Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

IAn instant is all it takes to threaten your business's sterling reputation online. You might have had an off day or the misfortune of dealing with an ornery customer, but it's almost inevitable that you'll come face to face with a negative online review at some point in your career.

But, as Adrienne Weissman, CMO at G2 Crowd, recently pointed out, negative reviews aren't all bad. Some 70% of Americans read reviews before making a purchase, and those who seek out negative reviews tend to be more engaged and are 67% more likely to make a purchase. Plus, 68% of people trust a company more when their reviews are a mix of good and bad.

Of course, the key to making the best of a bad review lies largely in your response. That means you need to be able to find reviews (both good and bad) as they pop up. That's definitely more social media monitoring than one person can handle...

And that's where reputation management tools come in. The following five reputation management tools are some of the best on the market for tracking mentions, discovering influencers, and managing online reviews as they happen....

Abercrombie & Fitch’s two-hour meeting this week with critics of its no-large-sizes strategy, and of CEO Mike Jeffries’ 2006 remarks that it only courts “attractive, cool” kids, prompted a mea culpa from the chain, and a vow to “take concrete steps to demonstrate our commitment to anti-bullying in addition to our ongoing support of diversity and inclusion,” the teen retailer said in a statement.

During the meeting, 18-year old activist Benjamin O’Keefe — whose Change.org petition urged A&F to carry larger sizes – Lyne Grefe, the CEO of the National Eating Disorder Association, among others, urged Abercrombie executives to add bigger clothes to store shelves, feature larger models in their branding efforts, cease hawking hyper sexualized advertising to its teen audience and redefine its warped, harmful notions of cool, O’Keefe told Forbes.com. Although the CEO was not at the meeting, the retailer offered a tacit apology for Jeffries’ remarks seven years ago, which included this gem: “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes] and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”...

As the horsemeat saga rumbles on, it is becoming clearer and clearer which organisations invested in crisis management training beforehand…and which didn’t.  This manifests itself most obviously in the performance of company spokesperson in their television and radio interviews. I was asked by The Grocer to assess the crisis communication efforts of the big supermarkets and as part of this I analysed the approach of their crisis spokespeople....

...Edward Burkhardt, CEO of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railways waited 5 days before visiting the crash site andmaking a statement to the media. His statement lacks a significant, quotable apology to those affected, while focusing too much on the technical aspects of dealing with insurance, finances and monetary issues. He even begins his statement by defending whether he is a compassionate person.

True, the CEO does not always need to be the spokesperson in every crisis. However, a crisis this big demands an appearance and statement within 24 hours of the onset of the crisis.

True, I believe a CEO should spend more time managing the crisis and running the company than trying to be a spokesperson, but a crisis this big demands at least a few hours to talk with the media and the families who have lost loved ones. News reports indicate that at the time of the news briefing, the CEO had not reached out to families....

Mountain Dew might have thought twice about the risk and reward from a deal with someone just as focused on branding as it is.

...The company even earned some good press for buying a promoted tweet to publicize its mea culpa. And the top of its website leads with a giant “We Apologize” note. Following these comments, PepsiCo hasn’t put an executive on a public chopping block, and Tyler has declared they loved the idea when it pitched it. Which begs the question of how sincere this apology is. Audiences will probably trust artists more than brands, so PepsiCo cutting their losses must also include a loss of credibility with Tyler’s base....