Thus, the goals of this article are:
A) To show that such a direction, in principle, happens and exists quite successfully.
B) Describe how it works.
Introduction
In simple terms, the main goal in reputation management is to hide all the negative away, and promote the positive so that it can be seen by a user who is interested in a particular company, product or person.
In order to immediately cut off the possible negativity and hate in relation to this article, there will be no talk of custom reviews. Here I will describe in general terms the principle of operation of each of the tools. Some of them are used in other areas, some only in reputation management on the Internet.
Before reading, please note that this material is only a story about how reputation management works in general terms. If you go deeper into the specifics, then the material threatens to become too impressive.
What does reputation management consist of?
So, if we talk about the most basic tools in the framework of reputation management, then it would be better to structure them in two directions, such as customer support and the formation of a visible area.
Two main areas are responsible for customer support:
- Monitoring of mentions on the Internet.
- Reacting to mentions.
Here, from the name of the tools, you can easily determine what they are responsible for. Monitoring is carried out, as a rule, through YouScan and Brand Analytics. The main goal is to find mentions of a company that require response or attention. It may be negative, which should be answered from an official representative, a problem with a product or service / order, information about which must be transferred to customer support. In addition, there may be a common comment or advice on the company's work and service improvement, which is also worth taking into account.
With response, the situation is about the same simple. You take a download from the monitoring system and see what needs to be answered. You can answer both on behalf of the official representative and on behalf of the client, but this is already a somewhat dirty work, which can also be performed within the framework of reputation management.
Formation of the info field
In this case, the scope of work and the number of tools is greater than that of the customer support service. If in the first case the work is mainly aimed at working with the existing ones, then when forming the information field the goal is somewhat different. The target of influence will be a potential customer who is already familiar with your company / product, as well as with competitors, and now he wants to choose whom to contact.
It is worth taking into account that in addition to regular advertising and PR, there are many non-standard methods, one of which we are talking about.
SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management)
Many who are not very detailed in this topic call the full range of reputation management "Serm", although this is not so. SERM is responsible only for the formation of search results, or rather, for the promotion of positive resources in the visible area, thereby displacing negative ones. The work is carried out on a brand request and reputation (brand / product + reviews). This is done, most often, by increasing the behavioral and social factors for these very resources. In addition, there are a number of details for promotion, but I will not go into them.
In general, within the SERM, you need to understand that we are talking about reputation queries, which can be “company + reviews”, “company”, “product + review”, “person's name”, etc. It sounds quite simple, but quite often, when they want to order reputation management, they indicate the desired request like "polyurethane foam reviews".
SMRM (Social Media Reputation Management)
As the name suggests, this tool is responsible for social media reputation management.
This can be attributed to the classic SMM, which works in conjunction with the ORM and the objections of the client are processed. However, this is not all. In reputation management, there is a very common practice of creating controlled resources, which can be attributed to both SERM and SMRM. These resources include the following:
- Review sites (satellite sites), which are used to post reviews for a specific brand or category of goods. Now they are far from being as relevant as a couple of years ago, since consumer confidence can hardly be reinforced by a resource dedicated to one company alone. You can make more large-scale reviews, however, it will take a lot of time, effort, and funds to agree on all the content for it and the technical specification itself and the composition of the site.
- Articles. They are used for more detailed product or company performance reviews. As a rule, these are the same semi-advertising articles that companies write about themselves, only it will be published on behalf of a client who already has experience with the company or using the product. As a rule, 2-3 articles are posted at the beginning of work on reputation, after which they are already moving into the visible zone.
- Blogs. In fact, the same as articles, only one blog is taken and articles are posted on it with a certain frequency. Of course, it is also promoted into the visible area.
- Groups of reviews and suggestions on social networks. Here, VK is most often taken, where a similar group is registered, in which the company can receive feedback on its work, and, of course, moderate it without hindrance.
Separately, I note that groups and satellite sites are losing their relevance, but still many are engaged in their creation and maintenance.
Monitoring
In fact, the main and most important tool if a company is seriously working on its reputation. It does not matter whether it is carried out by the contractor or the company itself, which monitors the reputation, because the unloading, as a rule, is collected once a day, after which you can already see and decide what to do with all the references.
The most important thing is to set up the monitoring system well so that not a single mention, especially a negative one, could slip away without attention. It is necessary to work out all the semantics in as much detail as possible, this is especially important for companies and products with popular names.
It also very often happens when there is no company name in the review or comment. In this case, you can manually browse the small resource pool. It would be best to take the TOP 10, or only the company's social network, although, in this case, it intersects with the work of the SMM department.
Reacting to mentions
One of the most important tools that is responsible for still fresh negativity or other mentions that require attention.
It is important to understand that if we are talking about the negative, then it should be divided into constructive and far-fetched. It's one thing when a client bought your product, he got a marriage or he has some weak point and the buyer wrote about it on a social network or otzovik and put everything on the shelves. In this case, it is more than logical to react to the message if you found it through the monitoring system.
It's another matter if this is an ordinary provocative hate review, where there are no arguments and indications of shortcomings, and the text is full of obscenities and far-fetched facts. In this case, it is better either not to react, or to do it on behalf of the brand evangelist, who will step in and be able to lead the discussion (if, of course, this can be called a discussion).
How to conduct a dialogue with the author of a constructive negative?
First of all, it is important to understand that if you decide to order reputation management, then at first the contractor will run to you like a child with clarifications on how to respond to this or that negative. Just during the first month, a reaction map will be drawn up, where all the nuances of communication with a client, response options, and a possible negative response should be taken into account.
