One of the most important lessons I learnt having been the chairman on two boards and a director on the executive board of a major listed corporation, was how highly sensitive all matters related to corporate reputation are. A while back Deloitte released a report outlining the reputation risk social media has on organisations. One of the key findings was that while 74% of employees agree it's easy to damage a company's reputation on social media, only 27% actually think about the damage social media can do to a company. While this is an internal perspective, it is of quite some concern given that according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's 4th quarter bulletin of 2007, "protecting a financial institution's reputation is the most significant risk management challenge that boards of directors face today"! This is because reputation risk is potentially both a fiduciary risk and a compliance risk - two words enough to have any director shivering in his or her boots!
It has been said that if you have no reputation, that you have no business. This is particularly interesting because there is a marketing version of exactly this, being that if you have no brand, then you have no customers. This is why in so many ways, reputation and brand go hand-in-hand. Harm your reputation or your brand, and one thing's for certain, your future revenue streams will be negatively impacted! This is also the reason why if you can quantify the brand, then you have quantified your reputation. However, given the opening paragraph, reputation can be extremely difficult to protect because it lies in the hands of ALL the stakeholders of the company, constituents that are not in the full control of the company.
One of the ways to manage reputation risk is to ensure that there are processes, systems and controls in place to monitor it. In essence, this is about the full monitoring of all media, being press, radio, TV, the internet, and social media. While most businesses are pretty adept at the first three media, the internet is less well monitored, and social media is monitored the least of all. And social media is where all the informal and sometimes anonymous chatter happens, with all the freedom of expression that comes with it, and where both formal and informal reviews of your products and services are available for all the world to read about and to form an opinion from, an opinion that may prevent them from making their next sale with you.
Social media is where we can help the most, from measuring the positive and or negative brand equity impact of all conversations across the social media spectrum, recording and storing the social media interactions with your brand, to reacting ALMOST INSTANTANEOUSLY on your behalf given a specific mandate. Please realise that INSTANTANEOUS response is critical in the social media space - leave anything out there more more than a few minutes, and the opportunity to rectify a negative statement will have lost its time-sensitive context, meaning your response becomes lost in the ether, the damage done!
Read a little more on measuring the impact of your social media presence.
It has been said that if you have no reputation, that you have no business. This is particularly interesting because there is a marketing version of exactly this, being that if you have no brand, then you have no customers. This is why in so many ways, reputation and brand go hand-in-hand. Harm your reputation or your brand, and one thing's for certain, your future revenue streams will be negatively impacted! This is also the reason why if you can quantify the brand, then you have quantified your reputation. However, given the opening paragraph, reputation can be extremely difficult to protect because it lies in the hands of ALL the stakeholders of the company, constituents that are not in the full control of the company.
One of the ways to manage reputation risk is to ensure that there are processes, systems and controls in place to monitor it. In essence, this is about the full monitoring of all media, being press, radio, TV, the internet, and social media. While most businesses are pretty adept at the first three media, the internet is less well monitored, and social media is monitored the least of all. And social media is where all the informal and sometimes anonymous chatter happens, with all the freedom of expression that comes with it, and where both formal and informal reviews of your products and services are available for all the world to read about and to form an opinion from, an opinion that may prevent them from making their next sale with you.
Social media is where we can help the most, from measuring the positive and or negative brand equity impact of all conversations across the social media spectrum, recording and storing the social media interactions with your brand, to reacting ALMOST INSTANTANEOUSLY on your behalf given a specific mandate. Please realise that INSTANTANEOUS response is critical in the social media space - leave anything out there more more than a few minutes, and the opportunity to rectify a negative statement will have lost its time-sensitive context, meaning your response becomes lost in the ether, the damage done!
Read a little more on measuring the impact of your social media presence.
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