Thank you ,Wednesday read your great ad:tech brain ” Blog Archive ” Reputation Management In The … blog ,your blog have a lot of very important knowledge and information for brand reputation ….

Some are doing it intentionally while hiding their true identity. We call them Fraudsters (and we wonder where their allegiances lie).

Some are simply uninformed, making statements based on what they heard from a friend’s second cousin’s best mate – or something they read ‘somewhere’.

There are antagonists, stirring the pot and using the uninformed to gather allegiances and gather momentum.

And there are the large majority that are on our side but are sometimes kept quiet by the ‘noise’ of the Fraudsters, Uninformed, and Antagonists.

Each of these groups needs to be approached differently and a planned and strategic approach is required.

When your reputation is being damaged online you have a choice – 100 tactical responses or one strategy carefully executed. Research. Plan. Execute.
Jeff Richardson

This post was mentioned on Twitter by SarahPea: RT @lucyjjames: how do can you manage your brand reputation online? suggestions from @jenatideagarden http://tinyurl.com/yesepq9 #atsyd…

No doubt those of us who keep an ear to the ground for these things or rely on Tim Burrows at Mumbrella to keep us informed would have seen last week’s hiccup of the “disaffected westpac guy” who accidentally tweeted that he was “Oh so very over it today” (http://mumbrella.com.au/westpac-tweeters-day-goes-from-bad-to-worse-18491#more-18491). Though this wasn’t a disaster it did receive its share of attention in the various industry blogs and online ezines. So as a study in online reputation management it is now squarely in the list of negative incidents we think of when we look at the subject.

Although there was no suffering client on the end of the failure it becomes something in the back of our mind and in a year we won’t recall the nature of the incident just some vague notion, “didn’t Westpac have an issue with using Twitter” and thus a black mark against the platform in our mind. If we let this black mark convince us not to use the platform we run the risk of far greater disasters or worse, missed opportunities. I’m sure there are organisations currently out there patting themselves on the back for abstaining from social platforms saying “… and that’s why we don’t use twitter”.

Westpac currently have close to 1000 Twitter followers. Reading back through their use of the platform there are dozens of instances of customers having issues or complaints. The customers are asked (via twitter) to DM their details and, from the outside looking in, their problem vanishes.

The simple numbers tell us for the 1 or 2 hiccups encountered by Westpac’s use of the platform there are currently hundreds of customers that have had positive experiences delivered this way. Keep in mind that Westpac are currently at less than 300 tweets so they’re still getting warmed up with this thing. Many of Westpac’s twitter followers now see their bank going out of its way to engage with them on a platform of the customer’s choice.

Lessons to be learnt from this example aren’t complex – Westpac are in the game and are currently ahead on the scoreboard by roughly 250–1. They agreed to be in the conversation and are coming out in front.

I’m sure when they have a real online brand disaster (and it’s only a matter of time) they’ll be able to talk to the audience they’ve already assembled and help portray it in the best possible light delivering real reputation management in the digital space.