When a mention has already been found, you must immediately find out the details of what exactly the reason for such dissatisfaction is, unless, of course, this is clear from the message itself.
After that, in a maximum of two messages, translate the dialogue into private messages or by mail, so that the whole clarification of the circumstances does not take place in front of everyone. If you can do it, then everything is fine, the job is done. Then it's up to the support service.
One may ask the question: "Why all this at all, if you can just send a request to the support service?" The answer is quite simple - in this case, it is important that users, including those who left their grievances in a prominent place, see live communication that will make it clear that the company cares about their client. The support service, as a rule, answers as dry and scripted as possible, so it does not have the same effect.
Removing negative reviews
After reading this heading, you probably thought that we are talking about deleting everything and everything, but it was not there. Doing so is not worth it for at least two reasons:
1. With the wrong approach, the negative can get a lot of publicity.
2. You cannot delete everything.
Trying to remove the negative is only on trust platforms, the moderation of which can and will go into dialogue, for which, first of all, their own reputation is important. These are exactly the same trust resources that are taken as part of the placement, if you order reputation management. They are quite complex in terms of placement, even if a real customer leaves a review. As for the removal of reviews, if there are serious and objective reasons why this or that review is ordered and not from your client, the resource may well seriously consider the complaint and remove the review or negative comment.
Even such seemingly logical and official claims can result in a new wave of negativity when it comes to resources that are trash and aimed at negativity. The compromising market itself in Russia is quite well developed (if at all it is appropriate to say this very word). This is the key factor why such portals and sites will promote the story that someone wrote to them with a request to remove some other negative or compromising evidence.
It is better not to touch such resources, but to shift them lower, where the minimum number of users will see it.
How to build a company's reputation at the start?
Consider an approach to image formation for a company that is just entering the market.
Of course, this direction is most relevant for brands that mainly work on the Internet, or their sales depend on discussion on social networks and word of mouth.
So, let's say that there is a company "X", which has just adjusted and tuned business processes and starts its activities. It is important for her that the client, when choosing between her and more famous competitors, chose her. It is not so important whether you decided to order reputation management or do it yourself, it only depends on the capabilities, both organizational and financial. How to tell about yourself in terms of reputation?
First of all, you need to know that if a company is engaged, say, in the production of refrigerators, then it is basically impossible to generate an issue based on commercial requests, such as “buy a refrigerator”. Our goal is brand and reputation queries, ie “brand name” and “brand name + reviews”.
We form the issue
The formation of results is necessary in order to give more information to a potential and already warm client who knows about you and decides which company to turn to - competitors or you.
This information can be given in several ways:
- Posting articles about the company, product, all aspects and competitive advantages. These can be articles from the company itself or from third parties. For example, if we are talking about a new restaurant, then it makes sense to invite a well-known critic or blogger who, due to his experience and competencies, will reveal all the details that are interesting to the client. However, it is important to understand that in this case the company has practically no control over what exactly will be written in the material. It is clear that you can just "add", but when you read such articles or reviews, you can immediately see what's what.
Themselves these articles should be promoted in the visible issue area.
At first it will be easy, but over time, when there is more content, this task will gradually become more difficult.
- Keeping a company blog in which articles will be published on a regular basis. It would seem, what's the difference? The fact is that the blog is maintained by the company itself and posts there regularly. The articles, which were discussed in the last section, are published on third-party resources, like the same Habr, Pikabu, VC, LJ and so on, depending on the business area. And these articles are already taking their place in the information field. The blog is constantly updated.
- Reviews. No, no, and again no, this is not about posting reviews through left-hand accounts or other means. When the company's reputation is still clean, the best solution is to stimulate real reviews. This can be done through completely different methods, from mailings to flyers and discounts for leaving reviews. Yesterday, for example, they just put a flyer with a QR code in the bag at the pharmacy, after going through which they asked me to leave a review.
- As one of the foundations that everyone already has, is to create groups dedicated to customer feedback and feedback. Most often, we are talking about VK, since it is there that the functionality is conducive to discussion, and the appeals themselves are convenient both to write and respond to them.
We control the information field
It is still easier here, at least if the situation is not neglected. In this case, the most important and basic thing is monitoring. It will help not only within the framework of reputation management, but also to understand the activity of the company's users on the Internet, where they talk about you most of all, which channels of attracting an audience are more successful, and where there are drawdowns.
When you know that somewhere you wrote something that spoils the overall picture, and even more so if this is a problem of a client who wants to achieve its solution, answer him and solve it. It is important to do this not like an outdated robot with simple scripts, but to conduct full-fledged communication with a person in order to solve the problem, gradually, as I wrote above, take the dialogue to the mail, to private messages, and so on.
In addition, it is highly discouraged to transfer to the support service all the time. Recently I even saw how a store selling covers for phones and laptops on one of the popular marketplaces responded to all reviews with a message like "Thank you for your feedback, your opinion is very important to us." Everything would not be so sad if there were no such responses to negative and one-star reviews. It looked, you know, not very good.
Output
With the right approach and the timely start of taking care of your image on the Internet, it is more than possible to get by with "little blood" and create such an information field that will not care even about competitors' attacks, not to mention the real organic negative. In such a situation, there will be no desire to order reputation management, at least in the form in which this direction is represented by the majority.
Now this direction is evolving, and this is connected not only with the emergence of new tools within the framework of work, but also with the awareness of the business that it is much easier from the very beginning to approach reputation and image as capital, and not as an empty sound.