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10 steps to 2.0 interactivity nirvana

It occurred to me in the past few weeks that there was some kind of missing link in the evolutionary state of the twenty first century corporation towards interactivity. As expressed in an earlier article entitled "15 golden rules for web 2.0", there is a strong requirement for large enterprises to launch interactive marketing initiatives - be they called 2.0, pinko marketing or anything else for that matter - not just because of the buzz word but because there is growing consciousness of the need to engage in better, less top-down discussions with one's clients. The whole world is awash with concepts like wikinomics (past posts on this subject) and co-marketing, but the real issue is not about whether this is required but in fact, how to make the rubber meet the road.

And that's where the missing link is to be found. There is the concept and even the urgent need on the one hand, and, on the other hand, there is a handful of complex, esoteric tools which managers have heard of but rarely grasp. At the end of the day there is nothing really complex about a blog or an ideagora, but you can't blame someone whose responsibility is business, who has never worked on an interactive website to come up with clear answers about questions he only discovered a while ago. So this is where we have a role to play, where our ability to bridge the gap between IT and business can actually make a difference ...

E-mail usage: 12 worst practices and recommended strategies for better communications

Illustration by Yann Gourvennec

As announced in a previous post, this is part one of my analysis of e-mail (mis)usage in the workplace. I have also inserted my recommendations for productivity enhancement for each of the worst practice items which I have described. This is obviously not meant to be a comprehensive list. Feel free to add comments to this post and add items.

Introduction: We have all become ‘anoraks'

In the Internet world e-mail can be considered one of the oldest web-related applications together with the late Gopher and newsnet. But e-mail per se already existed in pre-Internet era. As far as I am concerned, I have been a user and observer of e-mail usage since its inception in the late 1980's when I was working for one of the leading IT providers of that time. That IT provider made the decision to extend the usage of e-mail (then in proprietary format) to the entirety of the company's users (i.e. 125,000 users across 35 countries but sadly enough far fewer today).  The main issue with electronic mail at the time was about the requirement to make all employees including managers actually use it, the latter being rather reluctant. Indeed, many of them had difficulties coming to terms with the fact that their status was no hindrance to using the tool by themselves (many couldn't associate typing with manager status, at the time it used to be secretarial work only).  We were number 3 in the IT world at the time, but it didn't make any difference in fact, strangely enough. All this to show our younger readers how far we've travelled in terms of IT usage since such prehistoric times.

A little less than 10 years after, the Internet revolution was making IT a cornerstone of work efficiency not only in businesses, but also schools, not to name the entertainment revolution in the home. In business, it has now virtually become impossible to name any profession not resorting to IT for their normal day to day operations. Luddites are now few and far between. To an extent, we have all become nerds. So much so that IT has now become just one more of our working tools, just like pen and paper, the mobile phone and other tools, just an ordinary tool, and no longer a subject for nerds/anoraks to discuss amongst themselves using incomprehensible three letter acronyms.

However, despite the fact that IT has become ubiquitous, and even in spite of the Internet in particular, can we venture to say that we are all using it properly? In fact, there are many signs showing us that we are not. E-mail usage (be it in the business world or even on the open Internet) is very often inadequate, and can even be the source of conflicts in more in many ways.

Besides, e-mail usage has to face up to new and increasingly worrying problems: exponential rise of spamming, e-mail overflow, e-mail addiction through devices like blackberry and other mobile Internet devices, not to name viruses. What I'm proposing here is an analysis of e-mail usage, its good and bad practices, and the strategies that are required in order to protect oneself from the side-effects of bad e-mail usage, and also more positively, positive strategies for better using this tool.

Can software accurately reflect the work 'place'?

