Reputation Brand Analyst

Internship: Social Media/Brand Reputation Strategy

In the sports arena…..Bafana Bafana went out with their heads held high, scoring 2 goals in their last match…Sepp Blatter from FIFA joined Twitter and being bombarded with questions, comments and rude tweets;

and historically long tennis matches at Wimbledon…

Online Foursquare is getting more and more interest from Blue Chip companies using and wanting to invest in the start up and Twitter admitting to technical glitches from time to time due to capacity constraints and other issues slowing down usage and their API.

Status.twitter.com > giving people an overview of the downtime they have had, and the technical problems they have encountered, with an ETA on the fixing of the bug.

The Sepp Blatter case is a good example of why strategy and planning for any marketing campaign is so important.

Whilst his tweet to followers requesting feedback and comments was probably very well meant, the overflow of messages was not anticipated.

Furthermore, due to the negative nature (and sometimes even rudeness) of the comments, this entire effort from the Fifa CEO was undone within minutes and turned into an unmanageable situation with a very negative undertone.

Sepp then decided to ignore all comments and suggestions sent through to him in a public forum, and not to answer any of the questions posed to him.

Basically breaking the promise he made, as the CEO of Fifa, to his followers. Hereby starting his Twitter career off with a  lack of trust…

If sufficient research had been conducted about the public’s feelings about the CEO and the team had investigated the mentions already posted on Twitter and other social media sites regarding Sepp and Fifa, this disaster could have been avoided.

Then again, I am sure that everybody feels that way at the moment.

On a more serious note….

Whilst a lot of development has taken place in the past couple of weeks with great outcomes such as the RSS Feeds, the iPhone app and the Desktop Widget, this week has been filled mainly with maintenance work as well as some new development work on the dashboard and the raw hits pages.

The results of this work will be coming out soon!

In the meantime though, I would like to make sure that all the current features are working smoothly and effectively for you. Therefore, if there is anything that you are having trouble with or need assistance with the installation or application, please do not hesitate to contact us!

We can always come through to your offices to help with the installation of the desktop widget, or to present to the team the various benefits of ORM.

I would like to furthermore share the following articles with you, as they are related to both the World Cup and ORM and provide you with some great insights in the dos and don’ts online:

FIFA’s true nature

Kulula’s ambush marketing 

Hope you have a great week.

Many stories have come out about the long term effects this spill will have on the animal and plant life in the Gulf Coast and environmental organisations fear that dozens of species might become extinct due to this accident. Due to the nature of the images produced, many people were left feeling horrified.

Online, people were able to share their thoughts about this event with anybody and everybody, no matter how far away from the Gulf Coast you are. And they were able to show the world how they feel about BP and what action they will personally take to make sure that BP will feel the effects of this.

Whilst for some people this means not using BP for petrol and other services or conveniences anymore, other people have taken it a step further.

One great example of this is the persona ‘Leroy Stick’, who decided to register the Twitter profile ‘BP Global PR’, which BP had not registered themselves.

With this Twitter Profile set up, Leroy Stick, as BP Global PR, started tweeting about BP and the oil spill and made sure that every message came out with #bpcares, #bpspends, etc.

Although not all messages are about BP, Leroy manages to turn every statement made by the Oil Company into a laugh and mockery and hereby damages the BP brand online.

So far, he has over 138,000 followers, of which 3800 listed and has sent out 225 tweets, mostly about BP.

He has managed to turn a very bad PR situation for BP, into an even worse one. And he was not the only one!

This is just one case study of what can happen when you do not protect your brand online, especially on social media platforms.

One vital step that we recommend you take in your/client strategies is to register all domain names and associated variations, not only domains but also on social media profiles.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the World Cup!

Gillian is the founder of Blue Magnet, a company that specializes in eMarketing workshops that are designed to be easily understood by marketers, website owners and business managers. She has a vast knowledge of internet marketing and is generous enough to share her expertise in an informative two day seminar.

With the number of internet users in South Africa passing the 5 million mark for the first time in January 2010, it’s no wonder such a vast majority of marketers and PR executives are looking to the web to build relationships with their clients and customers. Gillian’s lectures teach various techniques on how to optimise your online presence and implement a successful online marketing campaign, right from defining your vision and goals through to tracking and measuring the results.

“The power to define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities”. This is a quote that comes from my e-Guru manual at the beginning of the Web PR chapter. Before the internet, organizations must have had a pretty hard time developing and maintaining a good relationship with their clients, but the above quote could not be more true with regards to the way brands are communicated these days.

