In the world of media today, it’s more important than ever for a company to have a positive reputation. From blogging to podcasts, even the smallest issue can come back to bite a company in the butt if they don’t handle it professionally. So what’s a company to do? Take an example from Paul Dunay and his “MRO” three-step approach to reputation management.
1) Monitor – Companies should designate an employee or hire an external service to monitor, moderate and drive positive discussions.
2) Respond – Technical staff should be designated to respond to any product or support issues that arise from communities and take the lead in responding with action plans to any negative sentiments that develop.
3) Optimize – Companies need to proactively optimize their reputation online over time by exploiting the positive aspects of their brand (an example here is GE, whose Ecomagination is demonstrating the company’s commitment to keeping the environment clean).
So how’s Columbia doing? Well for anyone who stays up to-date with the news, they know they haven’t heard any horrible stories affiliating them with sweat shops, plummeting stock prices, or any other major business disasters. Therefore, their monitors must be doing something right.
This unfortunately leaves them nothing really to respond to. However, they do have a PR manager and specialist on staff, which allows me to believe they’re prepared just in case.
I will however give Columbia a thumbs-up for their online press room. Lately they’ve optimized their press kits to exploit the positive aspects of their brand.
Posted by ducks4days 