Reputation management

Your brand is your most valuable asset. In the digital world, that equity can be eroded very quickly. Through the web, the influence and power of consumers is greater than ever. It’s no longer necessary to take to the streets and raise a mob. If you have a gripe about someone, a business, a product, a brand – you can start a protest campaign from the comfort of your own armchair. Whether it's setting up a blog, an online petition, a Facebook group, posting a video on YouTube or running an AdWords campaign on Google, there are hundreds of ways for consumers to air their gripes, connect with others who share their feelings and raise awareness in the wider world about the issues.

It's not just negative issues that can grow quickly through the web. Positive stories about you and your brand can develop in the same way. The web is simply transparent public opinion – all those conversations over the garden fence, in the pub, over dinner about you, your business, your products or service that you could never accurately monitor before are being reflected online. Do you have a strategy to monitor, to listen and learn from these online conversations about you? Are you prepared to engage in this space, do you know how, when to do it? We have seen numerous examples of companies who have failed to get this right and yet, with the right strategy and partner, it is possible to meet this challenge head on.

What has all this got to do with search? We believe that search is the most critical element of digital communications. Search engines are the gateway to all the content of the web. They have become a part of our everyday lives, just like reading a newspaper or watching the TV, and the sheer size of the audience is staggering. Over 750 million people use search engines every month, generating more than 60 billion search requests globally. Search is the most popular online activity after email and, as such, the most important piece of digital real estate for your brand is what appears on the first results page of the major search engines for the keywords most valuable to your brand. Although there are still a few ‘walled garden’ exceptions, all the content of the web, from social media and video to blogs and news feeds, is crawled and indexed by search engines. It’s much more than just your website and making sure it's well optimised. It's about all the other content out there about you which ranks prominently when someone searches for your brand or product names.

We can also see a very clear relationship between ‘brand noise’ and search. When a brand is in the news or engaged in a major PR or above-the-line advertising campaign, we can see a significant spike in the volume of brand-related searches. What happens when consumers perform these searches? What do they see? Is it positive, negative or mixed? How can you influence this? The positive and negative potential is huge and this, we believe, is the new frontline in reputation management. It's also why we feel that only in-depth search and PR expertise can help you to solve these problems and effectively engage in this space.

We call this fusion of PR and search expertise ‘search relations’. VCCP Search is part of the Chime Communications Group and, as such, we are lucky to have in-depth expertise on both sides of the fence, which can help your brand deal with the risks and take advantage of the opportunities that this new world of digital communications holds. Many different types of agency list ‘online PR’ as part of their range of services but often this does not go far beyond basic monitoring tools and online press release distribution. For major brands this type of offering is simply not enough and real depth of expertise is required to develop and execute the right strategy in this channel.

If you need to make sense of social media and what it means for your brand, if you are unsure about whether your business is prepared to deal with online issues or crisis management, if you want to make the investment in your website really work as a communications tool and if you want to effectively manage your brand reputation throughout the digital space from Google to Facebook - talk to us.

We don't make things complicated and we won't talk jargon. The medium may be digital, but behind the social web it's about people, after all. VCCP Search will give your team the tools to listen and learn from what’s being said about you online and, where appropriate, to join in the conversation and communicate in a clear, open and effective way.

We can work directly with your in-house team and your PR agency to help you to develop an effective online communications strategy and campaign and to implement the systems required to help you monitor and understand what’s going on in this channel.

We can work on a project or consultancy basis, but we’re often retained to ensure continuity and expert analysis and interpretation of what’s happening online every month in relation to your brand. We’ll identify the opportunities and the threats and help you to develop the right strategy.

Our reputation management services include:

• Online reputation audit and analysis for individuals or brands
• Reputation monitoring and analysis
• Web mapping
• Social media audit and optimisation
• Digital communications planning including integration with offline PR
• Online issues and crisis management