What part of online brand management is the most important?

Often referred to as ORM (Online Reputation Management), it should encompass many things. Listening, engaging, using SEO, social media, and PR, and your network are just the beginning.

Listen

Whether you’re using tools like Social Mention and Radian 6 or just using Twitter Search and Google Alerts it’s important to monitor for your brand name, products, and key employees to keep up on what’s being said.

Engage

When you see mentions (good or bad) you need to have some idea of what you’re going to do about it. Having a reaction strategy in place will help with that a lot. Figure out how and who will deal with negative, positive, and everything in between.

SEO

What happens when negative articles climb higher than your positive articles? Using a combination of SEO, social media, pr, and link building you can help get your positive stuff above the negative stuff. Having fully optimized content is important so that search engines can pick it up, read it, and index it properly.

Social Media

You should have all your profiles and searches going in the proper places (found by listening) so you can monitor and engage fans & critics a like where they exist. Build your network and give value, it will come in handy more than you might think.

PR

Who is already handling your brand’s image? Is it every employee’s responsibility, a dedicated departments, or an agencies? Who ever it is make sure they know what your company’s position and strategy is for online reputation management.  However you split it,  ORM is all about your Public Relations. Also, If you need to get something out remember, a properly optimized press release can go a long way.

Your Network

Building a good solid network can be your “Ace in the hole” for both good and bad situations. Need something good spread out wide? Share it with your network and get them to help you. Did something bad happen and you need help with damage control? Address your loyal customer / fans / friends in your network and get them to help. It will spread a whole lot faster than you doing it on your own.

To get a feel for how everyone else sees this subject I asked this question on Twitter and here’s the response I got:

I personally think that listening is THE most important part of ORM. It’s where it all starts, and it’s where you will continually comeback to. Obviously engagement is the next most important, but based on your business other items might come into priority after them.

What’s your opinion? What’s your take on this? What do YOU think is important when it comes to ORM?

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. Big thanks to Darin Berntson, Ryan Shaw, Scott Duehlmeier, Sara Brueck Nichols, Rachel Donner, Jake Matthews, Leo Dirr, JR Farr, Erica VanAmen Brown, Ryan Snethen, gigi thorsen, and seattlebiker for giving your input. If you’re not following them on Twitter already you should give ‘em a try.

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Today is the last day of my week at Utah CEO and to finish out the posts I hit on 10 things to avoid when hiring for social media. This list included the following topics:

As always, I would love to hear your ideas and feedback, so visit the article and as always…

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

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On Monday I wrote about 2 things to keep in mind when looking at hiring people for social media. Today on the Utah CEO Blog I covered 10 Things to Look For When Hiring For Social Media.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

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This week I won’t actually be posting on my own blog (again). I’m doing a week of guest posting at the Utah CEO Magazine Blog and it’s all about hiring for social media.

The first post is What to consider before hiring for social media (part 1) and contains 2 very important things to remember when hiring for social media. It’s also got a few other tips and ideas to keep in mind, a shameless plug, and a blatant tactic to get you to subscribe to the blog. It’s really everything you need in a post and then some.

The Utah CEO Blog was recently launched and I’m happy to say that I was one of the first people asked to be a guest contributor. It’s a great honor and I hope you enjoy what I think will be some good content.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

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I wrote an article for Utah CEO about document sharing an how Giving It Away Can Pay. Document sharing is a great tactic for companies that requires some solid thought and strategy behind it when you’re considering it.

Document sharing can help establish you and your business as an authority, it can be a great way to give something back to your customers / fans, help demonstrate your expertise, and can also be used as a lead generation tool.

Check out the article and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. In my effort to do more guest posts this year next week will be another week of articles that are hosted on other blogs, namely that of the recently launched Utah CEO Magazine blog. I’ll have three posts on hiring for social media up there next week so stay tuned for some good info.

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I’m going to be on the Web Marketing Weekly radio show today at 2pm MST. It should be a great show, I hope you tune in and after the show I’d love to hear your feedback.

Thanks,

Josh “Shua” Peters

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This weekend was supposed to be another SMAC Social Media workshop, but I was unable to get enough people signed up for it. Unlike last time, it wasn’t a great success.

Now like with anything else there are two ways of looking at this. #1 would be to try and forget it happened and continue with life. #2 would be to look at failure as an event, take the feedback I got and build a better workshop.

Feedback

• 2 days is just too long – This was a common email I got recently. I guess 2 days is quite a bit much for most people so I’m going to look at how I can lessen that and still retain value & info.
• Weekends might be better – I don’t know if that’s true for everyone, but I had several requests for a saturday workshop instead of a Thurs / Fri
• Price – Too expensive. I offered some discount codes to readers of my blog and the SMCSLC, but I guess that wasn’t enough. I don’t know how much to budge, but it’s worth a look

Like most people, I don’t like when something doesn’t go my way, or when something doesn’t play out like I want it to. The only way to truly be defeated by a failure is to not learn anything from it, and I refuse (as should you) to ever be truly defeated by anything.

