Online reputation can be a key to company’s success. There are many ways that can be used to make the reputation of a company flourish online. High reputation have many tangible and intangible benefits such as, if reputation is very high for a company then company will receive more customers who subsequently lead to more revenues earned, customers will prefer companies’ product and services over competitors, company will have ability to charge premium for products, stakeholders will standby company’s side in bad times and companies value in financial market will be boosted. However if reputation of a company is low then the business could greatly loose especially if there is any negative sentiment attached to the company’s name. Online corporate reputation management is the solution or precaution for the loss company face due to bad reputation. Online corporate reputation management can reverse these negative sentiments and comments by employing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) practices, such as posting positive comments to bring your company's reviews to the top of search engine search pages. Online reputation management is a process of using strategic SEO and various other methods to reverse damage done to an individual's or a business's reputation (defendmyname, (n.d)). Online reputation management is a practice of monitoring, developing and controlling a company’s online reputation(defendmyname, (n.d)). Taking example of Toyota, which suffered a big setback, February 2010 recorded more than eight million Toyota cars that were recalled by the company.
Due to sticky floor mats which slid down to the accelerators to faulty pedals, there was an accident in which people died. Various blogs, forums, review websites, news websites started downgrading Toyota. This was expected but what is commendable is the way Toyota managed its reputation online. Toyota launched a branded channel called Toyota Conversations wherein it aggregated tweets, articles and press releases related to Toyota and responded to their audience on Twitter. Toyota Conversations highlighted a page on Toyota’s website called “Toyota Recall” wherein Toyota provided all information regarding the recall of vehicles and also published videos highlighting Toyota’s high safety standards. The CEO OF TOYOTA Akio Toyoda gave a public apology and many news channels put up the apology videos on You tube and these collectively received more than 100,000 views. One video showing the CEO crying during the press conference received 17,000 plus views alone. Toyota published many videos on its branded You-tube Channel which revolved around “Safety” so as to maintain its image and consumer perception. Top search results for “Toyota Safety” And “Toyota recall” are from the official Toyota Press room. Toyota ensured that the top search results directed viewers to information controlled by them. In our view, Toyota has done a great job in safeguarding its online reputation. No brand can have control over what is written about them on the web by the press, bloggers, customers and even competitors but it certainly can mitigate the negative sentiments (http://gozoop.com/blog/toyota-an-online-reputation-management-case-study/).
So it is implicit from the Toyota example that one of the most important methods for developing and protecting reputation is online corporate reputation management. Online reputation management is done by being transparent with stakeholders and being front footer in addressing and resolving any conflicts, which can create damage to company’s reputation. Company should communicate and/ or signal to the customers, stakeholders, employees and market through various social media websites such as Facebook, Youtube, various blogs, Twitter etc.
But online activities are like a two sided sword as it spread bad image as fast as it spread good image. The ways which can be used for online reputation building such as online websites, including social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter, and also review sites can also harm the reputation. Product review sites such as cnet.ca can effects reputation in both negative and positive way. Analyzing an example of Southwest Air airline – when actor Kevin Smith was booted from a flight for not fitting into the seat, he went directly to Twitter to share the situation with his fans, creating a lot of negative buzz online – not to mention some negative press – for Southwest. The effort done by Southwest Air through detailing the situation, and the fact that Southwest was only following their policy, did not gain as much attention as the celebrity's choice to share the entire upsetting circumstance with his loyal Twitter following. The company apologized about the situation, but still had to endure the negative attention a celebrity brought to their seating policy. While Southwest Air is often lauded for its many social media successes, this case is a good reminder that reputation management issues can befall any business as in spite of successful media presence and many online reputation management efforts the airline took a hit through this incident. To protect the company against destructive comments and negative reviews and to subsequently build reputation, it should develop plan to control and tackle adverse publicity, as well as it should make a warning system for signs of any potential reputation hurting issues. As we have seen in Toyota and Southwest Company’s example the tactics used to manage reputation online included controlling internet searches, social networking sites profiles and blogging. So for the companies to have best online reputation management system, it is advisable to engage with customers through events, discounts and other promotions and should seek recommendations and feedback from review sites/ bloggers with good reputation, having many followers. An effective customer service model will earn a considerable amount of reputation to a company, which in turn will build customer liking and trust. If customers will be happy from your business then there will be less chance of you to get negative publicity as majority of negative publicity comes from customers. Also if you have a good amount of customers trust then it will back you up in time of controversies such as Dell did by launching Direct2Dell.com with great fanfare to prove to its disillusioned customers that it does care about their satisfaction (reputation-management, (n.d)). Continuously updating and informing the market with positive practices will help to maintain a good amount of positive space thus overshadowing any negative content, as Toyota did in 2010 to tackle the issue of negativity spread over internet. Communicate with both happy and unhappy customers what you are doing and how are you doing that, so as to maintain a transparency and thus a trust for example P&G - Pampers provided its new technology dippers ‘Dry Max’ in old packaging before its advertising launch which created a huge negative sentiments and distrust in customers against it. Never ignore the sign of problem or problem itself, as it’s always better to tackle the problem at start. In 2004 Dell decided to slash costs by outsourcing its previously spotless support system to an Indian firm which dramatically decreased the company’s customer satisfaction. The resulting downturn in customer support contributed to a single post by a popular blogger by the name of Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com. Instead of dealing with the issue publicly and taking responsibility for the issues that its customers were facing Dell withdrew and gave no official response. It took one year of reputational fallout for Dell to finally realize that it needed to face this issue head on and win back its reputation (reputation-management (n.d)).

References

1 - http://www.defendmyname.com/Reputation-Management.html

2 - http://gozoop.com/blog/toyota-an-online-reputation-management-case-study/

3 - http://www.stepforth.com/services/reputation-management/#.ULCIxIZTV_d