Now days a company’s successes and failures are determined almost entirely by consumers and their mighty power of peer persuasion. All over the web users are discussing the quality of your product or friendliness of your service and communication like this has a profound impact on where consumers will spend their money. Consumers who actively participate in online communities have a higher propensity to recommend you to someone else and become brand advocates.

A large portion of Gillian’s workshop was dedicated to Search Engine Marketing. Going into great detail on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per Click Advertising, she explained the importance and benefits of improving the traffic to one’s website via “natural” searches from search engines. She discussed how businesses with a budget could maximize their online exposure with a strategically planned Paid Search campaign that would guarantee visitors and allow you to target specific audiences or how to simply monitor your website’s traffic with Google Analytics.

Social media has also become very important in the bid to secure a positive online presence. Now more than ever customers are posting comments about an unfavourable experience or service compliments on social websites like Facebook and Twitter. Gillian explained that in order to develop and maintain a positive public perception, organisations should strive to use social media sights to communicate with their clients.

Gillian delivered her workshop in a very professional yet casual manner that allowed for some great audience interaction. The audience participation showed that people did not only get a great deal of online marketing insight from Gillian but that they were also eager to put their new found knowledge into play and develop a solid strategy for their business. An absolutely delicious buffet lunch was served on both days at the very festive Chief Epsom restaurant where we enjoyed a great meal while being entertained by the sounds of live traditional African music.

“We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers, we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it” ( The Cluetrain Manifesto – Levine, Locke, Searls, Weinberg)

Mango, David & Gillian at the eGuru Workshop

Thank you for your patience while we sorted out this issue.

A new study recently released from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany looked specifically at data from about 52 million Twitter accounts and some interesting findings were made:

• Being in the top 10% in terms of followers isn’t strongly correlated with being in the top 10% in terms of re-tweets or mentions. Re-tweets and mentions, however, are highly correlated with each other.
• The study identified only 6 million accounts with at least 10 Tweets since their creation.
• Influence is not gained spontaneously or accidentally, but through concerted effort.

Although there are many theories about how influence should be measured researcher Meeyoung Cha that worked on this paper commented in an article on Harvard Business Review:

“Now a very interesting question would be, “How should one measure influence?” We are afraid that there are no easy answers here. One would have to take a combination of many metrics, including follower count, mentions, and re-tweets. However the hard part is figuring out the relative importance of the component metrics. This is the subject of our future research. “

This is an interesting debate to keep an eye on as more research and statistics on this topic becomes available.

The saidWot team will be presenting to the 2nd year students at the AAA School of Advertising on Thursday on the topic of Online Reputation Management

This gentleman posted a negative article online expressing his frustration and anger regarding a particular Standard Bank Branch.

This negative mention was seen by many of his followers online and therefore affected the online reputation of the brand in a negative way.

However, due to ORM, Standard Bank was notified of the mention and responded immediately. Their quick response and the fact that they personally contacted him twice telephonically, left the man with a positive feeling about the bank. So much, that he even decided to blog about it again and add a compliment to his previous complaint.

In addition, the fact that Standard Bank has a Twitter profile and uses this to handle complaints on the site, gave him an immediate feeling that ‘the bank cares and listens to its customers’.

This is such a great example of how Online Reputation Management could and should be used:

• Monitor and track all the mentions regarding your brand / product / employees online and categorise according to the sentiment of the mention.
• Receive feedback from your existing and potential customer base in the online world
• Make sure that when crisis mentions come through, these are escalated to the correct person within the company immediately.
• Respond to negative as well as positive feedback immediately and provide the writer of the mention with the feeling that ‘the brand / company listens to what you have to say and cares about what you have to say‘. This can be done in the form of a company or ‘personal’ Twitter account, a Facebook Profile, a Facebook Fan Page, etc. Furthermore show the rest of the online community that you care as a brand and that you are online to engage and communicate with.
• In the case of a negative mention or complaint, follow up with a personal call, email or other form of communication to resolve the issue at hand.
• Make sure that the person that follows up on the complaint is aware of all the aspects of the complaint and can assist immediately. (Having a call centre agent call the customer and not being able to assist with the actual complaint will only result in more frustration and therefore more complaints online. Making the situation even worse)
• Leave the customer with a ‘warm and fuzzy‘ feeling that will often generate a positive mention from the customer online.
• Learn from the mistakes made and make sure that they do not occur again.

In addition, other factors play a role such as:

• Learn from your competitors and see how they (do not) engage online
• Build an online relationship with your target market and be available to them in the online space
• Identify the channels used by your target market and make sure to be present on these channels.
• Engage…engage…and engage some more