Years ago, it was usual by companies giving official statements that put let known the key informations relating to the company. The reputation was built thanks the contributions of traditional media (newspapers, TV, radio etc..), Having as a starting point communications produced by human resources, internal or external, where press agent or PR manager represented the main figures. Internet has radically revolutionized this model of corporate communication. Today there isn’t any information that can’t be checked on the web. The news can be branched from any citizen and the tools available to make known a communication have multiplied: blogs, forums, video publishing sites, social networks, just to name a few.
Companies are establishing a new profile manager, the Reputation Manager which is tasked to monitor the reputation of a brand, mainly on the web directing all the initiatives aimed at improving the information circulating on the network about the company.
The observation is made particularly complex by their variety and abundance of items of information and promotion of comments, posts and opinions. A good way for companies is surely consider their customers, loyal or potential, not as locking rings of their production processes or marketing, but as part of its activities.
It 's important to be able to create personal relationships with individual customers, who have as final goal to gather criticism, opinions and negative comments. No longer able to hinder the movement of negative news, as could be done in the past, companies are required to manage their reputation in the best way to avoid being publicly, focusing on the web, which is potentially more dangerous than the average and now widely used by the public.
Some could advices could be: Always tell the truth, that’s first rule. Far from obvious, is to put into circulation only truthful information. It’s pretty useless, even counterproductive, to try to penetrate the market as a leader of social responsibility then if you implement child labor practices or processes with high environmental impact.
The second rule of good corporate reputation is to talk with customers. If, for example, are found on the net negative feedback is important to contact whoever posted them trying to better understand the critical areas and improve them. Recognizing an error immediately, endless strategic, is certainly more useful than a belated intervention when it is permanently damaged the reputation.
The third and last advice is using search engines. Google census of all sites, blogs, forums through the use of keywords as the name of your company can easily access all the pages that signal a company. In the Internet age requires not too much to impair the company's image was built thanks to massive investments in communications. Even a false report may be enough to create a negative boomerang effect in terms of image. That's because being on the web, work with a structured and continuous monitoring can help to immediately identify phrases, images and videos that can harm the company. And try to put away immediately.
Starbucks example
Even a solid company could lose its reputation in just one day. Is the famous newspaper "The Sun" to blame after many reports of ex-employees: "Starbucks wastes 23 million liters per day of water, an amount that would satisfy the daily needs of Namibia, one of the driest countries on the planet, and would fill an Olympic swimming pool every 83 minutes. "
According to the tabloid, Starbucks taps in a sink used to wash cooking utensils remain open continuously even when there is nothing to wash, pursuant to a measure of hygiene to combat bacterial reproduction.
In a late statement, the corporation said that the taps of the stores "are open at low pressure and only during opening hours to remove food debris, keeping clean the cooking utensils and prevent the proliferation of germs." This wasn’t enough to change the opinion of the clients and for the following months Starbucks had an huge loss account.
I think it's a little bit ridiculous from 'The Sun' to publish something like this. If they judge Starbucks for wasting water,they should also take a look at other companies, because there are way more of them who waste water and even a bigger amount than this. Of course the opinion of customers gets influenced quite fast and it's a shame for Starbucks that they lost a huge amount of customers. But it's also well known that the media can be very hard and there's sometimes not much to rescue after a negative article, even a comment from the company doesn't help in that case.
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