Are Chines-e-whispers boosting or inhibiting your brand PR?
Who knows about you out in the wide world, and who has opinions about you? Is it good, bad or damaging? And who else will they tell?
One of the empowering aspects of the internet and the evolving digital landscape (Web 2.0: the second generation) – which is altering the way we professionally and socially interact – is that information is open to everybody.
Wherever PCs and phones log on, every person has the power to be a journalist and opinion former. Every item of data – true or false – can be endlessly repeated, used, changed or incorporated into something else. With a click of a mouse, you can obtain information from a number of sources, good or poor; no-one waits to be spoon fed.
Social media PR
To illustrate the impact social media sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are having on B2B brands, here are two incidents our clients recently experienced firsthand:
Alerted to a popular social networking site, one of our client contacts was shown a video of a man committing ‘an unnatural and depraved act’ on one of its clearly branded products. The news spread virally like an old-fashioned chain letter – only much more rapidly – and even employees of the company itself, who were not part of the online networking group, heard about it on email within days of the incident.
Another client was rung by an irate company secretary of a third party, because a published press report had contained false company information, not sent out in the approved media statement. The original press coverage had been read by a trawling freelance journalist (not on the distribution list) who rewrote it with added (and erroneous) details, before selling it into other publications.
The moral is that you can’t hide and, unless you monitor it, you may well have no idea about what is being said about your company on a screen near you.
Defence after the act is always too little, too late and a heavy handed overreaction risks making the problem much worse. Listening to audiences and then engaging with them is the key – these are the hallmarks of a company which cares about its customers and its reputation (online and offline).
How PR 2.0 can help boost your B2B reputation
So, how do you start to control reputation in the PR 2.0 age?
One way is by making available large quantities of positive (and accurate) information to act as a counterweight. You should endeavour to make this more visible than the inaccurate information, which can be achieved through intelligent optimisation of your presence online.
Your website should be the first source of information about you, but can also include links to third party ‘advocates’ such as suppliers, industry bodies or clients to boost credibility with your audiences.
Furthermore, the content has to be very easy to access and consume, in the short attention span available before they inevitably click elsewhere (i.e. around 10 seconds). So you have to grab their attention instantly, to get the relevant facts over before asking them to download lengthy corporate documents.
The information also has to be refreshed regularly. The internet search engine rankings are heavily biased towards updates and new postings. Fresh, bad news may well get a higher pick up than your old, good news – unless you act fast. Google and co. discriminate on the basis of the popularity of your site, the relevance of your content and how new it is. Use this to your advantage rather than allowing your competitors to ride rough shod over a reputation you’ve failed to manage online.
Plug in to your PR 2.0 network
The conclusion is that, today and tomorrow, PR 2.0 is a matter of taking positive action and ensuring that the right information is available to the audiences who matter. The methods for making this information available – blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts etc – are evolving rapidly. Currently there are over 70 million blogs and that figure has doubled in the last year alone – that’s a market you can’t afford to ignore.
Ensure you provide the information you want them to have and in the way that they find it easiest to digest and share with their peers. In doing so, they will shape your reputation with you, rather than in spite of you.