One of my goals this year was to do a study on reputation management. As we all factor in the effects of new media on our brands, I felt this was a topic with long-lasting appeal to every marketer.
My hypothesis going into the creation of these questions was that B2B marketers (including yours truly) just aren’t adequately prepared for an online reputation crisis. Dell wasn’t, Wal-Mart wasn’t. If those big B2C brands weren’t ready, I was betting we weren’t ready either. And I was right!
To be totally transparent with you, I wasn’t surprised by many of the responses to my survey. The bulk of you are monitoring your reputation in some way, shape or form. But are you poised to respond in the case of an online reputation crisis? 55% admitted you weren’t.
Perhaps you need stronger guidelines in place, like a blogging policy. Two-thirds of respondents don’t have one!
Many of you are do-it-yourselfers when it comes to monitoring your reputation. Is that perhaps because your company hasn’t made this a strategic priority? 53% admitted it wasn’t a strategic priority for you …. yet!
My goal here is to give you the state of the union when it comes to monitoring reputations online. This data is bound to change, so I hope I get you thinking of ways to close the gap with your organization’s reputation!
Click here to download the free research report
Special thanks to my sponsors …. Trackur.com, run by the renowned Andy Beal of the blog MarketingPilgrim.com, and Marketing Profs’ equally renowned Ann Handley for their support on this survey.
Tags: Online Reputation, Reputation Management, Reputation Monitoring
Interesting survey results – reputation management online is certainly such a new area that most are ill-equipped to handle that sort of crisis… they should learn fast because reputation management is certainly something that must be tended to these days! It can make or break you.
This is a very informative survey, Paul. PepperDigital participated in a webinar with PR News about building and managing a company’s reputation online a few months back. We conducted a survey for the webinar and according to the results, most respondents said they were only somewhat prepared for a digital crisis. If you are interested in reading more, you can see the slides from the webinar here – http://pepperdigital.typepad.com/pepperdigital/2008/03/in-case-you-mis.html
Excellent comment Pepper – I will check that survey out
That was definitely one of my key hypothesis I had going into the survey