Real Time Brand Management For Small Business
How do you make sure your customers aren’t running you down behind your back on the Internet? That’s what Real Time Brand Management for Small Business is all about.
Take my experience yesterday. I took my van under warranty still to Dealer A for a suspected brake problem. They said “No problem… your brakes are good for 10,000 miles”. Two weeks later they start smoking and crunching. And, no, I hadn’t gone 10,000 miles in two weeks!
Both my mechanic and because it was under warranty, Dealer B, confirmed that the mechanic for Dealer A must have been on drugs or out of his mind. And the idiotic manager at Dealership A was just in “cover my rear end” mode. What was obviously their mistake that endangered me and my family was nothing he’d admit.
Had I had a mind to, I could have gotten on Twitter or other public venues online and started bad mouthing the company, naming names, etc. Warning one and all that these dirty low lifes were too dangerous to entrust one’s car – and by extension – one’s life to.
Of course if we went around punishing all those who we felt deserved it, we’d never get anything done. That was my motto yesterday but it did bring to mind the issue of brand management.
Big companies have full time specialists scanning the internet for complaints … meet George.
This pleasant fellow gives a large company a friendly human face on the internet by smoothing ruffled feathers and trying to help aggrieved customers solve their problems. In fact, he is part of a team of service representatives camping out on the Internet on behalf of his company. They know that people are more likely to vent on Twitter than tolerate a “voice mail tree”. Wait on hold? It’s easier to use a smart phone to gripe if they feel they are waiting on hold for too long.
What about your small business? Likely you don’t have the funds to hire George and his friends.
I’m sure this small dealership doesn’t have a staff person to handle complaints on the internet… but such complaints could kill their business, especially in a small town and they might never know why.
Responding to internet complaints has a fancy technical name: “Real Time Brand Management”.
How can your small business implement it?
1. Recognize it’s a problem.
2. Realize that while you can’ t make everyone happy, you can offer to help and that offer will go a long way to mitigate the damage of their venom because the readers will see your response tackling their complaint head on and offering help.
3. Allocate resources to real time brand management. That means you pay someone to check social media sites for the mention of your name. Check Google Places for comments left and other similar places online. “Twitter” seems to be the place where most of these conversations take place so if you must limit your search, start there! Just do a twitter search for your company name. Reply to it and offer help to satisfy the problem if and when possible.
4. Automate to save time. How do you do this? One way is to install the “Brand Control Plugin” for your WordPress website. This valuable piece of software monitors Twitter and dozens more sites as well as allowing you to ADVERTISE your small business for free on the major search engines where your internet business is most likely to come from. In just a few minutes each day, this software lets you know if trouble is brewing and allows you to respond to it instantly. In this way, your efforts at “Real Time Brand Management” shouldn’t take more than a few minutes per day.
(If you don’t know what a “WordPress website”, “blog”, or “plugin” is, having one and using this software could save you lots of trouble. Contact me and I’ll quote a price for setting up this system for you!)
Don’t care to automate now? No problem. It’s NOT essential. What is essential is that the task of brand management be attempted!
Once you’ve tested the waters, it may be a project that you only have to do weekly or monthly depending on the size of your business.
These simple steps can help y0u protect the online reputation of your business in a few minutes per day… the good will it produces among your current and prospective customers might end up being the best form of online advertising you ever do!
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