Reputation Management – Researching Your Reputation

Brand and strategy research can have a great impact on your reputation management strategy. Knowing and understanding the messages that are floating around can help you decide what direction you’d like to go in, as well as possible pitfalls.

Reputation management has always been important, but in today’s market where consumer trust is at an all-time low, discerning companies are acknowledging the importance of their own reputations as corporate assets. Companies and individuals are now recognizing that to actively manage their reputation, the must first measure it. With so much information floating around the world wide Web, it’s possible for individuals such as Matt Drudge and Perez Hilton to be household names, even though they employ virtually no one.

If you’re searching for a reputation management company, look for one that partners with its clients to provide deep insights on your company’s current reputation, as well as one that strives to understand your brand promises and goals. Before you can know where to go, you must know where you are. There are various tools at your disposal to find out what the world thinks of you, or if they even think of you at all. There are demonstrable links between strong reputations (or perceptions) and positive supportive behaviors people have toward those companies. Product purchases, investment behavior and so on are all impacted by reputation management. Also, experts have identified a strong positive relationship between a change in reputation and a change in financial success or failure.

Case in point, consider AIG. Before these last 6-12 months, AIG was a well respected insurance company that supported various sports teams and that was considered a multi-billion dollar titan. Today, after consistent negative press and public embarrassment, AIG is considered one of the causes of the economic downturn (even though that’s absurd). When AIG takes the time to research their reputation, using Internet tools, media history and other resources, they will be able to trace their corporation’s poor reputation to the economic collapse.

The various tools available include some that are very simple, such as Google and Yahoo, and others that take a bit more finesse, such as Lexis Nexis. Using the tools you have available can mean finding out not just what your reputation currently is, but how that happened. For example, KFC is the kind of brand that regularly bounces up and down. When the country wanted healthier food, KFC almost became a poster child for obesity. Then, things seemed to die down. Recently, when Oprah offered coupons for KFC on her Website, and the company had problems filling the requests, near riots broke out at the stores. Some reputation management research will demonstrate that while companies have big ideas, they have poor follow through. KFC thought partnering with Oprah would help their bottom line, but when their operations weren’t lined up with their marketing, it turned bad.

Not only should you research your current reputation, online and otherwise, but you should annually research your reputation so that you can take a continued inventory.