The outcome of the ANCs long-awaited KwaZulu-Natal conference was a win for the Thuma Mina crowd. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Access to social media has given customers an always-on way to communicate with brands — and brands that don’t have a carefully planned strategy to manage this do so at their peril.
“There are risks in being on social media, and there are risks in not being there, but your decision to create profiles does depend entirely on the nature of your business,” says Mike Stopforth, CEO of Cerebra.
“However, not being in social media specifically precludes you from opportunities to engage with and sell to your customers. That’s a real shame when it’s so difficult to differentiate on product and price these days, or even geographic position [with online retail taking the pain out of travelling to a specialist outlet].”
Mike Sharman, co-founder of Retroviral and Webfluential, points out that having a strategy in place before entering the social or online world is critical. “Twitter, Facebook and other platforms are tactics — you have to start with a strategy that supports your business objectives and that addresses the problems that you are trying to solve.
“Put your business first, and communication second, and then work with an expert who knows how to plug social and online communication into your business. Then only do you choose the most relevant platforms.”
It’s also vital to understand that your online reputation is not just about being present (or not) on social media — it’s about monitoring mentions of your brand online. Repeated bad reviews of your product or service will push the Google rankings of those negative mentions higher on the search engine’s results page — meaning that anyone Googling your brand will be taken to negative mentions first — with obvious negative implications for your business.
These could extend to losses in sales, negative press coverage, and even impact your company’s ability to hire top talent: today’s candidates have far more resources to learn about potential employers than they used to, meaning that all candidates — especially the switched-on ones that will take your business forward — are going to do their research to find out whether they want to be associated with your brand.
A recent Deloitte survey found that 50% of millennials want to work for a business with ethical practices. For a brand like Woolworths in South Africa, that has built its brand reputation on ethical business principles, the recent debate on the ‘organic-ness’ of its milk could be a deterrent to a candidate of choice, for example.
Technology brand Dell has gone so far as to attribute a monetary value to online reputation issues. While it’s not clear how it came to these figures, the company rates an average customer to be worth $210, it believes that an online detractor costs $57, and that an online promoter earns $32.
That means that that Dell believes that an online detractor has almost twice the impact of someone who loves the brand — and given the speed at which bad news of any kind spreads online (more quickly than good news, sadly), it’s clear that detractors need to be quickly converted to promoters, for the good of the business.
Sharman reminds brands that entering the social space is not something you can pause on weekends, much less ever turn off, and, according to a recent Brandwatch report, at least 80% of customers that submit a query to a brand via social media expect a response on the same day. Around half expect a response within two hours — and 30% of Twitter users and 25% of Facebook users expect a reply in less than 30 minutes.
Smart brands realise that social media platforms are not just places people go to complain — they are media that can be used to achieve great results in reputation management and customer retention, if a proper content strategy is created and followed. It’s simple — in the instant gratification-oriented online world, a customer that feels loved by a brand will be loving and loyal (for at least five minutes).
And that short attention span is something that brands need to remember, if they’re concerned about entering this arena, Sharman says. “Brands need to understand that if they screw up, and they’re the focus of a whole lot of online hate, there’s always going to be something bigger tomorrow that’s going to distract people. However good they are, they’re never going to be perfect — and that’s ok.”
Stopforth agrees, saying that great online reputation management is seen when companies realise that they are fallible, that they will make mistakes — but they need to be prepared to own those mistakes and manage them with integrity and transparency.
“A brand’s online profile should be a collection of stories that generates positive feelings about the brand — and in the long term, that will see customers believing in its products and services,” he says.
And that’s where it’s vital to realise that online platforms have so much more potential than conventional media. Advertising is little more than ‘push notification’, with consumers able to ignore messages that are thrust in front of them on different media.
Brands that create comprehensive content strategies, that have put the tools in place to not only have conversations online, but that have put the people and resources in place to guide those conversations, are the brands that are going to win at reputation in the online space.
Which South African brands are getting it right when it comes to managing their reputations online? Sharman says that Vodacom and its agency, Cerebra, are getting it right because there is a very close connection between the agency and the brand. “Vodacom takes online feedback very seriously, and goes in and douses any flames very quickly. The team is really good at nipping problems in the bud,” he says.
He highlights Avis for its exceptional personal service on Twitter — he books car hire by direct message, and just has to ask for ‘the usual’ and it happens.
“Avis is a good example of a comprehensive online strategy — the company is not only active on all social media platforms, it has created partnerships with loyalty programs and various other entities that see it literally all over the internet — which in turn promotes its search rankings, putting it top of mind and top of Google’s page one — which in turn encourages more business,” he says.
Sharman highlights Telkom as another big brand that gets it right online — but one that doesn’t follow through on online promises in real life. “It’s brave to engage on social media, but your brand promise needs to be supported all the way through your organisation — otherwise you’ll damage your reputation, rather than enhancing it,” he says.
Stopforth highlights FNB as an organisation that is getting online reputation management right, although he does note that, while the bank puts enormous effort (and budget) into being available online, customers then have the expectation that they will enjoy the same level of responsiveness when they walk into a branch.
“This is one of the challenges of such a complex, massive organisation, however — and brands that make promises online need to deliver them offline — or they are taking a huge risk with their reputations,” he says. “Anybody that’s promising something that can’t deliver is taking a huge risk. Social doesn’t allow for a veneer — companies that get branding right realise it’s a creative expression of the truth, and cannot be a façade for the organisation.”
This article forms part of a larger supplement which can be found here. This supplement has been made possible by the Mail & Guardian’s advertisers. All content has been independently sourced by the M&G’s supplements editorial team