Recession impact on ORM
At a recent meeting someone shared a short story with me that brought up how the recession and people having a lot of time and possible greviences on their minds could create real Online Reputation Management issues.
In this instance the founder of an Irish online social networking platform was targeted as another venture he was involved with had let people go. One employee who felt very aggrieved starting posting all over the platform with details of his case. It would appear he was very prolific and targeted any posts by the person themselves.
Before the proliferation this would not have been possible. People with a annoyance would have protested outside the company, possibly tried to place a story in some media outlet, which would have been vetted to a limited degree.
This has all changed. People using the web to air greviences is nothing new but this is likely to get worse as the number of people being let go increases massively meaning you have technically literate people with plenty of time on their hand and perfect outlets to complain. As people have shared their contact lists through Facebook, Wink, Spock and LinkedIn in it has never been easier to gain access to someones network and track them.
Thomas Brunchard has blogged on the topic of ORM in the past. Decision is always a judgement call and sorting out the issue off line is best with threatened legal action being one of the worst way to response.
Of more concern is the number of people who may not be aware of the damage being done as online monitoring is not on their agenda.
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Thank you for the reference Eoin. My big fear at the moment is that due to misrepresentation of online marketing/SEO as online PR that ORM will become a function of a SERP nerd and not a professional communicator.
ORM is a gift to the PR industry. It’s monitoring techniques allow PR practitioners to monitor and quantify hearsay and the infamous ‘word-of-mouth’. The techniques used to respond to the results of such monitoring are by-the-book, old school holistic PR interventions and not ramping up SEO to bury it. Engagement, two-way symettrical communication and becoming the authorative source by freely aiding the purveying of information.
It saddens me to see that boards.ie is still warning-off discussion of MCD related news due to MCD’s legal threats against the site. This was initiated due to elements of the Boards membership unfavourable reviews of MCD events. It would be cheaper to say they would look into the complaints and offer complainants a free ticket to one of their low cost/low profile but high quality shows in Whelans, The Academy etc. instead of the unecessary expense expense of solicitors and the uncalcualble damage done to consumer preception of their brand.
One more little thing, Brunchard is Brunkard. Think ‘drunkard’ with a ‘B’. Just watching my branding 😉