Don't Be an Ostrich! Take Control of Your Reputation!

A poor reputation online can be enough to sink thejuice. Consumers were up in arms over the change
best laid marketing plans in an instant, not to mentionand made it known quite loudly on social networks
the amount of money in marketing dollars that can becalling for a boycott of the brand. Tropicana waited
lost trying to over-market poor PR. The wrong thing totwo months to respond and then changed the logo
do is nothing.back to the original one. The slowness of their
This is where having a system for Reputationresponse resulted in more damage as it was simply
Management comes into play. In today's world it is vitaltoo little too late. Dominos pizza on the other had had
for businesses of all sizes to have a strategy in placean even bigger situation with two employees posting a
that can predict and address reputation issues, createvideo of themselves on YouTube defiling someone's
a positive image and foster better customer relations.take out order. Yuck! Without delay Dominos was on
The Internet is a fast paced and uncaring tool forthe offensive with a YouTube video of their own
communication. It does not care if what is postedlaunching a Reputation Management campaign that
about you is good or bad. The search engines don'thas been viewed as a success. The story about
care either; they only care about making it findable.Dominos made it into the New York Times.
With the advent of social media, consumers now haveThe most successful way of managing your
a means of spreading the word about of company,reputation is to combine traditional PR with the new
product or service to the multitudes with a simple clicksocial media tools. There are hundreds of online
of their keyboard. In fact, social media has becomesystems for tracking, maintaining and repairing a
such a valuable conduit of information that the newsreputation with more being developed on a regular
media is using for their stories what people are talkingbasis. Knowing how to track, synthesize and maintain
about online. So if a customer has a complaint andthis new burst of communication is a must for PR
posts it online it can potentially and quickly becomesuccess.
local or even national news.A strong Reputation Management system is a must in
Take for instance the lesson Tropicana learned whenany PR strategy in this day and age and can be the
they decided to change the logo they had been usingdifference between simply fostering better customer
for 25 years of an orange with a straw to a glass ofrelations and cleaning up a disaster.