Reputation Management on Social Media - Brittany Peyton, Marketing Director

The Manalto Team attended the #IABC16 (International Association of Business Communicators) World Conference in New Orleans, LA, June 5-8, 2016.  Brittany Peyton, Marketing Director at Manalto, delivered an engaging speaking session on “Scalable Reputation Management on Social Media - In Just One Click.” Read more about the session throughout this article and ask yourself, are you managing your reputation effectively on social media?

Today, there are more than 1 million Facebook business pages registered each month. Social media is the most widespread and instant form of global communication and information sharing utilized by consumers and businesses today. The number of users of social media platforms is as impressive as is the increasing adoption rate by business in using social media.

We are seeing a dramatic extension in the purpose for which companies utilize social media. Consumer expectations continue to demand corporate transparency, but it is the consumers’ increasing appetite for immediate information that is transforming how organizations approach and leverage social media.

We need to be asking ourselves as a franchise or large organization these questions:

  1. Are we currently managing social media effectively?
  2. Are we applying enough rigor to effectively capitalize on the benefits of social media - as a low cost, high reach, rich media channel?
  3. Or, are we falling behind on how we manage social media internally, negating the cost savings and maintaining a responsive-neutral position only?

Let’s explore a few Q&A’s to discover the importance of reputation management at scale.

  1. “What is the Domino effect for social media and how can it be either powerful or damaging to a brand?”

The domino effect on social media is as powerful to a brand, as it can be detrimental. As a freeway for consumer advocacy and influence, the speed at which news and opinion is shared among communities and friends across social media can impact the perception of a brand immediately – both good and bad.  As an organization, there needs to be a plan in place and a proper solution to directly address the rapid speed at which information is shared on social media.

  1. “How can you become more efficient on social media? My current process is very repetitive and I know there must be a better solution.”

The low cost nature of social media is a key factor in businesses choosing to redirect some of their traditional marketing spend to social media. However, for large scale organizations that have a successful social media presence, checking to follow-up that the content has been published, obtaining results and identifying and building a solid content author community, internally, has the potential to negate the cost benefits of social media to an organization. Operating with a social media management solution in place will allow you to streamline this process and increase your visibility into it.

  1. “What are the challenges with managing brand reputation at scale?” 

The ability to proactively manage a company’s reputation on social media, can be instantly challenged by the escalation of one negative comment or response by a community. The ability for an organization to actively engage, effectively monitor and respond quickly to avoid an issue escalating to an incident or crisis state – product recalls, consumer complaints, etc. is imperative in today’s real-time age.

Yet, for organizations that have an expansive social media presence – with Facebook pages that are not connected or visible by head office, for example, it can indeed be challenging to monitor, circumvent or respond to a potential issue.

In the instance that an unauthorized post has been published, in the event of a disgruntled employee or leak of sensitive information or even a campaign being published ahead of time, too often there is a delay in removing the post or suspending employee access, simply due to ineffective monitoring or the inability to reach an administrator of the page quickly.

  1. “How can you better maintain brand messaging and management on social media?”

For a company that has multiple social media pages, the challenge of brand management is real. Updating a logo or brand asset needs to be populated and published individually on each native page, which can be tedious and time consuming.

For structures where social media is independently managed, Head Office is dependent upon local social media content authors to update, and typically email content to distribute. While this may be a workable process – the allocation of resources – staff and time, to send content to internal recipients and then have them separately publish is a duplicated process, which may not be as efficient as it could be.  Utilizing a social media management tool allows you to manage your brand messaging, logos and images all from one central dashboard to create cohesive brand communication.

Ensuring brand consistency and risk management at scale can be complex without the right process and tools in place. We challenge you to conduct a social media audit and take the appropriate actions to protect your brand today.