Reputation Management and Social Media
Wednesday, March 16th 2011
Posted by Alex Beaumont
In the last few weeks there have been some well publicised negative feedback stemming from high profile business interruptions at Vodafone and Gmail. Negative messages about a company can now buzz around the internet with just a few clicks and the words themselves can be incredibly damaging. Here is a small selection of some of the negative comments on Twitter and Facebook:
“@vodafoneuk any chance we will be having a functioning network today? which IDIOT signed off your DR plan? (In W3 London still no service)
@VodafoneUK Why can’t Voda put something on their website telling customers what is going on! Not happy
@VodafoneUK Any estimated time for a fix? This is a joke, really is. Never had any of these issues when I was on #O2
@gmail First, GMail goes down (_still down_), then a #spam inundation. What next, Google, locusts? #gmailfail Tell users what’s going on!
I’ve been without network for two days now this will be day 3 yet you say network has been restored!!! you’ll still want paying on time I guess – 3 days!!! No you’ll want full amount or you’ll cut me off, whatever happened to good customer service…….”
Not something that anyone involved in a business wants to see, let alone get into the local or national media (e.g. the BBC’s Dot.Rory blog) who are now relying more than ever on social media to gauge the opinion of the public.
These events highlight several questions and key issues surrounding reputation management during a crisis.
- How can a business ‘control the message’ without going against the ‘spirit’ of social media or neglecting its personal connections?
- In an age where people expect more information more often how much and what sort of information should be placed on the internet?
- Can you engage proactively with social media in a recovery situation, or should your response be reactive?
These aren’t questions that can be easily answered but it is clear that, as in many cases, proper planning will go a long way to mitigating the effects of any incident damaging to a business’ reputation. Although their BS25999 certified Business Continuity Plan may not have worked 100% this time, Vodafone will no doubt be learning the lessons and will be even better prepared should another problem occur. This continual improvement is a vital step when it comes to actually activating your plans to get the most out of them. A recent survey on the activation of disaster recovery plans showed that many plans have problems but “none of the activations reviewed resulted in complete failure.” A BS25999 aligned or certified plan builds resilience into an organisation and helps it to cope with changes and new developments which might otherwise harm inflexible businesses that aren’t keeping up-to-date.
Whether these events will do long term damage to the reputation of Vodafone and Gmail as reliable technology platforms remains doubtful, there were even some supportive comments on Facebook. However the place of social media in our society is only going to expand alongside its ability to damage the reputations of businesses, making good planning more vital than ever.