Questions

What do you think? What would you like to see in a social media workshop? Are there certain topics, teaching styles, info, etc that you would find more useful than others?

I’d love to hear more feedback in the comments below.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

image by jurvetson

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The third part of this Social Media integration series, Integrating Social Media with Online Marketing,  is posted up at the Utah Pulse on the Social Media Minute. Check it out and I’d love to hear what you think.

Part 1. Integrating your social media marketing
Part 2. Integrating Social Media with Offline Marketing
Part 3. Integrating Social Media with Online Marketing

Thanks for reading,

Josh “Shua” Peters

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The second part to Monday’s post Integrating your social media marketing is now up at the SMCSLC’s blog. Check it out: Integrating Social Media with Offline Marketing

Part 1. Integrating your social media marketing
Part 2. Integrating Social Media with Offline Marketing
Part 3. Integrating Social Media with Online Marketing

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

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This is the first in a series of 3 posts

Without a doubt a part of social media is trial and error because when it comes down to it people are unpredictable. Sure we tend to follow certain patterns and rhythms, but under it all we ‘re unpredictable creatures who sometimes make erratic decisions that make no sense. I see it everyday and I’m sure you do too, this behavior makes it so you can’t know for 100% sure how something is going to work until you try it. However, with social media, you can hedge your bets with some good planning and integration.

I’ve been saying for a while that social media is a tool, however that tool is comprised of other tools like a Swiss army knife. It’s so versatile and potentially powerful that you can use it to achieve just about any goal you have online, but where it gains a lot of power is when you integrate it into your other marketing and business operations.

Using social media to enhance what you’re already doing and tap into your existing networks and communities has a lot of underlying power to it. It really is like having a built in fan base right when you start.

Do you have a newsletter you’re running? If you do then you already have a great list of possible fans you can connect with when you get started. Do you run a direct mail campaign of some sort? Add your social info on there as well. Let people know where to find you.

When you’re integrating the two you want to use offline resources to drive online traffic and you want your online resources to support and compliment your offline efforts. When you create this environment where each piece is working with and building off of the other then you will be able to build a stronger connection in everything that you do.

When you’re getting ready to get things integrated the first thing you’ll want to do is…

Analyze your existing online and offline marketing campaigns.

Look for where your social media and other online marketing compliments your other marketing efforts and how you can help them work together. Where can you cross promote? Do any of the online and offline promotions work well together and have the ability to convert online to offline and vice versa? Do a good audit of them to help you see what everything is looking like.

Take a look at them from separate points of view and break them up. Look at them individually and think about what each piece could use to give it a boost. Chances are you’re going to see that you already have something or are planning something that will compliment it.

After analyzing your existing online and offline campaigns the next thing you’ll want to do is…

Audit your existing online and offline marketing campaigns

Make sure they are up to snuff and working like they should be. Make sure that everything is in working order and that if you’re running any kind of giveaways, discount codes, promotional offers, etc. that it’s represented right across your platforms.

There’s nothing more frustrating to a potential buyer than seeing different prices on the site, social platforms, fliers, etc. Get all your ducks in a row so that the pieces you’ve already identified as working together will so so seamlessly.

After you audit, the next thing to do is…

Plan your online and offline marketing campaign integration

Never underestimate the power of sitting down and planning it all out. Get on paper (well a google, open office, word or other doc anyways) what your strategy is. What’s going to go with what, why, how you’re going to measure the results, etc.

Take some time here and look at the best way to approach each side. A good plan makes everything easier.

After planning then you’ll want to…

Execute your online and offline marketing campaign integration

Now that everything’s in place… jump in.

Get everything up and running and start watching the pieces fall in place together. While implementing your integration you might see that things don’t work exactly as planned, that they work better than planned, or exactly as planned. Either way be sure you’re watching, monitoring, and looking for ways to make it work better, integrate more, and build upon what you’ve created.

What do you think? Thoughts, ideas, tips, links, extras? Please place ‘em in the comments. I love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading,

Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. Above I mentioned that this is a 3 part post. First is an overview placed here. The second will be looking at Offline Marking The Third will cover the online marketing. They will appear on the SMCSLC blog and the UtahPulse Social Media Minute  and I’ll link them from here

Part 1. Integrating your social media marketing
Part 2. Integrating Social Media with Offline Marketing
Part 3. Integrating Social Media with Online Marketing

Image by AskDaveTaylor

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