By Dr. Lee Schlenker

Although IT vendors can proudly claim that computer technology is nearly ubiquitous in business today, many managers remain quite sceptical of the ability of software solutions to help them learn about the different realities of business practice. In spite of constant technological "innovation", many clients rightfully question whether any supplier is able to deliver business applications that makes as much sense to their "end-users" as it does to their IT department. As an initial contribution to this blog on Marketing & Innovation, let me set out here some of the foundations that I will try to develop in the months to come. After having listened to hundreds of managers in diverse industries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia, we have the firm conviction that IT is essentially a conversation, and individual markets for IT can best be understood as stories with multiple voices.  This view may help explain why many operational managers feel that value of software depends less on its ability to incorporate global best practices than its ability to accurately reflect local visions, contexts and experience. In this era of  "anywhere, anytime, anyplace", the ambition of this blog in the coming months will be  to explore  IT frameworks  that amplify these voices to strengthen future success stories of business.

15 golden rules for Web 2.0

Introduction

This article was originally designed to address the questions which were sent to me by large customers wanting to launch Web 2.0 initiatives.  Very often, these clients wanted to jump on the bandwagon, but didn't know how to do it.  They required help and guidance, even to understand the very meaning of Web 2.0.

Evaluating what should be done as part of such Web 2.0 initiatives with large organisations implies that we rethink the definition of Web 2.0 (see O'Reilly's Web 2.0 meme map to start with). An executive summary of this definition is provided hereafter. More than often, we have noticed that the main motivation for large corporations to jump on the bandwagon is to keep up with the Joneses.

In this article, we will describe the key principles and main reasons why you should or should not opt for a Web 2.0 initiative.  Large organisations are getting increasingly interested in launching 2.0 initiatives. To a certain extent, we can relate that to the fact that an increasing number of success stories are relayed by the press and that most of them are related to impressive buzz marketing operations, which are seemingly easy to replicate.  The entire world is full of the concept of Web 2.0, so the idea is often not to miss the opportunity to do something about it. All of this is very tempting and hard to resist.  However, companies should never launch 2.0 websites just for the sake of it.

Indeed, it requires a lot of forward thinking about what one is trying to achieve and how it fits in the overall strategy.  To a certain extent, what we are witnessing today with Web 2.0 is not very far from what we have witnessed in the 1990s, when large corporations wanted to launch their first websites.  More than often, the same question prevails: that is to say, is this website going to support or jeopardise my brand.

How can you tell a website is 2.0-ready?

There are several characteristics of Web 2.0, which are described hereafter:

• Human characteristics
  • Collective intelligence: this is a concept which was developed by Howard Rheingold. This concept implies that when a group is cooperating, the result of this cooperation is stronger than the sum of all the contributions from all the individuals which are part of this group.
  • The user is the producer: With Web 2.0, users are also producers not just spectators. Web 2.0 sites are definitely alien to advertising and communications. Ignoring that and pursuing the old habit of delivering pre-formatted top-down product-orientated messages would be a non-starter.
• Functional characteristics:
  • RSS: RSS is more than just a feature, it has a real functional impact on user behaviour. RSS (Real Simple Syndication) enables users to receive information without having to make any effort to collect it. The use of RSS feeds imposes that the user installs a feed reader. More and more, these the readers are integrated within the Internet browser or within the Internet toolbar (Google, Yahoo, etc.). The exponential development of RSS is at last making it possible to push information towards the user as was originally designed at the end of the 1990's.
• Technical characteristics:
  • Thin clients, light programming and mash-ups: the basic idea is that Web 2.0 websites can be built very rapidly by using existing objects or even objects and pieces of code or data drawn from existing websites. These existing websites can also be external. A typical mash-up example is that of websites which use Internet maps (mainly from Google), in order to make geo-localisation possible.
  • The Web as a platform: this is the recycling of the '€˜old' (2000+) ASP concept (Application Service Provision). The idea is to use the network as a repository, and to avoid thick clients (see previous paragraph).

  

Enterprise 2.0 fear factor: Overcoming risks, uncertainties and doubts

There are risks associated with adopting any new technology, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different. Enterprise 2.0 holds the promise of dramatically increasing business productivity, stimulating greater innovation, and creating tighter connections between employees, as well as with partners, suppliers and customers. While these technologies and other social networking softwares are facilitating knowledge sharing, accelerating team communications, fostering increased collaboration and online communities creation, many executives are recognising their value but worry about losing control of information, compromising sensitive data, opening  their networks to security breaches or even exposing employees to time-killing “network noise". 

