E-reputation risk, anticipating it in your development strategy

This article was originally published by Charlotte Chanet, from the group SVP.

The e-reputation risk has become a crucial element in a company's development strategy: the company must control its image in order to optimize its performance and gain a competitive advantage. But, given the size of the digital space, how to anticipate and manage this risk?

With the development of new communication channels, there is an increasing e-reputation risk, which is complex to analyze. When an SME analyzes its market and particularly its competitive environment, it is important to study its reputation and that of its competitors.

What is e-reputation?

The e-reputation, an intangible asset, is the image and the reflection of opinions about a company, a product, on the digital territory which is the non-physical window of a company. It allows us to capture the positive or negative expression of Internet users who may ultimately be consumers. Indeed, e-reputation can have an immediate and significant impact on the performance of a company and its business.

The digital space studied is very large, which multiplies the e-reputation risks for companies. It includes: websites, social networks, micro/blogs, job boards, YouTube, ... allowing to analyze the verbatim and to highlight the tone (positive, neutral, mitigated or negative), the typology of the Internet users who express themselves as well as the themes addressed. The specificity of this new digital space is the amplification of the impact of information.

Reputation management within a company is generally carried out by a community manager who, when working for a company, often belongs to the communication or marketing department. His scope of intervention is quite wide:

• monitor the reputation of a company,

• building a digital identity,

• establishing a dialogue and animating a community,

• building customer loyalty and involvement (through publications in favor of the company)

• gain the trust of future customers,

• moderating web communities (managing defiance and bad buzz), according to the company's marketing and communication strategy,

Anticipate an e-reputation crisis by setting up an action plan beforehand. The defense of these digital interests requires the company's reactivity and a homogeneous and controlled discourse.

E-reputation management: a strategic lever

In a globalized economy that is increasingly competitive, it is essential for small and medium-sized companies to stay one step ahead and anticipate image crises, which can have a negative impact on their business and profitability...

The lack of confidence of a customer or a prospect can lead to a drop in turnover as well as costs linked to legal procedures. A bad reputation can also affect the attractiveness of the company for recruitment.

On the other hand, through the management of its image, a differentiating element can be created compared to its competitors. It is in this sense that it is important to enhance its assets and act on its risks.

Analyzing the e-reputation of your competitors allows you to detect strategic aspects and the associated opinions of Internet users, which may concern, for example

• Commercial development through the opening of franchises,

• Partnerships,

• A presence at a trade show,

• The acquisition or partnership with a company,

• Recruitment,

• Product innovations,

• CSR, which is an increasingly studied data in the e-reputation analysis of a company. This is becoming a major criterion for consumers.

The e-reputation, closely linked to the strengths and weaknesses of companies, constitutes a real competitive advantage and can improve its own performance.

How can SMEs analyze their e-reputation and that of their competitors?

Two approaches can be used to analyze one's reputation or that of one's competitors.

The first one consists in doing an e-reputation audit of the image of your company and that of your competitors at a given moment, to give a starting point to the approach and to bring out the global trends. This analysis can be integrated into a complete competitive analysis. This will allow us to specify the scope of the intervention, which could, for example, concern a product, a manager, a brand, etc., but also the typology of detractors and ambassadors.

The second option is to set up a monitoring system using paid tools such as Digimind, LexisNexis, Sindup, Geotrend, KB Krawl, Talkwalker... or free tools such as Netvibes, Google Alerts, Feedly, Swello, Inoreader, Talkwalker Alerts, in order to process a large volume of information and to evaluate changes on a recurring basis. Organizations with a small budget to allocate to managing their e-reputation can outsource this mission by calling on specialized service providers.

Through these two approaches, it is necessary to know the different uses and audiences of each medium and then to evaluate its digital territory.

As soon as the company's digital identity is known, corrective actions can be implemented if content harmful to the company's image is detected, such as the implementation of a specific targeted content strategy or the cleaning of Google pages via a delisting over the last X months.

To do this, it is necessary to contact directly the support services of the search engine or the webmasters of the concerned websites.