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Online Reputation Management and Digital Public Relations posted on Tuesday, 17 February 2009

Managing the online reputation of a brand is not as easy as it once was. Blogs, Twitter, syndication feeds and online communities make it almost impossible to control how a brand is talked about.

By Leslie Hammann

For a public relations professional, this is the stuff of nightmares, but tapping into this inevitable online conversation actually holds a wealth of possibilities to advance a PR campaign.

Listen, Reply and Learn

Horrific scenarios where customers vent about subpar service or a recent product recall immediately spring to mind when I imagine users posting on a blog, but I have come to discover that this image is fatalistic. These disgruntled users are not the only ones engaging in the online discussion, and tapping into these consumers who take the time to write a positive review, boast about a purchase or mention a brand name can be used to expand the reach of a PR campaign. User comments like this are unsolicited, candid feedback that can enlighten PR teams about consumers’ affinities and needs; this information—previously only unearthed during focus groups—can help align public relations messaging to their audiences and increase brand interaction.

Prepare for the Best and Worst
There will always be a group of consumers who do not have positive things to say about a particular brand, but this fact should not preclude a company from embarking on a proactive digital PR campaign. The key to success is to engage with your consumers online; if users posts unflattering comments, write back and show that their opinions are heard. More often than not, they will respond and appreciate the personal reply. From a PR perspective, this is effective because the very same users exposed to a negative comment are the ones who see the response thus enabling a PR team to counteract critical publicity and reach a wide range of consumers with a single message.

Don’t Leave Anything Out
Public relations is still navigating the online world, so there are tactics that are not as web friendly as they could be. Press releases are a good example of this point because it is no longer sufficient to just write one and send it out over a wire. To be most effective, links need to be incorporated into the text and verbiage should reflect a search engine optimization strategy. Simply put, if certain keywords are targeted to drive website traffic, make sure they appear in the body of a press release and in every digital PR execution. This will reinforce your search engine optimization campaign and ultimately drive more website traffic. Since the shelf life of online content is much longer than it is offline, adopting this holistic approach to PR will make certain each campaign component compliments one another and will support longer term public relations plans.

Use what you have
If your company receives media coverage, make sure to push out the content wherever possible; post a link on a blog, include it in a company newsletter and add it to your website. The Internet is a vast and fragmented space, so it is important to direct customers to positive and interesting company news. With each additional link or mention, website traffic and online visibility will increase, so do not leave it up to a publication to promote an article on your behalf.

Conclusions
Budgets are being scrutinized, and the goal of most PR campaigns is to generate awareness and drive business. As a result, public relations campaigns will be expected to deliver additional coverage and directly contribute to corporate objectives. By maximizing each tactic and incorporating emerging digital trends into a PR plan, companies can garner online coverage and support business development.

Leslie Hammann oversees Geary Interactive’s public relations program and executes their digital marketing initiatives.

Posted by Leslie Hammann | 1 Comments