Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Research Blogs -> Connie Crosby

Legal Research

: Connie Crosby

Mesh conference workshop: Sam Ladner on Reputation Monitoring and Management

By Info Diva

Speaker: Sam Ladner of Blast Radius

http://designresearch.wordpress.com

Tylenol - cited as key way to address bad incident with product; pulled product off the shelf in 6 days. Today, with word of mouth on the web this would not be fast enough.

S. S. Stevens, 1946 "on the Theory of Scales of Measurement" Science,Vol. 103, No. 2684

How do you measure an online reputation?--
Are people judging your reputation?
How are they judging you?
What is the quality of their judgement?

There are some tools that can help you understand this:

1. Social media analytics tools - if you are being judged, a little bit about how, but not about how to respond. Most of these are free tools.

• Technorati - authority - how many blogs link to this blog in the last 6 months; media take a little bit to interpret; takes time to record and analyze; nothing automated about the tool
  
• Digg - some of the reputation ranking is manipulated, but still has some value
  
• del.icio.us
• Google Trends
• ePinions.com - unbiased reviews; helpful for brand that has a product; a good, free, easy place to start; however, you must do it every month.
  
• web analytics (e.g. Google Analytics)

2. Social media observation tools - if and how you are being judged

• Nielsen Buzz Metrics - very high aggregate level; between $35-$45,000 to use one time; if your brand is online-centric it is probably good value
  
• Cymfony - sometimes how you are being judged is more important then if you are being judged - compared cereal brand impressions online; looked at certain types of words; Cheerios mentioned most frequently, considered the healthiest; Count Chocula was a trailing 10th place, but most of the references were about nostalgia. This can show some kind of status to help you position the product.
  

3. Social media response tools - if and how you are being judged plus how to respond (the creme de la creme) - do more than you might imagine. Useful if your brand lives on line; try them once to see if they are useful. If your brand does not live online, use tools in category #1.

• Umbria - segmentation analysis, brand mentions - say they can do gender and age analysis; not precise but can determine trends - they seed the system, and once it is seeded it learns. They have a good turnaround time for standard requests; a lot of it is automated - tools that helps you qualitate conversation; observe and then engage in the conversation.
  
• TruCast - from Visible Technologies. They teach it a few things; it learns. Analysis is very rudimentary (good, bad or "good and bad"). Specific blogger tracking and targeting--who is talking and who they are talking to. Prefer to watch.
  

You must see trends; develop standard metrics. Have to compare standard metrics. Keep them simple. Measurement has to be regular; at a regular, predictable interval. Recommends monthly; anything less than monthly you will miss out. Monthly is the minimum you could do.

Governance: In an organization, there are practices and processes that govern the organization; measuring anything new, they do not have accountability for it. You need a person to "own" the metric. They are accountable for watching that measurement. Make the person with high enough level of authority, power. Good to get champions from across the organization together as a "task force" to address concerns as needed.

Audience questions:

Q: Your personal name, if it is the same as others, how do you manage your reputation?

Answer from audience: ClaimID or OpenID - you claim all of your online identities so you can direct people to your presence. Google will index it.

A: Not every employer understands this, nor has a lot of sophistication online to understand this. Many people will provide the Employer with a link to OpenID or LinkedIn.

These measurements are just a representation of your company's reputation; they are not actually your company's reputation.

Full post as published by Connie Crosby on May 22, 2008 (boomark / email).