Is there an area for which reputation would be as important as for banks and microfinance organizations? The bank studies the reputation of the client — his credit history, the client — the reputation of the bank, its reliability and profitability. If banks work with PR and direct advertising, then online reputation management or ORM (online reputation management) raises many questions.
In our article, we have collected 4 ways to increase the effectiveness of reputation management, both in terms of labor costs and in terms of budget. So what can you save and how?
Resource #1: Time
Method — automation of routine processes
An ORM has many day-to-day tasks, most notably tracking social media reviews systematically. It is not practical to do this manually. Analytics systems will help automate routine processes in ORM: Brand Analytics, YouScan and others. They have great capabilities for analyzing the Internet environment.
Resource #2. Money
Method — KPI optimization
The correct selection of kpi will allow you to pay not for the process, but for the result. Key metrics should not be limited to posting, say, 30 reviews and 10 responses to a negative, they should also include reporting on the ratio of positive/neutral / negative mentions of the company, and ratings on company cards on review sites.
The main KPIs for measuring the result of ORM work are usually: the dynamics of changes in the information field, ratings on reviewers, and the number of publications of reviews and articles.
Resource #3. Labor costs
Method — we give the service to outsource
RM is a new service. Most agencies have started to provide it in the last 2-3 years. As a result, there are not enough professional specialists in this area who would simultaneously have the skills of an analyst, IT, knowledge of the basics of advertising and public relations. At least two employees are required to fully work on the company's reputation.
It makes no sense to take individual specialists and spend your budget on them for full-time work. It is cheaper to contact an agency that will bear all these costs. In addition, full-time specialists do not always have at their disposal modern tools for monitoring and managing reputation, while advertising agencies and reputation management agencies must be aware of all trends.
By outsourcing ORM, you not only save money, but you can be sure that the service will be of high quality. Of course, you need to monitor the quality yourself. Pay attention to the fact that the contractor has a large database of accounts, uses the analytics system and can react to a possible negative. For example, when a video is released on Youtube with half a million views, a large database of accounts will be able to protect you, while a small one will be powerless.
Your brand should not be seen working on its reputation. No need to post reviews from the same IP address or reviews about different companies from the same account, or post reviews, for example, about a company in Moscow from accounts in Vladivostok. Reviewers track such fraud, flag unreliable publications and unscrupulous companies. It can go further in the media or social networks.
Resource #4. Leadership image
Method — we control the reputation of top managers
The reputation of management is an integral part of the company's reputation. Exactly like the reputation of contractors, partners, investors, employees of the company: they affect the general public perception of the organization. What to do if there is a surge of negativity in social media against a public top manager?
During an attack on one of the company's leaders, the network may contain a lot of unreliable information about his personal life, professional qualities, legal behavior, etc. To cope, reputation management specialists work closely with the company's PR service on an anti-crisis plan, which must be prepared in advance any professional PR director.
One of our clients had a similar experience. To solve it, we introduced related informational events in social networks, published positively neutral articles on thematic partner sites, initiated discussions and presented a different point of view on behalf of «agents of influence» — our accounts. This shifted the focus of publicity from the negative news about the top manager and his wife, and at the same time removed the image of the head from the reputation of the bank.
In such crisis situations, it is important to promptly respond to negative mentions and suppress negative outbursts both with responses from the bank and from «live» accounts. Monitoring systems and a wide base of «agents of influence» will give you a high reaction speed. In our case, this is Brand Analytics and manual processing. Many also use YouScan.
The effectiveness of this strategy, by the way, is partly due to Elisabeth Noel-Neumann's Spiral of Silence. This concept from mass communication theory states that a person is less likely to speak their mind if they feel they are in the minority. This is observed in practice and in social networks.
If there are no comments under the entry, then the “troll” is more likely to come here soon. If there are a lot of positive reactions from “live” accounts under the record, there are fewer people who want to express a negative opinion. Where negativity prevails, a “snowball” is triggered and the discussion is purely negative, involving even more users.
In no case during the active development of the crisis, do not delete comments, do not negotiate with administrators about deleting, or editing information in articles, posts, and the like.
A screenshot of your correspondence, a screenshot from a user you have blocked or whose comment you have deleted, may surface in social networks and the media. Editing or deleting information as unreliable can be pointwise and after the incident through negotiations with site administrators, when everything has already calmed down. A legal rebuttal may well be a claim drawn up by a lawyer in situations where the dialogue did not lead to the desired results.
The crisis and the decline in the solvency of the population are forcing all participants in the financial market to monitor the advertising budget and the conversion of the sales funnel. Against this background, it is optimal to spend resources on ORM, since trust and loyalty increase the effectiveness of advertising. Start working with those 4 directions that we have suggested to you, and the result will not keep you waiting.
