Last Thursday I spoke on a panel at BlogWorldExpo (#bwe09) entitled “Social Secure-ity: Managing Your Brand’s Online Reputation.” Audience questions drove the discussion; I managed to jot down some of the audience questions/ panelist responses and have compiled them below.
In my role at Scout Labs, I have seen a wide range of corporate responses to these questions, as I’m sure had the other panel participants- Connie Bensen of Techrigy, Amber Naslund http://altitudebranding.com/ of Radian6, Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez of Crimson Hexagon, and Aubrey Podolsky of Sysomos.
Thinking back on it later in the day, a lot of this advice just isn’t useful with some resources and corporate commitment to social media- and from the tone of many of the questions, resources and commitment are still an issue. There’s no doubt that social media is here to stay whether or not companies want to “formulate a response.” The real question is which companies are going to recognize that better understanding their customers through social media is a source of competitive advantage- whether they decide to turn Twitter into a customer service channel or not.
From a travel industry representative from Las Vegas: How should we deal with negative criticism? How should we respond to it?
David Spinks, a community manager, asked about the importance of responding to content on sidewiki:
A gentleman who works for a hedge fund asked what to when everyone hates you:
Kat French asked for thoughts on what to do about clients who only focus on the negative:
Tracy Schmidt from ChicagoNow asked a question about policies for employee participation in social media:
Last was a great question on how to deal with franchises, where much feedback comes about individual franchisees that impacts the overall brand:
And Lacey Kemp from Seattle, I got your name but not your question- ask it again here and I’ll do my best to answer you!
I found it encouraging that there were a fair number of B2B marketers at the session- leveraging social media is just as crucial for them as it is for the B2C brands, if not more so, and they rarely get the same level of media love.
Some other memorable sessions at BlogWorldExpo were the ROI smackdown- very smart thinking and good examples from Deb Micek, Rob Kay, Beth Harte, and Stephanie Agresta- and the Real Time Web session from the ever thoughtful Louis Grey. The sessions were all taped and will theoretically available online at the conference site but I don’t see the links up yet. Much thanks to Jason Falls for organizing.
Previously posted on scoutlabs.com/blog on Oct 19, 2009
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