Tapping the Digital Dialog

Ketchum Digital in the Spotlight

Whether you like it or not, or whether you understand it or not, there's no denying that the influence of social media is increasing. Whether it's the plane crash on the Hudson River or the fire at the new Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel, social media is making news and spreading news. As social media continues to disrupt and transform the communications landscape, Ketchum's service offerings to address these opportunities and challenges continue to grow. In this edition of Bulletin we've put a special focus on Ketchum Digital, which helps clients embrace online channels to better manage their communications, to bring you up to date with the latest trends and tactics.

Furthermore, in these times of recession, consumers are spending more time doing due diligence before they buy. More often these days consumers are complementing word-of-mouth (WOM) referrals with WOM searches online. Clearly, even in China there is a high probability that your brand will be subjected to scrutiny on the internet by your everyday consumer.

And yet many companies in China - both multinationals and homegrown - ignore, at best, or dismiss, at worst, what's being said about their company by online audiences, much less have programs in place to engage those audiences.

Worst-case scenario - an isolated BBS rant or a compromising video spreads like wildfire and by the time you notice and take steps to respond it's too late. The damage is done and there's no way to clean up the mess.

Less dire but still short-sighted - you miss opportunities to more personally engage, converse and build relationships with people who have an influence on your reputation - customers, employees, industry experts, etc.

What's your company's social media strategy? Are you proactively engaging audiences online to build your reputation?

If you're not sure, ask yourself the following questions for your company or organization:

• Are we currently aware of what's being said about our company online? Are we actively monitoring what people are saying about us and our competitors?
• Have we seen any trends in postings about our company by individuals online? Are postings primarily positive, neutral or negative? Do we see any
• negative comments that might snowball?
• Do we have a strategy for engaging key audiences online, particularly using social media to deepen relationships?
• Who, if anyone, in our company is participating in social media? How does what they are posting online reflect on the company?
• Have we identified the resources - internal or external - to develop, manage and implement a social media program?

The need for authenticity

Today's Internet allows any individual to become a publisher and engage in personal, direct communication. The personal nature of social media makes it the natural domain of public relations whose key value propositions include building relationships, fostering trust and credibility, and enhancing reputations.

Too many companies today fail to recognize the authenticity and transparency that's required to engage in this space.

Take blogging and blogger outreach as examples. Popular marketing approaches often include "seeding" blogs or BBS sites, an approach that might be implemented by hiring people and paying them to post positive comments about a company or its products and services on social media sites.

Attempts at blanketing bloggers and BBS with cut-and-paste marketing messages create little traction and may backfire if recipients openly voice their frustration or mock the effort.

Online marketing approaches (such as search engine marketing, online advertising, etc) are important to driving website traffic and expanding online reach. But public relations approaches in the digital sphere can build deeper relationships and expand trust.

Developing an online reputation management program

The first step to developing a program is to begin to monitor what's being said about your company. From there you can begin to develop a program for counteracting any negative comments or conversations and for promoting a more positive reputation.

As with traditional communications programs, it's important that your online reputation management effort be strategic in nature - using social media tools to reach your most important audiences with a message that resonates. Social media must be incorporated as a business initiative supporting your goals and objectives, rather than seen as an isolated or ad-hoc marketing gimmick.

Tools you may wish to employ in your program include:

• Blogging - A blog written by an executive or expert in your company can give your company a powerful voice online.
• Blogger outreach - Identify and reach out to the most influential bloggers in your industry by having an executive from your company comment on blog postings or by offering interviews with executives and third-party spokespersons.
• BBS quick response - Responding directly or indirectly to BBS comments ensures you are part of the conversation rather than a bystander.
  Online executive positioning - Make sure leading executives and experts from your company participate in key social networking sites - both international (e.g. Facebook and LinkedIn) and Chinese (e.g. Kaixin Wang).
• Online video - Produce a series of YouTube-style videos featuring interviews with key company executives and experts and post to the company's website and key social networking and video sharing sites.

Susan Boyle's appearance on the UK's Britain's Got Talent TV show has received over 50 million views on Youtube globally and was the most talked about subject of the week on Twitter in April.

The US Airways Flight 1549 crash on the Hudson River went round the world on Twitter before the media caught up with the story in January.

In February the Mandarin Oriental, still under construction in Beijing, went up in flames during an unauthorized fireworks display triggering a wave of internet commentary in China.

The Growth of Social Media in China

The growth and influence of social media (blogs, BBS, social networks, video sharing sites, etc) in China continues to expand rapidly and at a scale unlike anywhere else in the world. Just look at some recent numbers:

• 224 million broadband consumers in China regularly make contributions through a diverse number of social media channels - twice as many as in the US.
• 41 million of them are contributing content online through six or more activities (uploading photos, publishing blogs, posting ratings/reviews, etc).
• Heavy users are connecting with an average of 84 people in a typical week.
• 102 million Chinese consumers aged 13 and above are using the mobile web, or 42% of the broadband population.
  Heavy users of social media are young adults, online shoppers, and the middle class.

How to Monitor Online

Monitoring the sentiment of how consumers are reacting and feeling about companies, brands, products and services online helps communicators develop a deeper understanding of their target audiences and act rapidly and positively to consumer reactions.

Ketchum has developed an in-house proprietary system which monitors blogs, BBS forums, websites and photo and video portals based on customer defined keywords. This specialized monitoring forms part of Ketchum's one-stop Online Reputation Management service which uses Ketchum's global PR team to manage and protect brands on the Internet.

Meme Tracking

Internet memes are catch-phrases, stories, trends and concepts that spread quickly from person to person, usually through online sharing, until they become a cultural phenomena. Ketchum has a dedicated team of experts tracking day-to-day conversations on the web in order to identify the "memes" of importance to our clients so that we can use this knowledge to insert our clients' messages and/or brands into the conversation.