1. Proactive Reputation
Management
Presented by:
Tony Wright
CEO of WrightIMC

2. ―If I tell my Facebook friends about your
brand, it is because I like my friends -
not because I like your brand.‖ – Mike
Arauz, Undercurrent

3. Why do people write reviews?
• The two leading reasons people
contribute content to social shopping
sites are the need to feel part of a
community (31%) and recognition
from peers (28%). (IBM Institute for
Business Value, August 2011)

4. Do people really trust online
reviews?
• Users put great trust in their social networks. One-half of
Beresford respondents said they considered information shared
on their networks when making a decision—and the proportion
was higher among users ages 18 to 24, at 65%. (eMarketer, October
2010)
• 90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people
they know; 70% trust opinions of unknown users. (Econsultancy,
July 2012)

5. Does this stuff go viral?
• The average consumer mentions
specific brands over 90 times per
week in conversations with friends,
family, and co-workers. (John Moore,
WOMMA, 2010)

6. Why should you care?
• 70% of Americans say they look at reviews before
taking the next step to conversion. (Google, Zero
Moment of Truth )
• 53% of people on Twitter recommend companies
and/or products in their Tweets, with 48% of them
delivering on their intention to buy the product. (ROI
Research for Performance, June 2010)
• When making purchase decisions, North American
Internet users trust recommendations from people
they know and opinions posted by unknown consumers
online more than advertisements on television, on the
radio, in magazines and newspapers, or in other
traditional media. (Nielsen Online, April 2011)

7. Understanding the Landscape
• Blogs
• SERPS
• Reviews
• Message Boards
• Hate Websites
• Twitter
• Location Based Sites
• Social Bookmarking
Sites

8. Monitoring the Landscape
• Tools come in all shapes, sizes and
costs
• When evaluating a tool, know what it
will be used for
• Know where a tool gets it’s data
• Understand what a tool can and can’t
monitor
• No one tool gets it all

9. Not being proactive?
• ―Doing PR during a crisis is like eating
healthy during a heart attack‖ –
Unknown person from my Twitter
stream

10. Rip-off Reports, Negative
Reviews, Bad SERPs, Oh My!
• Most companies do NO reputation
management until a crisis hits
• If a crisis hits a blank slate, the crisis
wins
• Companies with unmanaged reputations
will most likely lose infinitely more in a
crisis than those with managed
reputations

11. Social Media Policies
• What can your employees say online
and to whom?
• Most current policies are more about
keeping folks off Facebook during
working hours – this is misguided
• Should be created by HR, Legal and
Marketing…preferably someone in
marketing with social media savvy.

12. Employee Education
• Everyone from the CEO to the Janitor
needs to know they influence online
reputation
• Hold annual seminars for all employees
– show them positive and negative
reviews
• Reward employees who are mentioned
in positive reviews

13. The thing about reviews…
• Your online reviews will not, and should
not be perfect
• Your review ratio is a logorythmic scale.
The more reviews you have, the more
room there is for negativity
• Deal with negative reviews offline where
possible
• Watch out for Mobile Syndication! Yelp
and Iphone anyone?

14. Proactive Review Strategy
• ASK YOUR SATISFIED CUSTOMERS FOR REVIEWS!
– Don’t be pushy, but do ask. Think of it as asking
for public feedback
• Understand your review landscape and try to sculpt
reviews to affect SERPS
• Forward facing employees should go through the
review process on relevant sites once a month to
help customers understand how to create reviews
• What are you doing to make your customers actual
FANS?

15. Influencer Identification and
Outreach
• Invest in good tools to identify
influencers – there are several
• Influencer identification is an ongoing
process
– Surveys of existing customers can be useful,
but are hard to execute
• Create ongoing relationships with
influencers – provide them value

16. Influencer Identification and
Outreach
• DO NOT SPAM INFLUENCERS
– Ask permission to send them items
• Meet influencers offline whenever
possible
– Having a beer with an influencer can
determine their opinion of you during a crisis
• Consider monetary support of influencers
causes

17. Be Part of the Conversation
• Encourage employees to be subject
matter experts in relevant online
places
• Offer value throughout your entire
Web presence
• Be prepared to offer customer service
in a public forums (watch resources)

18. Creating your Plan – Who should
be Involved?• Marketing
• IT
• Upper Management
• Crisis Consultants
• HR
• Representatives from the rank and file
• Unions (if applicable)

19. What to consider?
• Online and offline – but pay more attention
to online, it’s harder
• Monitoring – YOU MUST MONITOR YOU BRAND
AT ALL TIMES!
• Mock scenarios – how will you handle each.
Think worst case scenarios
• Technical execution of responses
• Response Responsibility
• Do you know your search results before the
crisis?

21. Reputation, Influence and
Branding
• Reputation, branding and influence are
not the same thing but are
interconnected
• Of the three, start working on reputation.
The others will come if reputation is good
• Don’t let good branding get in the way of
a good reputation (logo police, anyone?)
• Monitor your reputation. Create a formula
for keeping your reputation solid – deal
with snags as they come

22. Thank you for time
Tony Wright
CEO/Founder
WrightIMC
tony.wright@wrightimc.com
@tonynwright
972-215-7167