You are a leading FMCG company in India. Recently the FSSAI has charged your instant ready-to-eat snacks category with unhealthy containing unwanted nutrients. As Chief Marketing officer, entail at least five steps or ideas that you will undertake to ensure that this claim is false & rebutted including on Social Media & Web-based Platforms.
A well-known British author Charles Leadbeater said, 'You are what you share!' This must be understood while understanding what online reputation management is. There is nothing new that while talking about a product or a service, people usually tend to talk or take an interest in adverse comments rather the positive ones. To maintain a good credibility in the market, companies need to understand the dynamic nature of the market and upcoming trends beforehand. In the given case, the company is a leading FMCG company, which means that we need to maintain the huge client base from diminishing to the competitors owing to the charges of FSSAI. A company's reputation is one of the most valuable assets that it can hold.
In today’s world of citizen journalism, the news goes viral in a flash. Also, if it's bad news, it acquires a spin and speed that is virtually impossible to stop. Food brands, therefore, are more vulnerable to a tarnished image today, than in any other day and age. The complex blend of the online and offline world, consumer and shareholder activism, arbitrary decisions by the government bodies, unpredictable social groups, and hatchet jobs by the competing firms make it all too easy to fall from grace. In this situation, the loss of goodwill can play out in the form of reduced revenue, loss of customers or suppliers and loss of market share. Considering to avoid this, here are the five steps should be followed immediately.
1. Immediate response:
A viral video or a new against the brand or your product is like a powder keg. You cannot stop it from going off, but you can contain the damage based on your online reputation management skills, impeccable planning, and quick response! The best lesson can be learned from the Domino's Pizza debacle after their employee uploaded a video of unsavory pictures of how they made pizza. When this video threatened Domino's reputation and stocks in the marked, they answered with a quick response to a video made by the president of the company apologizing personally on behalf of the company. In our case, that should be our first action. We should understand the situation and quickly sum up our case and arguments in a short video and release it on multiple media channels. We should not let the void filled with the rumors created by the competitors and trolls on the internet. Let our official response should be the beginning of a close conversation between the company and our loyal customer base.
2. Online reputation management tools:
There are some remarkable tools you can use to monitor these keywords: Tagboard, Hashtagify.me, SocialMention and TweetBinder are quite popular for their benefits. These tools enable you to search various social networks for keywords and hashtags related to your company; you can even set up alerts so that you’re notified when your brand name is mentioned. Google Alerts is another great and free tool for receiving regular notifications of a new brand and keyword mentions right in your inbox. We will choose one of such best tools and monitor the internet for the status of our reputation. All social profiles and directory listings will be checked daily for new comments or reviews for an immediate response.
3. Claim and update all online profiles:
There are numerous local business directories as well as business rating sites where the companies may have 'unclaimed' profile pages and not know about it. Companies should search to find all of these directory and social listings, then claim all pages to have full control over them. Claiming such directory pages on sites like Yelp!, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and other similar local directory sites gives businesses the ability to offer correct information to their customers as well a capacity to monitor their online reputation. Most of these sites allow clients to rate and review businesses, making them important places to control and monitor.
4. Sound social media plan:
Create a policy for client engagement, for yourself, and other people who work for you. Keep it simple, and principle-based, as principles are simpler to remember and apply. It’s quite easy to post in haste, and then regret it for years afterward. Every company will get its share of complaints and negative reviews since it is impracticable to please every person. When these comments are discovered during your routine monitoring and reputation management, a response should be generated instantly. The sooner an issue is acknowledged and handled rightly, the smaller the chance of it becoming an issue that could damage a brand's reputation. In many cases, a prompt and courteous response that acknowledges the problem and offers resolutions can even improve reputation. We will surely invest some money and increase the team in the task of social media management. When the company's reputation is at stake, then it should deal with efficiency. In India, when the Maggi lead controversy happened, Maggi used the bots to give the same two-lined automated reply to every customer, at it bombed. Social media cannot be used like broadcast media and needs more than a mass auto-response mechanism to tackle the crisis. When your clients have been loyal to your brand for years and have a deep connection, their dilemma about the current charges is justified. This should be handled with care and highly personalized response.
5. Understand Legal Options
In few extreme cases where a business may find themselves the victim of persistent fake reviewers or someone is out to harm the business intentionally, there may be legal recourse. If endeavors to remedy the situation in a normal way do not work with complaints that are baseless and intentionally harmful, a company can sue for slander. A solid reputation is something that every modern business needs. Therefore, protecting the reputation with good reputation management practices should be considered a necessary part of everyday operations for all companies. With proactive online reputation management, companies can more easily control their brand reputation and do whatever is important to protect it in a competitive business world!
