|
By Cara Garretson
Managing corporate brands and identities online is a black art that combines Web technology savvy, a deep understanding of how search engines and social networking sites work, and an appreciation for the power of perception. Although this task doesn't typically fall on the CIO's shoulders, technology executives need to understand the issues at hand and the role they can play in helping to manage their company's brands.
Just as company executives charged the CIO's office looking for help in the 1990s with the emergence of domain squatting - setting up a Web site with a name similar to a certain company or brand and spreading misinformation about that company or holding the URL for ransom - upper management will no doubt look to the resident technology expert for rescue should the company's online reputation become compromised.
CIOs can help prevent this scenario by working with marketing and communications departments to optimize corporate Web sites for generating positive search-engine results, develop employee online conduct policies that dictate what can and cannot be said publically about the company, and evaluate online reputation management tools and services, experts say.
Online reputation management is more than just making sure that naked photos of the latest Hollywood starlet don't end up on someone's Facebook page. For corporations, protecting brands online is becoming an essential function as more and more consumers turn to search engines and social networking sites to gather the information that forms their opinion about a particular brand or company.
"The switch from traditional media and corporate monologues on websites to social media on the Internet makes every Internet user a journalist," says Andy Beal in his book Radically Transparent; Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online. "People will judge you, your company, and your brand. Reputation management requires new skills in this radically transparent world."
Why does a company's online reputation need to be managed, especially if the business believes it has nothing to hide? Because the top search results from Google and other engines have become trusted sources of information for most consumers, and companies can't control what other Web sites are saying about them, who's reading them, and how those comments are ranked by search engines.
"Among users who search on a daily basis, 90 percent of them trust what's on Google page one [of search results], and 70 percent of those users rarely read beyond page two," says Tripp Donnelly, CEO of RepEquity, a two-year-old online brand and reputation management service. "That gives companies a narrow window to control their brands and reputations."
RepEquity, and companies with similar offerings such as Visible Technologies, J.D. Power and Associates Web Intelligence, ReputationHawk.com, BuildIntelligence, and many others, provide programs and services that - among other things -- manage the order in which information about their clients is ranked by search engines. There is also cadre of online monitoring tools available that alert a company whenever a brand name or keyword relevant to the company is posted.
Brand management tools and services employ techniques such as search-engine optimization of keywords to help their clients bring the most pertinent information about their companies to the top of the search results, burying older, more random, or less flattering links deeper within the results.
But managing a company's reputation doesn't end with search engine techniques; there's also the issue of monitoring what is being said on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and who's saying it. There have been reports of companies having unauthorized Twitter accounts opened with names similar to the corporation or brand name; in one case a company's competitor did just that, and the tweets it sent out were less than flattering.
For the most part, sites like Twitter won't verify the authenticity of a new user account, so it's up to companies to monitor these sites themselves for unflattering comments or for the spread of confidential information, which sometimes can come from within. Beyond employing online monitoring services and tools, CIOs should make sure that the company's policies regarding online use by employees specify what kind of information can be posted about the company on a public forum. That means working closely with the marketing folks to come up with these guidelines, something many IT professionals aren't necessarily used to.
"Today, it is more essential than ever to have IT and marketing on the same page," says Ryan Deutsch, vice president of strategic services and market development with StrongMail Systems, in a blog post earlier this year. "As data becomes the currency of relevance and customers demand real-time interaction with the brands they do business with, it is even more important for marketing and IT to join together and drive efficiency for the business and value for the customer."
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
