It’s naive for any company out there to think that they can still own their reputations with their deep pockets. In the past, many companies can simply spend considerable amount of money to start a campaign to build their reputations and to manage them. That’s because broadcasting medias used to be owned by companies which need to take care of their cashflow.
Why journalists cannot help companies to own their reputations?
Today, a big percentage of the media is no longer controlled by journalists and marketeers. Bloggers are volunteering themselves to write about companies based on their own views and experiences. And to see a bigger picture, we can do a search to find out if there are many bloggers (as well as journalists) having the same experience with that company. Well, many people can say that we cannot really believe in the words of a blogger. How about reading 100 opinions of different people’s blogs or other forms of websites? One journalist’s opinion in a magazine or newspaper cannot be fully trusted as well unless we have read other people’s experiences.
Why marketeers cannot help much to own their reputation?
It’s a known fact that many of us will want to read reviews and opinions about a certain product from a third party unless the company is very transparent with their products’ strengths and weaknesses.
As such, even the companies’ websites have started to add in review engines. They allow users to give their 5-star ratings to every product on the website. They also allow users to give comments to their products. However, we will start to wonder if we will ever see a single bad comment on their own websites.
Deep pockets don’t work as well
Like it or not, the websites are made so inexpensively that anybody who wants to have a say on the net can even literally pay nothing! We have Google Page Creator, BlogSpot, WordPress.com, and many others to help the users to express themselves.
Companies used to pay lots of money to the media for the kind of coverage that they need. Today, companies can literally distribute their money to many little broadcastors out there and yet there are still many more people who are not paid to shut their mouths!
User-generated content is the new way to go!
The end-users have their say today to determine the companies’ reputations. Websites have been set up at Epinions, Amazon, Ebay, and a host of others to allow buyers to give their opinions about the products. When a person gives a video review about a product in YouTube, we will start to see comments coming (if that YouTube is receiving attention) in both good and bad opinions. We don’t really have much to do except to moderate them which come to the point of trust from the end users.
Talking about Reputation Management!
Many companies are also managing their reputations through their marketing materials and even up to their own employees’ reputations. There are still many companies out there who choose to think that their main source of income comes from everywhere but not the Internet. Again, it’s really naive to think this way as the companies may not know what the world is talking about them while the companies are having a monologue session with the customers, talking about how good their products are but never listen to what the world is talking about them.
Simply said. Online cannot be ignored anymore irregardless of whether your business is an online website or not. So long as you have a huge presence especially to the consumers, you will definitely be reviewed online!
Companies really have no choice but to explore social media
Ok, I admitted that I am being too pro towards the Internet side of doing business. But I must say that there should have a certain level of social media participation to engage our customers as well as potential ones. If you like to call it brand awareness, let it be! If you ignore that, your customers will have forgotten about your brand even though they have heard it many years ago… They probably thought this company has closed down… If not, they will be talked about in the social media which the company really has no idea what their consumers are doing…
I started learning online marketing since 2007. I have a couple of online projects which I am working on part time with an elite team such as