... even companies! This reputation, different from brand image, must be forged on the Internet, the main channel on which consumers express themselves.
Interview by Anne-Françoise Rabaud
"Au village, sans prétention, j'ai mauvaise réputation", sang Georges Brassens as he presided over his character finishing a rope around his neck... Your company may not risk such a fate, but it's certain that a bad reputation spread on the Net can severely damage your business development. On the other hand, a good reputation can encourage prospects to discover your brand with a very favorable review. But reputation is not the same as a corporate or brand image, which is a snapshot taken at a given moment in time. Corporate reputation is a medium- to long-term concept. Another difference is that the company controls its image, but much less so its reputation. In fact, a company or brand's image is the result of its communications activities (advertising campaigns, direct marketing, etc.) aimed at its target audiences (customers, prospects, future employees). It is the company that sends out the signals that reflect its image. This is not the case when it comes to reputation. Reputation takes into account all the opinions freely expressed about the company and its brand by customers, consumers, employees, trade unions, associations, financial analysts, etc. It is therefore essential to have complete control over these opinions.
Recently, a new element has turned this notion of reputation on its head: the emergence of the Web 2.0 concept, which enables the free exchange and sharing of opinions and ideas via the Internet. In France alone, nine million Internet users regularly consult blogs, and there are four million users of the American social network Facebook. On the Internet, whether on a blog, a consumer review site or on social networks, all the audiences concerned by your brand become media that are difficult to control. These traces, opinions and comments on your company or brand make up your "digital footprint". The result: today, in B-to-B as in B-to-C, reputations are made and broken on the Web!
Your digital footprint
Those who say: "It's not a blogger who's going to make our sales drop" are wrong! On the Web, tongues are easily wagged. To be able to anticipate and react as quickly as possible to any "attack", a company needs to know its reputation in real time, and to measure its digital footprint. This audit will help answer several questions: who is talking about you? Are they customers, employees, shareholders...? Where do they express themselves? Via editorial sites, blogs, professional forums, social networks? And what themes do they address? Do they talk about your product, brand or after-sales service? Are their comments favorable or unfavorable to you, and precisely what words do they use...? Another element will come into play during this audit: what is the weight of each of the audiences expressing themselves about you? The aim is to map out your digital footprint and measure the power of influence - in other words, the potential audience - of each opinion.
To begin this audit, define the issues you're going to observe on the Internet: after-sales service, customer satisfaction, image, quality... In fact, you mustn't reduce your research to your brand name and company name. Once you've defined your themes, you need to translate them into "search equations". For example, "company name + after-sales service". But beware: these equations must respect the writing conventions specific to the Internet, and can therefore be complex. You'll need to launch the queries on various classic search engines (Yahoo!, Google, Copernic...) as well as those specialized in blogs (Technorati, Google blog search, etc.). It's a technical job that will be less time-consuming if you're technophile and have specific software and applications at your disposal. When the search is carried out correctly, a minimum of 50 results emerge per search engine, or at the very least 300 reviews or comments. But up to 1,000 results can be obtained. This data on your company or brand must then be analyzed both quantitatively: what is the traffic and reputation of the sites disseminating this information? How many comments has this information generated? Etc. This work gives you a precise vision of the different communities: those who love your brand, those who find it too expensive, those who criticize its inefficient after-sales service... And gives you the means to approach them differently by doing "community management" according to their specific expectations.
Double action
Once this audit has been carried out, the actions you take to improve your reputation will flow directly from your digital footprint. To curb dissatisfaction, you - or a sales representative - can enter into discussions and debates on forums, have a presence on social networks, launch viral marketing campaigns or even create a dedicated site on which you can express yourself and fuel the debate. Are your prices too high? Create a site like "pourquoimamarque-estchere.com". Include videos, interviews with the production manager and targeted debates to defend your position.
At the same time, you need to capitalize on the positives that characterize your reputation. Companies often forget to do this. For example, if bloggers mention your brand in a positive light, don't hesitate to get in touch with them, thank them and turn them into allies or ambassadors for your brand. Use them as opinion formers.
Finally, to succeed in this endeavor, use the same communication channels (chats, forums, blogs...) as those used by the Internet users you're addressing. Once you've taken the first steps, you need to analyze the results at regular intervals through digital monitoring. You then enter the virtuous circle of improving your company's and your brand's reputation, which needs to be fed continuously and in real time, just like the Internet!
