

!   So whether it’s a video message posted on YouTube or a Tweet from their personal Twitter account, a response from your CEO will inevitably go a long way to dampening the heat from an online crisis.


5 ways BLOOM can help you manage your online reputation

Design you a tailored crisis management strategy to meet your specific needs

Identify your online influencers and advocates

Train your employees to manage a crisis on your behalf

Implement listening and engagement tools

Produce online content for pro-active crisis management


Contact Annabel Wetton for more information [email protected] 01273 666 888 @bloomworldwide www.bloomworldwide.com

Why Social Business is critical to managing your brand's reputation online - #AskBG

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