Consumers believe other consumers. What one consumer says about your product or service will influence the opinion of other consumers. The consumer voice will carry far greater authority and power than any message by your sales force. Consumers will believe a negative statement made by others about your brand. Especially if it is staring them in the face when they search for your brand.
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A lot of criticism was flung at Forbes’ Daniel Lyons after he characterized the blogosphere “an online lynch mob” that swarms the object of their blog-rage, whether the information is accurate or not. Lyons created his own self-fulfilling prophecy and was cyber-lynched by the same collection of pundits he had accused.
Point made, Mr. Lyons, the blogosphere can be a nasty place, especially if you’re in the business of managing a public image. The phenomenon has set off a competitive market for online reputation management-a ring in which Feedster and Biz360 were quick to throw their hats.
On Monday the two companies announced a partnership to provide marketing and communications professionals with a service that gleans intelligence from the increasing volume of blog and wiki content discussing companies, products, competitors and trends. BlogView, an expansion of Biz360′s Market360, automates sentiment ratings and surfaces topics and influencers related to the aforementioned categories.
Biz360′s Senior Manager of Market Strategy, Brian Glover, refrained from making mention of previous public image metrics providers like Intelliseek and IBM’s Public Image Monitoring Solution. But Glover says the service is unique because of a pending patent technology, with the technological aid of Feedster refreshing 18 million feeds a day, that “learns” a client’s understanding of language nuances.
“Our biggest differentiators are our Point-of-View Sentiment and Auto Discovery technologies, which allow us to deliver far deeper and relevant intelligence than other services,” said Glover.
“We’re the only company that has automated sentiment ratings toward specific companies, products and issues you’re tracking. Also, Point-of-View Sentiment is a machine-learning technology that “learns” a client’s style of rating–what’s positive to one client may be negative to another, there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to rating sentiment.”
Auto Discovery surfaces buzz phrases, influencers and brand associations related to the topic. For example, marketers can answer questions like “what’s the buzz around the latest iPod?” or “who are the influencers driving discussion of Avian Flu?”
This contextual analysis technology is fed by active blog feeds provided by Feedster for real time monitoring. The blogosphere, like a house of mirrors, makes it difficult to identify reality-a problem that Feedster president Chris Redlitz says this partnership aims to solve.
“The Blogosphere is noisy and hard to track since for every legitimate blog there are dozens more that are essentially fake. Feedster has an advanced ability to monitor everything in the blog world and provide Biz360 postings that are meaningful and actionable,” said Retlitz.
BlogView is available now as part of Market360, which supports RSS, or as a standalone service. The capabilities will also be available through LexisNexis MarketImpact and StrategyOne’s MediaMind.
Jason Lee Miller
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Reputation is what you do or what you say and what others say about you. (Institute of Public Relations, 1997)
Reputation is the opinion held of an organization – it depends on how an organization is seen to behave. It’s an intangible asset but worth a fortune. (Jefkins, 1987)
A corporate reputation is a set of attributes ascribed to a firm, inferred from the firm’s past actions. (Weigelt and Camerer, 1988)
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Wal-Mart and Starbucks aren’t rivals, and they have shared some management talent. Current Starbucks CEO Jim Donald spent five years running Wal-Mart’s food operations. But when it comes to corporate reputations, the two are opposites, the Cain and Abel of this business generation.
Why the disparity between Wal-Mart and Starbucks? The reasons illuminate the importance of managing one’s corporate reputation — and the increasing difficulty of doing that as a company expands.
Size is certainly one reason Wal-Mart has faced so much criticism. “When Wal-Mart became the biggest company, it also became a symbol of corporate evil,” says Charles Fombrun, the director of the Reputation Institute in New York. The big footprint the retailer stamps on communities where it operates and the power it wields with suppliers have kept it under fire. And rather than take on the critics, Wal-Mart, until recently at least, dismissed them as propagandists or opportunists and figured its business success would speak for itself.
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz took a far different approach as he transformed a coffee-bean company into one of the world’s most popular brands.
To Mr. Schultz, corporate reputation is a means to success, not a byproduct of it. Starbucks’ “guiding principles,” such as “providing a great work environment” and “contributing positively to our communities,” are the best advertising, Mr. Schultz believes. Called “partners” at Starbucks, employees are eligible for stock options and health benefits if they work at least 20 hours a week.
“Mr. Schultz recognized ahead of most executives that customers today vote with their dollars and will spend more money at companies with values they admire,” says Nancy Koehn, a business historian at Harvard Business School.
But as Starbucks keeps growing — it is opening five stores a day this year — it’s being targeted, too. Last month the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint alleging that Starbucks tried to block workers in three New York City stores from participating in union activities and fired one who “supported and assisted” a union. Union organizers for the International Workers of the World claim many Starbucks employees don’t work enough hours to qualify for health benefits.
Starbucks, through a spokeswoman, responds that “we do not take action or retaliate against partners who might be interested in union activities.”
Starbucks adds that there has been little union activity at Starbucks’ U.S. stores, though some employees have organized in Canada and New Zealand. And it thinks it has a good defense against critics: sticking to its principles. It aims, it says, to “stay small while growing big.”
For Jim Alling, president of Starbucks U.S., this means giving store managers and employees enough autonomy to keep them motivated — and serving customers.
“We’re not beating people over the head with a checklist of policies to follow,” he says.
He tells managers to listen to employee concerns, elicit their suggestions and mentor them so they can advance. “If we try to control everything from (headquarters) and don’t trust the judgment of our front-line people, we’ll lose our connection with customers and be too big,” he says.
CAROL HYMOWITZ
Wall Street Journal
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Reputation is a component of strategic management. It builds trust and confidence and results in increased business. Customers want to buy from you, people want to work for you and investors want to recommend you. Profitability and revenue growth are closely linked with reputation.
Within the internet bad news travels very quickly. Company and brand reputations can be destroyed instantly.
Search engine reputation management should be part of your online reputation management strategy to safeguard your business success.
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Rob Key said reputation management within search engine results is tricky, especially since the advent of the blog.
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Greg Jarboe suggested reputation management has become a brilliant opportunity for experienced search marketers when trying to identify a SEM niche.
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Search marketing should go beyond traditional search engine optimization and paid links by bolstering a firm’s reputation and customer image, according to a panel of experts. Search marketing and PR combine in the field of reputation management.
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