In their keenness to leverage the power of Internet, many corporate entities are experiencing an undesirable side effect – an apparent inability to track all the ephemeral ideas, thoughts and messages that they are dispatching into the vast cyberspace where a minor negative ripple can turn into a tumultuous tornado, tarnishing the online reputation of a brand before the managers and owners could realize it. The experience can indeed get scary and nerve-wracking.

The crux of online reputation management is simple. It can be summed up in the following way.

1. To keep record of every word mentioned of the brand, products and services for future reference
2. To grasp the trend and make necessary modifications to the company’s social media marketing strategy
3. To guard the company’s interests in the event of a claim or lawsuit of misleading or false advertising

Archiving business communications on the Web

Keeping this unwanted prospect in mind, a small suite of emerging tools and technologies are emerging on the scene. These promise to offer comprehensive solutions to companies for managing their social media publicity, presence and image.

It has become necessary to have an Internet solution to manage the data. Though the task of monitoring/managing online reputation can get tedious and taxing at times, it has become indispensable for companies. The process is largely effected through archiving of all business communications or meticulous managing of each individual employee’s posts on networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Ways of social media management

Companies from many domains, such as financial services firms, anyways need to gather the data to be in compliance with prevailing industry regulations. However, the complexity of modern day communications with the advent of social media has broadened the scope of this task.

As we have checked in the previous post, agencies like DDB Worldwide have come up with new technologies for social media management. They are also exploring the usage of a technology for monitoring posts that employees of a company put up on their personal networking accounts from within the network. The product lets employers track what their own people are saying about the products and services as well as the brand itself on their personal social networking sites while at work.

Protecting the brand image

At a broader level, small companies must pay meticulous attention to customer feedback and handle compliance issues. For them, the technology to archive and arrange a brand’s social media communications can be very vital. This is because they simply cannot afford to ignore any negative feedback.

Continuing to overlook a deluge of negative remarks, treating them as handiwork of your business rivals or disgruntled employees is not a wise thing to do. Such remarks, constantly appearing in search results as well as in review sites and forums, can tarnish the brand image.

Small businesses must have a back-up plan in place to guard their reputation or brand image with help of specialists.