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!

Transparency
2010 will see an increased demand from the public for companies to be more transparent in their business dealings. The recent Copenhagen Climate Conference showed that people are very passionate and aware about the environment and that companies will in the future need to be very transparent in terms of their carbon footprints, CSI and ethical business behaviour. This will in turn place a bigger focus on Reputation Management in general and specifically how people are talking about you online.

Real Time Social Media Search Results
Last year all three major Search Engines announced the integration of real-time data from Twitter and Facebook into the search results. Google is calling it Social Search and pretty soon, you should see not only what the Search Engine is suggesting, but also what others are saying via social media relating to the search terms you entered. Search Engines are trying to provide more relevant, timely and accurate results and there is much talk of searching for information in real time. These changes will play a hugely important role in the way companies are perceived online which will shift the focus to the importance of an online reputation strategy.

Tracking is Key
One of the biggest challenges of the emergence of Social Media Marketing is tracking the conversations that are taking place on all the different platforms.  It’s vital to be aware of what people are saying and therefore making use of a good tracking system will become more and more important in 2010.

Content is King
This might sound like an outdated cliché but the reality of it is that now more than ever ensuring you have relative, interesting and value add content on your site will not only ensure that you own that vital Google CV but also guarantee you have consumers coming back to your site time and time again.

Policies
As more and more companies become aware of the need to carefully manage their reputation online you will also see the development of social media policies for staff. If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year.

Always be Authentic
The reality is as much as in the past companies were able to push one sided message towards consumers, those days are long gone. If you communicate with consumers in a way that they don’t like they will be sure to tell you that, whether they don’t like your advert on television, think your billboard is horrible or are of the opinion that your service is lacking. 2010 is increasingly going to be the year where companies will be forced even more by consumers to be authentic and to put messages out there that are a true reflection of their brand.