Liability for potentially illegal activity involving workers, risk of malware infections, bandwidth constraints and other drop-offs in employee productivity are obvious reasons why the "open social Internet" just goes against the instincts of many Chief Information Officers. 

It is also true that employees using these systems for group collaboration, usually operate outside the approved IT applications, meaning they aren't actually subject to enterprise policies governing compliance and information protection. It is obviously a challenge for any IT professional to give up control over the IT systems they depend on. As Enterprise 2.0 is decentralised and ad hoc, control is in the hands of users rather than the IT department. 

Security risk - either incoming, as malware, or outgoing, as data leakage - is probably the biggest issue with Enterprise 2.0 technology since opening up your company to share information and allowing users to upload files to your system - while a laudable idea for improved collaboration- surely expose your infrastructure to related threats. An open social system makes it a challenge to maintain security. 

Additionally, many managers may be concerned about the risks associated with bad publicity or confidential data disseminated due to employees potentially sharing information on blogs or other social networking sites. Lots of companies are spending large lump of money creating their message, maintaining its consistency and build a brand. Opening up the conversation means, for better or worse, that you will be losing control of that message, at least in ways it was previously defined. While there are benefits related to opening up the conversation, not all content or opinions are created equal and some may be more valuable than others. Community policing are therefore also required to provide the necessary checks and balances to potentially eliminate noise. 

Some concerns could be addressed by providing tools and dashboards, giving control over these conversations as well as which employees can access and use which tools. While this could help allay IT fears, it may still be difficult for some to accept this cultural shift without some assurance that critical business systems will keep operating. The first rule of thumb for improving security protection and securing risks is considering people and process alongside with technologies including "next-generation" capabilities such as web filtering technologies, reputation services, blended threat protection and behaviour-based detection. IT professionals are highly required to think about security implications and ensure appropriate safeguards are taken as their companies adopt Enterprise 2.0 techniques. These technologies are indeed enabling information to move in new faster ways, with users being so much more involved, putting networks, employees, and customers at risk. 

As businesses rush to get involved in Web 2.0, a Forrester research study recently revealed that the vast majority of organisations adopt Enterprise 2.0 technologies without even preparing to fend off the related threats and dealing with the security risks that come along with it. The report indeed found that 97 percent of companies surveyed considered themselves prepared, though 68 percent conceded there was room for improvement. Even scarier, a full 90% of surveyed IT professionals and security decision makers reported that they are at the least "very concerned" about related threats and may have made the leap into these technologies without thinking about the security consequences. The study further notes a lack of risk awareness, user training and consistent policies, making essential for organisations to re-examine the adequacy of security policies and protection mechanisms together with implementing systematic and comprehensive training to communicate the magnitude and extent of web threats to users. 

Finally, as with any disruptive technology, a critical success factor resides in the fact that companies will need to assess the strategic value and implementation plans with an eye toward enterprise requirements including reliability, security, governance, compliance, and privacy. As companies dive into Enterprise 2.0, associated risks such as security, infrastructure stability, data loss or reliability, just to name a few, are increasingly important to secure. Nevertheless, in most cases, the benefits provided to enterprises considering the new social media technologies as a collaboration platform, may outweigh the risks, especially if some precautions are taken to mitigate these.

Changing your marketing mindset: 12 steps to the interactive future

We recently touched on the subjects of the many forms of web marketing tactics that could potentially be utilised as part of your digital marketing arsenal as well as the effectiveness and increased use of these online tools. So while we are on the topic of integrating innovative techniques into your marketing plan, let's consider this from a broader, more strategic perspective, rather than a pure tactical point of view.

I echo Larry Weber, global communications entrepreneur, that "The customer is in control" or "Web 2.0 will change marketing as we know it" could be considered as neo-platitudes. I would simply argue that few marketing professionals, even if growing by the day, embrace these new concepts and adapt their marketing approach accordingly.

