You are your Online Reputation

iridiumInteractive — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 10:08:38 +0000

I do agree social media is one place where you have to give up a lot of control, but if you think that social media has taken full control on your brand then doomsday is not very far. Your brand’s online reputation accounts primarily for whatever you have done for your company to gain that standing. It is very important to understand that reputation management is how you are portraying the brand plus what others perceive your brand as. You ultimately hold the keys to your reputation. Any bad customer feedback you can both respond in a well mannered way to appease your customer or take a haughty stance and disappoint many more customers.

Here are some methods I feel can help you manage and guard your reputation:

1. Filter what is being said about your company on various social networks. A good social media monitoring can help you turn scattered information on the web into powerful trends & insights about you at a click of your dashboard.

2. Educate employees on the intent for your company’s social media initiative. It is not their personal social network but a corporate forum to interact with customers.

3. Be cordial and approachable while on the social network.

4. Handle negative customer comments with dignity and poise.

5. Do not bad talk any other brand. They will figure it out anyways. Rephrasing a famous quote “keep your fans close but keep your competitors closer”. Competitive analysis about you and your competition is something social media monitoring can give you where you can compare apples to apples and apples to oranges. For example, it can simply find out about a particular feature of your car v/s your competitors and get all the intelligence of what people think and how they perceive your brand.

So, if you are a smart company, understand the big message. Not having the social media presence and intelligence is now considered at par with not having a company website…now you understand…now let us act

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/comedynose/3512538453/

Why consumers befriend their companies on social media?

iridiumInteractive — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 06:08:54 +0000

To cut a long story short, social media was first introduced for networking, socializing, tracing back old friends, school friends etc. Like minded people started discussing their common topics. They discuss, complain and even rave about their favorite or not so favorite brands here.

Companies have their own reasons of joining the social network bandwagon as I have already discussed before, and so do customers who have already mastered the social networking sphere for their own purposes.

Here are some of the reasons why customers befriend companies on social media sites:

It is considered cool to be associated with your brand on such forums.
Or to simply be aware of offers and discounts they might avail (majority do this).
Just to be up-to-date with company information in real time.
Or even gain access to company information, exclusive only to company fans and friends.
Sometimes to show support for their loyal brands.
Follow the herd and be associated with brand making news.

Whatever the reason may be, this has surely provided an incentive to every company to promote their brands on social media, to leverage their marketing efforts by communicating with their community of followers.

Iridium Interactive Blog » brands

You are your Online Reputation

Why consumers befriend their companies on social media?