Earlier, I highlighted the fundamental problem in ORM or Online Reputation Management which leads to an aggressive culture within ORM teams. If the organization has strong customer service, PR and content marketing teams, the pressure on ORM would reduce significantly. However, it is still crucial to imbibe a better culture in the ORM team. And as usual with most cultural changes, they need to flow down from the leadership.

5 action points to build a better ORM team culture

Set the purpose of the activity: what are we here to do? 

The purpose of the activity needs to be set first and foremost in a very visible and clear way for all team members. It is never to “shut the opposition” or anything against anyone else. There are much better ways to articulate the ORM purpose.

Some examples,

• share our truth with facts and perspectives,
• shape the narrative,
• highlight hidden truths, facts and stats.

On lines of this purpose, create a document that elaborates it in detail. Include examples of ORM responses done right and done wrong. This should also include training resources which I have mentioned in point 4 of this blog post.

Moreover, the purpose must be re-iterated by various team leaders frequently through different means. Articulating the purpose, when done properly, becomes the center stay of your activity. It is not fluff. It is core direction setting.

Provide specific data, information and relevant positive stories: what should we say? 

Depending on the controversy, the ORM team needs to have relevant data, information to understand the situation and related positive stories. This helps ensure two crucial matters,

• the ORM team member is convinced of the need and purpose of rebutting the negative controversies. Otherwise, they may also start doubting veracity of the false claims.
• the team member is empowered with different information pieces that can be used to respond to the negative claims. Without this, a lot of them may slide into aggressive name calling, simply because they don’t know how else to rebut the onslaught.

If there are numerous diverse controversies around the brand, then some thought and effort would have to be put in to organize the various information assets properly. So they are accessible quickly to share with the team members.

Branding guidelines: how should we say? 

With ongoing aggression and barrage of negative content around the business, it is very important to establish response norms. And the brand personality that needs to reflect in this content.

It is important here to have articulated brand guidelines which clearly defines the ORM tone of voice. You can refer to my branding 101 whitepaper to understand how to do this better.

These branding guidelines will flow from your organizational branding guidelines. So it is important to have them in place first.

In ORM, you do need to account for team members using their personal accounts and thus, the branding guidelines can only be broad. Because each person should be able to bring in their own personal touch. This will add to the authenticity of their activity.

Training for each individual ORM team member: what should I be doing? am I doing this right?

One way to do this, could be in the form of onboarding video sessions. Each team member is taken through a series of training sessions once they join. This can also be done with weekly zoom meetings or other engagement assets. Either case, it is important to have some sort of training sessions available for the various ORM team members.

Doubts, confusions, anger may happen at some point. Especially, if they are expected to respond/be active through their personal accounts. Having some training material to go through would help put them in a more relaxed and thoughtful state of mind – they can self-analyse and look at the activity as work and not take it personally.

Such training guidelines also need to reiterate the tone of voice, the purpose of the activity and contact people who can help them with any further queries.

Measurement Metrics: is this working? 

Obviously, at the organization level, metrics and KPIs need to be set to evaluate the impact of the ORM work. Quantitative and Qualitative both. But from the perspective of culture creation, individual level metrics that help each person evaluate to some extent the value of their contributions should be provided.

When faced with baseless allegations or nefarious slander, people can lose their objectivity and indulge in silly emotional reactions. They may not be able to objectively evaluate where their efforts are required. So, I feel, it is important to give them a way to self-analyse their ORM impact. And hopefully improve over time.

That’s all I have on this. Happy to hear your thoughts.

I may be able to share some actual work sheets and other resources with you, but it will take me some time. Do sign up for my weekly emails, or add a comment here, so I can update you when they are available.