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Reputation management can be an elusive concept to grasp, especially for those with little online marketing or social media experience. The Corn Refiners Association, in countering the recent uproar over high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), has provided a high-profile, large-scale multimedia reputation management case study. Not one to pass up clarity-inducing educational opportunity, I’ve created an FAQ illustrating reputation management and a few other SEM concepts using examples from the HFCS campaign.
Reputation Management FAQ as demonstrated by the Corn Refiners Association’s HFCS campaign
How much does reputation management cost? It ain’t cheap. Google AdWords alone might run you 5K in a single month. You might spend $30 million on TV ads. And then there are print ads and blog comments and PR…
How much is this worth? Some people call it “positive ROI.” I call it “everything.” Maintaining positive perception of your brand can mean the world to sustaining or building revenues. Just imagine what would it would be like if a bunch of companies stopped selling your product because consumers didn’t want it.
Can we just clean up our online reputation once and have it stay that way forever? Close your eyes for a second. Picture this. Someone starts a nasty rumor that your product causes a few major evils of our time. Say…obesity and juvenile diabetes. Then people start saying your product isn’t natural. (Then they change their mind. WHEW!) You’ve got to fight this. You pull out all the stops. You launch tv ads and magazine ads and newspaper ads. Your buddies rally for you. And then, when things have finally leveled out, BAM! People start saying your product has poison in it - MERCURY! If that scenario doesn’t inspire you to consistently monitor your reputation, I don’t know what will.
How do I know people are actually looking for me online? No matter what your field, there’s usually an audience worth talking to. According to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, people search for “high fructose corn syrup” about 74,000 times a month. And another 12,000 times for “hfcs.” That’s over a million people a year. For those in the corn business, that’s a big deal. How many would have to boycott (or keep buying) your product to make it worth it for you?
Do I really need to optimize more than one landing page? Hello! How are you going to bury a bunch of negative study results and nasty news articles with one measly #1 search result? You’ll need lots of pages to knock bad press onto pages of Google that have no hope of seeing the light of day. Optimizing lots of pages, however, will likely have little impact on Clusty, which generates “Obesity” and “Mercury” (and “Dangers” and “Diabetes”) clusters on a “high fructose corn syrup” query.
Should I buy Multiple Domains? I guess if you’re desperate. It’s working for the Corn Refiners Association. They’ve got a mess of positive press at corn.org. And hfcsfacts.com redirects to sweetsurprise.com. Now, as for duplicate content…we’ll address that in a different FAQ.
Do I need to do PPC, too? Of course! That is, if you find yourself in the position of targeting keywords you DON’T want associated with your brand. You wouldn’t want to organically optimize your site for “my product bad,” would you? With PPC, you can organically optimize your site for terms you like and use PPC to catch those troublesome queries while keeping them at arm’s length.
Whatever you think of high fructose corn syrup or the Corn Refiners Association, their interaction in this feedback loop is noteworthy. The faces of media and marketing are rapidly changing. If the President of the United States and giants of industry know the importance of reputation management, shouldn’t we all?
Coming Soon…
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