BedTimes magazine June 2010

The rise of social media has
created what some experts call the
“people paparazzi”—the multitudes
that stand by ready to broadcast a
company’s every slip-up.
“Online reputation management
is critical and growing in importance.
The fact is, there is so much
incivility out there and anyone with
a computer and an opinion can go
online and malign you,” says Leslie
Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist
at public relations firm Weber
Shandwick, headquartered in New
York.
Among the potential troublemakers
are angry consumers, disgruntled
employees and malicious competitors,
not to mention “squatters” and
impersonators who can hijack your
brands or company name online.
What is a company to do?
First, don’t think you can escape
by avoiding the online world, reputation
experts told BedTimes. That
won’t stop others from talking about
you, boycotting your products or
launching defamation campaigns.
“Many companies worry about
engaging, but all they need is one
crisis to realize they have not built a
community of online advocates and
evangelists who will come to their
defense,” Gaines-Ross says.
The business-to-business aspect
of online reputation management is
growing steadily, too.
“Mattress manufacturers will
want to keep an eye out for unhappy
retailers or other business
partners,” says Andy Beal, a reputation
management consultant and
author based in Raleigh, N.C. “For
instance, if someone at a big chain
is saying your product quality has
gone downhill in the past five years,
they may have lots of influence over
consumers and other retailers. You’ll
want to be able to reach out quickly
and address that.”
“Another thing companies need
to realize is how online reputation
relates to traditional media,” Gaines-
Ross says. “Social and traditional
media go hand in hand. Something
that bubbles up online can easily
show up in traditional media. It’s
where many journalists are getting
18 | BedTimes | June 2010
their stories today. That type of
news can impact all of your business’
stakeholders.”
Plug in
“It is imperative that all companies
monitor their online reputations,”
Gaines-Ross says. “Create your own
baseline audit—or have it done by
an outside agency or consultant. At
the most basic level, create alerts in
the major search engines with your
name and brands, mattress industry
keywords and your competitors’
names—because anything that hap-
7 traits of the ideal
‘community manager’
1. Diplomatic
2. Lives and breathes the brand
and the industry
3. Online extrovert and people
person
4. Excellent written communication
skills
5. Customer-service oriented
6. Creative—able to proactively
manage reputation by building
unique content that makes
points about the company and
its products, services
7. Easygoing and egoless
pens to the competition can easily
spill over to you.”
You can set up alerts at search
engines that specifically crawl social
media, such as Whos Talkin and
BackTalk. Use Technorati to search
blogs; for Twitter check
http://search.twitter.com. By setting
up searches at Boardreader
or BoardTracker, you can follow
comments on message boards and
forums, which are especially difficult
for major search engines to navigate.
“Keeping an eye on forums is a
great way for companies to solve a
problem before it goes public. Many
people post to them when they have
a gripe, a problem with a product or
need to know how to fix something,”
says Rhea Drysdale, chief operating
officer for Outspoken Media, an
Internet marketing, search engine
optimization and reputation management
agency based in Spring
Hill, Fla.
“No matter what your company’s
size, I recommend that you begin by
monitoring your reputation yourself,”
Beal says. “This will give you
an idea of what kind of support you
need. If you decide to outsource,
you are better informed in choosing
and directing an agency.”
There are many free and paid
listening platforms available for
monitoring online reputation.
“I created Trackur because I was
disappointed with Google Alerts,”
Beal says. “You don’t have to set each
search individually and you get an
intuitive console for viewing results
online.”
Trackur has a basic version available
for free. Paid plans begin at
$18 per month. If you outsource
monitoring to your marketing or
public relations firm or have a large
budget, you might use a tool such as
Alterian, Radian6 or Visible Technologies.
Less expensive Scout Labs
starts at $199 per month for individual
companies and offers a free,
trial version.
Use your monitoring platform
to gain competitive intelligence and
market research insights.
“Look to see what customers like
and dislike about competitors’ prod-
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