Oriol Gifra

Welcome to my new blog.  It  wants to give to my friends, fans and followers (whatever you want to express it) a more complet vision on my thoughts based on 3 pillars: professional, politics & social and vital (personal) thoughts.

Once said it, let me use this first post to write a few lines about Online Reputation.

Recently I had a very bad experience with a real state company I rented my apartment. They simply did not want to refund me the deposit I paid when I left the apartment.

When someone’s attitude with the customers is so miserable the first thought it came to my mind was: The problem of this company is not (only) about their customers care, it is worst, it is about taking care of themselves, it is about their brand and corporate reputation…

Let’s list 10 costs to avoid related with Negative Online Reputation:

• Loss of brand confidence
• Brand image damage (brand frustrated emotions and expectations)
• Potential spread of negative message through social networks
• Obviously,  lost of customers
• Probably, sales decrease… may be not in short term, but in middle and long term
• Who wants to work with a bad reputation brand?
•  High cost (money and time)  to rebuild prestige for the brand
• It (people negative comments, messages, posts…)  may be out of your marketing and press department control
• Advantage for your competitors
• Who will solvent the problem once created? Same people who did not avoid it occur? Are they ready and know how to deal with Online Reputation Management (ORM)?

Some years ago I had the opportunity to work with an online reputation case for global consumer’s food brand. When typing their brand in the Google search box, the Google suggest system came out with 6 negative attributes associated to the brand from 10 results list… and in organic SERP’s from 18 results, 5 of them where at the upside of the screen…

The problem was that meesages did not were true, but at corporate lever nobody was ware it was happening or it was considered not important. After 6 month it was first priority for the communication department because among others pergned woman started not buying the product thinkig it was not healthy for them, among other customers.

In other case I was leading with the problem was nobody wanted to go to work with my customer’s company. An ex-worker posted in a blog some lies about the company relation with the employees. Furthermore, some of the customers returned some of the purchased products. Still today they are on legal issues.

Yes, users and customers have the power, the brand power. In this new scenario, some actions need to be taken from corporations:

1. The company staff is the brand. Any single customer conflict may be, if not solvented, a digital brand bomb. From customer’s care departments up to sales and marketing, all who deal with customers have in their hands the responsability to take care of the brand they are working for.
2. All must be user and customer centric. Forget old times where corporations had the power. Not anymore!. Online, people have the power, buzz is the weapon.
3. Be ready to have people skilled in deactivating digital brand bombs (angry users/customers).
4. The human value marketing (sincerity, kindness, love, service, truth, trust …) is the new marketing. Hire people with true human values.
5. If you do things well, do not worry. Customers will be your best department of communication  (Eg. Apple). If not, be ready for the war, the brand war.

Still today I hear opinions coming from companies they are afraid in being on Social Networks. I always say the same: “do not worry, you are already on Social Networks, people is already commenting on you”.

Online Reputation is the new marketing, Crowdsourcing Marketing!.  People build the brand, not the company. Is your company ready? And you?.