Monitoring Your Brand Reputation Online Matters

February 4, 2011

In a recent study by InformationWeek, business technology professionals were surveyed about their companies’ established initiatives for monitoring their brand reputations online and responding to specific types of online conversations about their brands. As reported by eMarketer, the results aren’t too surprising given that there is no recipe for success for social media marketing yet.

Survey respondents were almost equally split when asked how their companies monitor brand reputations online between using search alert services such as Google Alerts (56% of respondents) and not knowing how their companies monitor brand reputations (40%). If your company falls into that 40%, you need to put together a plan to monitor your brand’s online reputation immediately.

Following is the breakdown of how survey respondents reported that their companies monitor online brand reputations:

Search alerts = 56%
Don’t know = 40%
Outside vendor = 16%
Specialty applications like Radian 6 or Scout Labs = 15%
Other = 4%

Even more interesting were the survey results related to how companies respond to negative online conversations and similar social Web activities. The chart below shows the survey results.

Of course, it’s important to recognize that technology professionals responded to this survey, not marketing professionals. However, since employees are the strongest brand advocates that a company can have, there is still something to learn from these results. Employees should be better educated about the brands they work with. It’s up to brand managers and marketers to put together the initiatives to build internal brand advocates as well as provide the education about how to talk about their companies and brands online. When it comes to responding to negativity about your brand online, I typically teach my clients the 3 Fs – flight, fight or flood.

Image: eMarketer

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Susan Gunelius

President & CEO at KeySplash Creative, Inc.

Susan Gunelius is the author of multiple marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and blogging books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, a leading blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com, a featured writer for Forbes.com, and the Guide to Blogging for About.com. Additionally, her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, FoxBusiness.com, WashingtonPost.com, TheStreet.com, SmartMoney.com, TodayShow.com, BusinessWeek.com, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Small Business, and more. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Susan also appears at in-person and virtual events where she speaks about marketing, branding, social media, and more (visit www.SusanGunelius.com for more information). You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.