The 6 players in a company’s online reputation

Who are the players likely to affect a company’s reputation? With the rise of social media and the growing power of stakeholders, companies must keep an eye on all the players shaping their reputation and on the information sources they rely on. Here is a portrait of six players that every company absolutely must monitor…

In the past, companies learned what their audiences thought by running opinion surveys, and weathered the occasional crisis. Today, their audiences’ opinions are known in real time, the good ones as well as the bad, and crises are many and come from every direction. Hence the value, for a company, of setting up strategic monitoring of what people say about it!

The company, a “responsible” player in its online reputation

Companies today are exposed to many crises coming from many directions. In 1988, Ian Mitroff and Thierry Pauchant defined a typology model that explains all the reasons for and sources of crises, along two axes: “technical/economic” and “human/social/organizational”:

We can see that crises are more likely to come from inside the company than from outside. In 2012, “in 84% of cases, the crisis was internal. Out of 32 crises, 47% originated in the communications department, 18% in the marketing department, and 15% with the company’s employees or former employees,” notes Nicolas Vanderbiest(2).

Employees, players in their company’s online reputation

Employees or former employees are reportedly behind crises in 15% of cases(2). They are the source of harmful information being spread, whether deliberately or unintentionally (through a lack of knowledge about social media conventions and practices). It is therefore essential to raise employees’ awareness of the company’s digital stakes.

Some companies recommend drawing up a digital charter that clearly sets out their employees’ rights and duties. Others use their staff as ambassadors through a community of fans.

Internet users, players in companies’ online reputation

A company’s online reputation is shaped by the actions of internet users: comments, reviews, exchanges and recommendations of information, collective action and conversations within virtual communities. In this age of mass communication, internet users now wield enormous leverage over companies, whether they are consumers, customers, and so on.

90% of internet users say they trust recommendations from their friends, and 78% trust recommendations from strangers (according to a Nielsen study). Some 67% report sharing their opinion online (according to an Olimeo.com infographic) and 25% are ready to boycott a company on social media (according to an Ifop survey).

It has, in fact, become easy to mobilize anyone in the world within a few minutes to launch a media campaign against a company. What’s more, with the arrival of smartphones that can record anything (photo, video, audio), internet users will increasingly be the source of crises and of their amplification on social media. According to Médiamétrie, 80% of them are now registered on at least one social network, and the average internet user belonged to 4.5 social networks in 2013, up from 2.8 in 2011.

Competitors, players in companies’ online reputation

A crisis can also be triggered by competitors or by suppliers/partners through negative reviews of a product/service or of a company’s actions/statements, which can go as far as disparagement or even defamation. Spreading false information, and ultimately rumors, can also be the domain of competitors. Take, for example, the crisis among telecom operators after Free entered the market. It sometimes happens that competitors slip in among the critics to stir things up or to promote their own products.

The media, the fourth estate of companies’ online reputation

The media are often the spreaders of corporate crises, which typically start with the publication of a piece of information or an investigation into the company. Their power is such that information published by the media automatically ends up in first position on Google. All the more so because the media influence stakeholders, who use social media to amplify the impact of a piece of information about the company.

Influencers, players in companies’ online reputation

Influencers are the new opinion leaders. As genuine content creators, they call the shots online (particularly in high-tech and multimedia products, fashion and beauty products, and services such as tourism, travel and dining) by using all kinds of expression spaces (not only blogs but also social media, discussion forums, and so on) and all kinds of general-purpose community platforms.

Faced with this new and increasingly pervasive power, backed by a real audience, companies must be able to account for and analyze influencers’ contributions, and to do so across several areas of their activity: marketing, customer relations, monitoring their online reputation, and more.

Faced with these six players in their reputation, companies must respond by putting in place an online reputation management strategy that takes them into account.

Sources:

1 Van Belleghem, S.. The conversation manager. Leuven: Lannoo Campus, 2010. 19. Print.

2 Nicolas Vanderbiest “La gestion de crise et l’e-réputation des entreprises” (Université Libre de Bruxelles).