You’d better know what you need before starting ORM

I often hear marketeers asking ORM actions plans. They are facing online crisis/issues and need to take actions. BUT they don’t know who’s talking about them, they don’t know the credibility of the bloggers and they have no idea of what is Online Reputation Management. They just want us to act as a plaster on a wound without diagnosis & treatment.

Before starting ORM you should determine:

1. your objectives (buzz monitoring, crisis management, looking for communication opportunities, building company reputation, building your boss reputation,…)
2. your weaknesses in term of communication, products, process,…
3. what’s your internal resources (who’s is able to communicate on blogs, crisis committee, messages, etc.)
4. what’s your allied websites (corporate, products, partners, etc.)

Based on this 1st reflexion, we will be able to help you selecting your ORM solution (adapted to your real needs) to monitor your positive & negative buzz. We will then have to analyse the results and the sources as well. And finally we will take actions (if needed).

Good ORM needs expertize and professional process to be efficient!

P.S.: This all process doesn’t take very long. Don’t miss it! 😉

e-Reputation management goes beyond Search Engine Marketing

One of the most popular questions I got from prospects is “How do you – as ORM professional – compete with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) agencies offering Online Reputation Management?”

Before answering that question, I’d like to add that most of ORM specialists come from eMarketing or PR worlds. As you know I’m a PR. 🙂

As PR my answer is: “When I’m doing ORM services, I’m not PR anymore. I don’t want to limit our actions portfolio to SEO-friendly press release, online press room, PR campaign,… When I’m offering ORM services, I’m ready to give you advice on how to react to online rumor/attacks with ads, marketing, PR, SEM, legal,… tools. Of course I won’t be able to take all the actions on my own. BUT that’s not my job as consultant!”

“When you are looking at most of the SEM e-Reputation Management services you rapidly understand that their only focus is ranking/positioning in search engines. They just miss the global idea of Online Reputation Management such as communication opportunities, brand protection, buzz analysis, etc.”

All right! SEM is a great tool to manage your online reputation. BUT ORM goes beyond SEM!!!

Much more than a buzz tool…

As I already told you in a previous post, Online Reputation Management (ORM) is all about reputation (not only about buzz).

If it’s important to measure your buzz and see if your (online/offline) marketing campaigns are generating reactions on the internet, it’s even more important to assess if this buzz is positive or negative.

Do you imagine the impact of negative rumors/conversations on your brand/name/company results? With ORM you’ll be alerted when negative buzz will be identified. You’ll then be able to react and (maybe) prevent the fast circultation of the bad news via blogs, forums,… You’ll be able to protect your brand or influence your consumers’ perception.

That’s all about reputation!

Online Reputation Management, what’s for?

Consumers use the web to make buying decisions. A large majority of those consumers buys offline BUT goes online to research information, read reviews and get opinions from other users.

Are you aware of what your customers are saying about you? What about your (ex-)employees? What about your competitors? Information travels very quickly across the internet (via websites, blogs, forums, podcasts, social networks, etc.). Are you listening to the online conversations about your brand/your name/your competitors/…?

The Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a wonderfull service that able us to:

• measure the buzz generated by an online or offline campaign
• identify communication opportunities (when your consumers are mostly speaking about a topic you never stressed in your campaign)
• manage/prevent crisis (dealing with negative comments/malicious information on the net)

Through this blog I’ll try to make you discover the all dimension of the Online Reputation Management.

I invite you to join me on this blog to share experience and questions on e-Reputation.