Are you proactively working on your company’s reputation online? For those of you that still ask “why should I bother?”, then answer: Is your offline company reputation important?

Last week we received a few calls and a couple of LinkedIn questions about company reputation and visibility (looks like many companies are “on a mission”)

I’m aware that many of you are still thinking, delivering when and how you’re going to use Twitter, Facebook and more importantly a company blog (phenomenal reputation management tools). Also, many of you have to even go through several stakeholders, Legal and other departments to deploy your social media presence. However, today, I’d like to share something that you can launch straight away, a no-brainer, something that shouldn’t require many approvals and also a fundamental way to leverage your company’s visibility and reputation. That’s a LinkedIn company page.

I would have assumed many professionals were on board but turns out only a small percentage of companies are taking advantage of this valuable resource.

Why is a LinkedIn company page so important?

First, answer this: what does your business offer and what are people saying about it? The majority of companies would probably have to spend some good time collecting testimonials here and there to finally deliver… by email? A LinkedIn company page portrays all that powerful information in one shot (one page) and it’s available to anyone in the world that wants to check out how good you are, even while you sleep
LinkedIn is also a strong business network with more than 80 million professionals so the chances that people will visit your personal profile and your company’s, is very likely.

The “Services” tab is one of the hottest additions.  You can load products and services and have your clients leave a recommendation (social proof). In order for this to work, you must proactively ask your customers to endorse your company. If you don’t make it simple for them (provide link), it won’t happen magically.

An opportunity for people to get closer

You can also “Follow” a company on Linekdin. This means that every time there’s a new member in the team, a new opening or people leaving, this information makes it to the LinkedIn news stream and via email reaching hundreds or thousands of business professionals.

3 important bonuses

On the upper right, there’s a useful call-to-action for people that want to learn more and get in touch!
Also, every single tab of your LinkedIn Company page has a spot for you to include a video. This is fabulous since it provides a much deeper taste for your audience. Videos are proven to be super effective tools to educate your community and help them make a decision.

Finally, you avail of free page analytics. All graphics compare your company’s numbers against similar companies.

What’s your experience with LinkedIn pages? Will you set up yours?

“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

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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