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Ignoring Blogs: A Recipe For Reputation Disaster
By: Michael Snyder - Managing Principal, The MEK Group
Category: Marketing and Brand Development
A senior radio executive recently stunned me with this comment: “Nobody reads blogs, especially in Indiana. I don’t read them, and if I don’t read them, then I’m sure nobody reads them.”
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The sad piece about this? Over the past few years, I have heard variations of this comment from other senior executives in and around Indiana. The truth, of course, is that this mindset represents nothing short of a recipe for disaster. Blogs (short for Weblogs) and the blogosphere are here to stay and gain daily in mind-numbing influence.
Could this simply be a fad that will evaporate? Hardly, at least for the foreseeable future. Marketing Daily recently conducted a national survey that demonstrated that eight out of 10 Americans not only know what blogs are, they visit them, often daily. Technorati reports the existence of nearly 100 million separate blogs and more will be created by the time you finish reading this column.
Whether anyone wants to recognize it or not, the spread of broadband and easy Internet access has ushered back in the age of the consumer. It was no accident that Time magazine named its “person of the year” as “you” last year, eloquently reflecting the rise of a new era of individualism.
What does this means for crisis prevention and positive reputation management? It means that companies ignore blogs and other online commentary at their own peril. While everyone wants “buzz” – an organic and highly influential active discussion – to materialize around their products or services, there most definitely exists a dark side to “buzz.” An integral element of MEK marketing counsel includes a focus on developing brand evangelists – a believable and independent resource who can dramatically extend the impact of a marketing campaign. But there are two sides of recruiting and securing brand evangelists – if you burn this individual with bad product or crummy service (or in some cases, even the perception of same), that person will work just as hard to undermine, even destroy, your brand and your reputation. That person’s voice, as often as it is not, rings like a clarion bell across the interactive world.
While I was in Chicago attending AD:TECH recently, I had an opportunity to converse at length with a senior executive at Nielsen BuzzMetrics, an organization that specializes in measuring and tracking online buzz. The Nielsen executive spoke at length about how merciless bloggers and online commentators can be, and the devastating results that can erupt from a non-responsive company. On the other side, if companies actively monitor and engage blog writers with a proactive strategy, the marketing impact can be far-reaching and positive.
A case in point: a few months ago, Web traffic exploded on the MEK Web site for no apparent reason. When I ran a few keyword searches using Google’s blog search function and other online resources available to us, I found that a Canadian journalist had taken wholesale – a simple cut and paste – certain comments I had written about the impending “death of traditional advertising” and sliced them into his popular blog. At the end of the section he included a link to the MEK Web site – and weekly MEK traffic roared to strong four digits for months.
Here’s a fair warning: if you don’t presently have an online component to either your crisis communication plan or your strategic marketing efforts, put one in place today. As in now.
Because if you don’t, you’ll probably be calling me or another communication professional sooner rather than later to put out a roaring online fire. Or, if not a fire, you’ll be wondering why your competitor is eating your lunch and why you’re losing market share.
Right now, before you finish this, go to http://blogsearch.google.com and type in your company’s name. If by some remote chance you don’t find anything (which is unlikely if your company has any reputation whatsoever), that’s not a very good thing. That means that your online reputation is completely open for attack and that you probably have a very ineffective online marketing strategy.
By the way, the radio executive I mentioned at the beginning was indulging in what senior marketers call “self-reference criteria.” That translates out to “I like it, therefore everybody likes it.” Basing marketing decisions exclusively on self-reference criteria has killed many a company. With regard to blogging and online marketing, don’t let it be yours.
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