A well-known British author Charles Leadbeater said, 'You are what you share!' This must be understood while understanding what online reputation management is. There is nothing new that while talking about a product or a service, people usually tend to talk or take an interest in adverse comments rather the positive ones. To maintain a good credibility in the market, companies need to understand the dynamic nature of the market and upcoming trends beforehand. In the given case, the company is a leading FMCG company, which means that we need to maintain the huge client base from diminishing to the competitors owing to the charges of FSSAI. A company's reputation is one of the most valuable assets that it can hold.
In today’s world of citizen journalism, the news goes viral in a flash. Also, if it's bad news, it acquires a spin and speed that is virtually impossible to stop. Food brands, therefore, are more vulnerable to a tarnished image today, than in any other day and age. The complex blend of the online and offline world, consumer and shareholder activism, arbitrary decisions by the government bodies, unpredictable social groups, and hatchet jobs by the competing firms make it all too easy to fall from grace. In this situation, the loss of goodwill can play out in the form of reduced revenue, loss of customers or suppliers and loss of market share. Considering to avoid this, here are the five steps should be followed immediately.
1. Immediate response:
A viral video or a new against the brand or your product is like a powder keg. You cannot stop it from going off, but you can contain the damage based on your online reputation management skills, impeccable planning, and quick response! The best lesson can be learned from the Domino's Pizza debacle after their employee uploaded a video of unsavory pictures of how they made pizza. When this video threatened Domino's reputation and stocks in the marked, they answered with a quick response to a video made by the president of the company apologizing personally on behalf of the company. In our case, that should be our first action. We should understand the situation and quickly sum up our case and arguments in a short video and release it on multiple media channels. We should not let the void filled with the rumors created by the competitors and trolls on the internet. Let our official response should be the beginning of a close conversation between the company and our loyal customer base.
2. Online reputation management tools:
There are some remarkable tools you can use to monitor these keywords: Tagboard, Hashtagify.me, SocialMention and TweetBinder are quite popular for their benefits. These tools enable you to search various social networks for keywords and hashtags related to your company; you can even set up alerts so that you’re notified when your brand name is mentioned. Google Alerts is another great and free tool for receiving regular notifications of a new brand and keyword mentions right in your inbox. We will choose one of such best tools and monitor the internet for the status of our reputation. All social profiles and directory listings will be checked daily for new comments or reviews for an immediate response.
3. Claim and update all online profiles:
There are numerous local business directories as well as business rating sites where the companies may have 'unclaimed' profile pages and not know about it. Companies should search to find all of these directory and social listings, then claim all pages to have full control over them. Claiming such directory pages on sites like Yelp!, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and other similar local directory sites gives businesses the ability to offer correct information to their customers as well a capacity to monitor their online reputation. Most of these sites allow clients to rate and review businesses, making them important places to control and monitor.
4. Sound social media plan:
Create a policy for client engagement, for yourself, and other people who work for you. Keep it simple, and principle-based, as principles are simpler to remember and apply. It’s quite easy to post in haste, and then regret it for years afterward. Every company will get its share of complaints and negative reviews since it is impracticable to please every person. When these comments are discovered during your routine monitoring and reputation management, a response should be generated instantly. The sooner an issue is acknowledged and handled rightly, the smaller the chance of it becoming an issue that could damage a brand's reputation. In many cases, a prompt and courteous response that acknowledges the problem and offers resolutions can even improve reputation. We will surely invest some money and increase the team in the task of social media management. When the company's reputation is at stake, then it should deal with efficiency. In India, when the Maggi lead controversy happened, Maggi used the bots to give the same two-lined automated reply to every customer, at it bombed. Social media cannot be used like broadcast media and needs more than a mass auto-response mechanism to tackle the crisis. When your clients have been loyal to your brand for years and have a deep connection, their dilemma about the current charges is justified. This should be handled with care and highly personalized response.
5. Understand Legal Options
In few extreme cases where a business may find themselves the victim of persistent fake reviewers or someone is out to harm the business intentionally, there may be legal recourse. If endeavors to remedy the situation in a normal way do not work with complaints that are baseless and intentionally harmful, a company can sue for slander. A solid reputation is something that every modern business needs. Therefore, protecting the reputation with good reputation management practices should be considered a necessary part of everyday operations for all companies. With proactive online reputation management, companies can more easily control their brand reputation and do whatever is important to protect it in a competitive business world!
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