What is ORM?
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is, in simple terms – The process of monitoring a brand online, knowing how to deal with any negativity and understanding how you can pro-actively protect your brand via conversation.
Why ORM?
With the growth of consumer-generated media such as blogs, micro blogs, forums, message boards, social media sites, podcasts and chat rooms more information can be generated much quicker than ever before, consequently spreading like wildfire. With the size and viral intricacy of the internet, coupled with the speed at which news travels it’s difficult to continuously monitor all that is being said. However for business leaders, it is vitally important to actively listen to what the buzz is about online and whether it is positive or negative – you need to be aware how your brand is being perceived so as to act on the consumers perceptions.
The impact of ORM
Companies need to acknowledge that they are no longer exclusively in control of their brand messages. The consumer controls how your brands are being perceived online, no longer are they sold on one-way advertising messages. As you launch a campaign, you will soon know if your consumer embraces it through the mentions on YouTube, ratings on bookmarks sites and bloggers posts. It’s a highly measurable medium that can be used to gage positive or negative perceptions.
Brand Value
More than ever before, today’s marketers are finding themselves increasingly responsible for demonstrating the financial outcomes of their brand strategies and initiatives. Brand value has generated much discussion inside and outside of the marketing community as a possible means to this end. Knowing the potential pitfalls of brand value will help you put the approach into the proper perspective with alternative approaches to marketing assessment. Apart from giving you insight into the health of your online reputation, saidWotalso rates the value of your brand. In other words, what would it cost your company to buy the same exposure you’ve received through mentions and conversations, in online advertising space. It’s not about whether mentions are positive or negative after all there is no such thing as bad publicity.
What are key influencers?
These people can be opinion leaders, consultants or experts whose early and enthusiastic endorsement of a new product is sought by salespeople. Most discussions on the generic topic of social influence centres on compliance and persuasion in a social environment.
Why are they so important?
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. In the context of Influencer Marketing, influence is less about argument and coercion to a particular point of view, and more about loose interactions between various parties in a community. Influence is often equated to advocacy, but may also be negative, and is thus related to concepts of promoters and detractors.
Using online social media tools to identify influencers
Web services can be used to crawl social media sites for users that exert influence in their respective communities. Exactly how much is the user engaging the online community? The social influencer marketing firm then asks those influencers to try client products/services and discuss them on their respective social networks. Clients can then observe, through an enhanced digital dashboard, with metrics that measure the dissemination of brand mentions across numerous web platforms.
Advocates of this online-only approach claim that online activity reflects (or pre-empts) the trends in offline transactions. In addition, online activity can be a core part of offline decision making, as consumers research products and review sites.
Critics of this online-only approach argue that only researching online sources misses critical influential individuals and inputs. They note that much influential exchange of information occurs in the offline world, and is not captured in online media. Indeed, the majority of consumer exchanges occur face-to-face, not in an online environment.
