Reputation management case study. Share your thoughts!

Posted on Sunday, November 1, 2009 by Fred

Last Wednesday, the Measurement Camp Dublin organised by Simply Zesty was back. It was a smaller group than the first time but we had a great time and learned a lot from each other.
After the presentation from Philip Macartney (Bebo) and Matha Rotter (Microsoft) we went straight into three case studies. We picked the last one and the problem to solve was the following:

measurement camp Dublin

“A client of yours has a bad reputation online (through forums, blogs etc…) from a revolutionary new music device they developed that is guaranteed to help to send you to sleep. The device – the iNod, is very difficult to use and people have been complaining it goes off at full volume in the middle of the night.
To help combat the problem, the company has released a set of easy-to-use instructional videos that they’d like to distribute online.

How would you measure the success of these videos and what else would your campaign involve? How will you measure the success of the campaign and whether you’ve turned opinion from a negative into a positive?”

The strategy that Dena, Frank, Eoin and I put together, included both: an OFFLINE and an ONLINE front.
With strategies, there’s nothing written in stone so it would be great to get your input to improve the below plan of action. (Thanks again Dena for taking notes!!!)

Offline solution

Offline solutions/strategies included:

POS

Video boxes in key retailers playing the videos on a loop

Rep’s assistance to demonstrate the usability of the product

Hotline

Dedicated customer careline to hear customers’ complaints and a) direct to relebvant URL to view videos online or b) offer to email them to the relevant customer

Collate feedback – post viewing of the video too. To find out what customers thought of them and if they were useful

PR/Blogger event

Explain that we’ve made a mistake with the user instructions and because we’ve listened to the feedback we’ve made some instructional videos

Launch the new videos

Key journos – both tech & non-tech specific

Include some of the more vocal/influential bloggers – be very specific that we’re not trying to “buy” or “fix” their opinion, more that we want to include them because we value their opinion, wether it be positive or negative

Press release

Non-digital & digital version

Digital version to have embedded videos/link & feedback option

POS (Point of Sale)

Video boxes in key retailers constantly playing the video tutorials.
Reps’ assistance to demonstrate the usability of the product and ensure immediate feedback.

Hotline

Dedicated care-line to handle customers’ complaints. We would direct them to the relevant URL of the video tutorial.
Collate feedback – post viewing of the video too. To find out what customers thought and if the material was useful or how could it be improved.

PR/Blogger event

Explain that we’ve made a mistake with the user instructions and because we’ve listened to the feedback, we’ve made some instructional videos
Launch the new videos.
Key journos – both tech & non-tech specific
Include some of the more vocal/influential bloggers – be very specific that we’re not trying to “buy” or “fix” their opinion, more that we want to include them because we value their opinion (positive or negative)

Press release

Non-digital & digital version
Digital version to have embedded videos/link & feedback option

Online solution

Forums/Blogs/Twitter/Facebook

Already tracking them clearly – continue to do this & monitor what’s being said
Engage commenters in all forums – acknowledge feedback, answer queries, explain launch of videos and share the link!
Ensure all comments come from one “person” or character for synergy
Direct users to video URL or embed the videos where possible

Product Homepage

Videos front & centre so that they can’t be missed. There would be a clear space to make comments and a “share this” button.
SEO campaign to ensure that the iNod site is always top of lists for specific search results (postive and negative keywords)
Videos should include a call-to-action to compel viewers to give feedback
Poll Daddy poll?
Useful versus not useful?
Rate this?
Email campaign – make use of existing database (Acknowledge the issue & offer help & advice)

Good post? come on, share your comments below! We’d love to hear your thoughts about this campaign!

Best,

Fred

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Category: Events, Social media.

Tags: , case study, measurent camp, reputation management, social media strategy, team work

enormous

Hi Fred,

I like this post and your ideas for increasing engagement are spot on. However (and I hate to be schoolmarm-ish!) your group did not answer or you have not posted here about the part of the question which is the burning issue in the social media space at the moment:
How would you measure the success of these videos and what else would your campaign involve? How will you measure the success of the campaign and whether you’ve turned opinion from a negative into a positive?”

Is it quantitative based on views of the video? Or is it (the more time consuming but valuable) qualitative measurement where the team collect comments, posts on blogs and forums and analyses them? How do you ensure the sample collated is a representative sample? How do you ensure the validity of the results of this change research? I'm not saying I have the answer and I know that your group may not have had the time on the day to tackle the second part of the task but maybe your commenters here could share their ideas or experience.

Thanks though - it got me thinking and also let me hear a little more about what went on at an event that I couldn't make it to myself!
Roseanne

Channelship

Hi Roseanne,

Thanks for taking the time to write a good comment!
I'm with you in the sense that we need to focus more in the "measure" than the strategy. It's easy to shift that way since there's no platform yet that measures it all. On the other hand it turns almost impossible to track intangible metrics like sentiment. I believe in this particular campaign, sentiment plays a big role.
With the iNod the main objective was to turn bad feedback into positive so there are ways to measure that even though most will be manual and time consuming:

- Video tutorials / reps' assistance / hotline: it's important the amount of people that watch them but more important to measure if they were satisfied with the answer and will keep using the product. That can be measured.

- Bloggers / journos: we could measure here if the videos are well done and if the strategy is accurate from their feedback. The rest is simply expect that they write about the product and encourge more people to land on our landing pages, watch the videos or call the hotline to asses the final results.

- Online solution: this plays a major role since most of the activity will generate a lot of users talking about the iNod. Through automatic alerts and following the conversation in the selected networking platforms, it is possible to measure the amount of "mentions" and later define the percentage that were positive and negative.

- Tools: Finally, through widgets, plugins and SEO you can measure the level of engagement. e.g: Poll Daddy will tell you how many people participaded and the % that are satisfied, Webmaster tools will give you an idea o the people looking up the INod in Google and the weight on the different landing pages. These metrics will add value to the overall delivery.

How do we ensure the validity of the results of this change research? I guess that will depend on the strategy and the % of risk that it will allow for bogus feedback. As far as the entire team executing the activities, we gotta trust each other.
Hope that answered at least a piece of your question :)
Best
Fred

Frank Daly

Great solutions.
One other option you could consider along with the instructional videos is a question and answer video where a person asks a number a number of questions about product (feature questions and issue questions) and an expert answers the questions (demonstrating if necessary)

Channelship

Thanks for your comment Frank. Instructional videos with questions and answers are a good option too. I guess we should measure later the level of satisfaction from users and focus on the effectiveness of the answers. Also, some answers could come from satisfied users! :)