ORM or Online Reputation Management is fundamentally an uncomfortable project. If it was about solving customer grievances then it would fall under the “customer service” team. If it was about publishing positive stories and brand building content then it would fall under “content marketing” and “PR or corporate communication” teams. The existence of an ORM team by itself implies that there is, most likely, some negative flack on media channels against the business.

So, already the business is in some kind of unfavourable situation. Naturally, in such a case, outside people would cast doubt and wonder how much of the negativity is true. “Maybe not all of it, but surely, some part of it would be true.”

The media hostilities could simply be due to the scale of a business – which means there are too many dynamics around your business leading to random flack now and then. Or one could be in a hostile domain like politics or religion or eco-unfriendly industry and so on. Or a popular but still bad product (happens!). Or some other reason.

Recently, there was an incident where an online education brand, WhiteHatJr’s ORM group chats have been leaked out.

https://twitter.com/whiteHatSnr/status/1327232281686257667

I haven’t gone into the details of this matter nor have I delved into the particulars of the various incidents highlighted in the above thread. On the face of it, these group chats suggest a terrible culture and working environment. However, considering ORM by itself is uncomfortable, a leaked out ORM group conversation would very easily put any business in a no-win situation with regards public perception.

I have been part of a fairly dynamic ORM team for an organization. And only after being part of the ORM backend, did I understand the many nuanced and complicated matters involved.

Often, for a lot of organizations, ORM becomes necessary due to various situations. Once an ORM team and process is put in place, it most likely will involve “groups of people” for organized social media activity. And as I highlight later in this blog post there is a strong possibility of it becoming a crass / aggressive environment.

Theoretically,

a strong marketing and PR team, should be able to manage online reputation as a legitimate and positive project for the brand and all the people involved.

3 Good Ways To Manage Brand Reputation, Online or Otherwise

1. better branding : reiterating the core ideals and purpose of the business would help the public relate with it and see the contribution and positive side of the business (get my free branding 101 guide)
2. better distribution of positive content including customer stories
   • increase the reach of positive content significantly – because negative news travels fast and is consumed faster. So it is important that positive stories are pushed more for significant public absorption.
   • generate authentic, truly significant customer stories (assuming you have them) – nothing shows the other side of the narrative than actual impact stories – and again distribute them in a big way!
   • put forth the point of view of the organization in a honest and clear way (even the stand on tricky matters as relevant) – and then distribute this so it reaches a lot of people.
3. smarter controversy communication
   • bring forth intelligent and authorative view points through third party neutral / respectable media channels
   • engaging with at least some of the hateful comments and bringing them to a discussion zone – I personally think this is very important. And this will only happen if the controversy response is toned properly.

We could delve deeper into the tactics for the above activities, but broadly they will help create positive brand impact. This would counter any negative impact well.

Thus,

a strong & meaningful customer service + content marketing + PR / corporate comms – should, ideally, take the burden away from ORM team.

However, that does not usually happen.

Practically,

there still remains quite a bit of work for the ORM teams due to two reasons,

– the opposition may not play fair. And may resort to dirty tactics that game digital platforms (mass negative activities like reporting, bad reviews, downvotes and so on)

or

– a meaningful customer service + content marketing + PR team is not set up.

ORM often boils down to gaming the various digital platforms,

• upvote positive content, downvote negative content
• respond to mass negative actions like bad reviews or trending topics with your own mass positive actions like good reviews and trending topics.
• report false allegations and follow up to get them removed
• ensure comment threads are positive or neutral. Balance out negative comments.
• Wikipedia wars

Here’s an AHREF’s article on 5 ORM tactics. They have also put a note, “online reputation management is NOT about quashing negative reviews—especially not if they’re objective and fair” because that will most likely happen in a LOT of ORM teams.

Inevitably, a general aggression exists in the team to “shut negative comments out”.

The ORM team can become a pretty aggressive and crass environment because it is constantly about seeing negativity and trying to shut it out. Sometimes the barrage of very baseless negative stuff may cause the team to lose their objectivity and they might not be able to really “feel” when a genuine complaint comes through.

So when an ORM team chat is leaked, I would be slow to judge the organization by it because the general benchmark would be fairly low.

Though in WhiteHatJr’s case, there seems to be a bigger issue at play. In fact, they have slapped a defamation case against the author of the above tweet thread. Read the tweet chat of the case here,

Delhi HC starts hearing Karan Bajaj’s defamation matter against Pradeep Poonia.

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) November 23, 2020

So how do we do this better?

Two main ways,

1. ensure a strong ‘customer service + content marketing + PR’ effort; naturally this will ease the pressure on ORM.
2. spend extra effort at creating the right ambiance and culture in the ORM teams.

Legal teams may also need to be involved in a smaller capacity in the above efforts. However, only if the controversies escalate beyond a point then (genuine) defamation cases may be considered. Or the opposing hate groups may even slap false cases against the organization and then legal teams get properly involved.

Next blog post: 5 Action Points To Build Your ORM Team Culture – Priyanka Dalal

Hope this helps companies with their ORM efforts.