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Drinking from the Fire Hose: Reconciling the Quality vs. Quantity Conundrum of Reputation Management

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Today's communications environment is not for the faint of heart. Because of the speed with which information now travels, executives might go to bed confident that their organization's reputation is impenetrable, only to wake up and find that an issue emerged overnight and demolished that perfect façade. Often, these issues percolate in online channels that fly under the radar and, for any number of reasons, suddenly gain enough momentum to break onto mainstream media platforms. In other cases, they remain isolated within niche communities, but those communities happen to be among the organization's most influential audiences.

To protect their corporate reputations in the context of this fragmented media environment, executives have begun to shape reputation management programs that not only outline processes for identifying and reacting to emerging issues, but that also help drive strategy, marketing, PR and customer relationship management.

The crux of these programs: sophisticated applications that monitor conversations across media platforms, with particular focus on those with a direct impact the brand, reputation and bottom line.

In the early stages of social media proliferation, these monitoring platforms could have easily been mistaken for a panacea. They helped executives spot issues that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. However, as the number of platforms and conversations increased exponentially, reputation management programs could be as harmful as they were helpful. As executives began being inundated with an ever-growing pool of information, they had to dedicate increasing amounts of time and resources to determining which conversations actually required a follow-up action, and which could be disregarded.

This, of course, became cost-prohibitive, causing many executives to reassess the effectiveness of their reputation management platforms. Sure, the quantity of conversations caught in their monitoring platform's net was important-what if the one conversation NOT caught ended up spawning a crisis?-but even more so was the QUALITY of those conversations.

Today, reputation management programs must address the quality vs. quantity issue in the context of the specific organization's business goals, key stakeholder groups and primary challenges. To assess the effectiveness of their current program, or to determine their needs moving forward, executives should ensure the solution can:

• Retrieve information rapidly -as close to real time as possible
• Accommodate your budget by capturing just what you need, when you need it and in a form that allows you to use it most effectively and efficiently
• Prioritize information according to influence, sensitivity and reach
• Support daily communications activities
• Identify emerging trends and issues
• Offer perspective on competitors

Given the current trajectory of media's fragmentation, it is likely that the quality vs. quantity challenge of reputation management will only become more critical. By establishing expectations up front and shaping monitoring strategies accordingly, you are more likely to avoid squandering resources that can be better used elsewhere.

For more insights into reputation management, check out dna13's white paper, "How to select PR software that safeguards branding."