An excellent excerpt from his recent book "Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business" is highlighting 12 steps to the interactive future that marketers should take to recalibrate their efforts and change their mindsets on how to improve their marketing effectiveness. This 12-step approach is a great way to organise your thinking about the differences between the traditional marketing of yesterday and the new marketing of today and tomorrow, and includes the following recommendations:

1- Change your marketing mindset: The new marketing of today and tomorrow is about being more transparent, earning trust and building credibility. It's about nurturing relationships and dialogue among customers.

2- Make your brand come alive: In the new marketing reality, a brand is a living, changing thing. The brand is based on the dialogue you develop with your customers and prospects. What makes the social Web so important is that it enables companies to have this kind of dialogues more efficiently and less expensively than ever before. Companies should now gauge brand equity by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth rather than static metrics such as brand recall. 

3- Out with the old segmentation: With the advent of the social Web, the new marketing means segmenting by customers' behaviour, attitudes and interests so that you can target them with marketing activities that are actually meaningful to them. 

4- Target by behaviour: One of the big changes happening is a swing away from one-to-one targeting, leading to targeting customers by behaviour. Behavioural targeting will become more widespread and is expected to increase ten-fold over the next five years. It will allow marketers to offer more personalised customer experiences, whilst consumers gain from more relevant advertising and content as they have been targeted based on their online footprint. 

5- Communicate Interactively: Communication is less about creating and delivering contained & controlled messages (as in the old marketing) and more about creating compelling environments to which customers are attracted. Web 2.0 actually creates the platform of true interactivity. 

6- Embrace Consumer Content: In the new marketing, the best Web site will combine professional and user-generated content, contributed by customers and prospects who are initiating and continuing the dialogue. 

7- Spread the right virus: Companies should develop solid viral marketing, a strategy that does more than simply attract attention to itself, so that word of mouth generates content-based virality. 

8- Accept customer reviews: The difficulty in the movement toward the social Web is the natural instinct of marketers and corporate culture to control the message and the customer. It's difficult to give up control completely, but realise that reviews, as user-generated content, serve to demonstrate your company's transparency. 

9- Leave paper behind: The new marketing will be collateral-free, with material that is more compelling, customised, visual and up-to-date. Information can be a powerful customer relationship tool, but doesn't have to be printed. 

10- Invert your strategy: Strategy has traditionally been imposed from the top down. It is now required to consider it in a bottom up approach. As marketers, it is increasingly important to learn from the people who are really paying attention to our products and services: the customers. 

11- Let users decide: With the social Web, information has to be available on demand, when and how users want it. Marketing is, in essence, truly becoming an investment in your brand's future growth and profitability. 

12- Let the people pay: In the new marketing, customers want to be in charge of their own payment options which must be fast and easy.

Today, marketing is exploding with possibilities but also complexities as it reaches out into new forms of communication channels and increasingly engaging media. Marketers have an exceptional opportunity to use these new tools to reach their audience, even in a fragmented world. It is becoming essential for marketers to understand the context of the "new marketing", and prioritise what they need to do to develop customer engagement, build communities and maximise profit in a time of marketing confusion. Online and interactive marketing initiatives should indeed be considered as an effective divergence from traditional marketing mediums as marketers have the opportunity to engage customers in a "conversation" that is not just steered toward standardised product messaging.

When you think about it, marketing's role has not changed. It has always been, and will always be, about acquiring new customers, managing effectively customer relationships, selling more to current customers while developing their loyalty, analysing the effectiveness of marketing activities and providing better customer service. But be prepared, the techniques that were successful in the past may become less and less effective in the future. This is where a new marketing mindset is required!

How are companies marketing online?

Although there are many online tactics available to supercharge your digital marketing plan, not all of them deliver the same effectiveness or even are appropriate. It is obviously highly depending on the target audience you are trying to reach and develop relationship with, the product and services you are promoting as well as the marketing objectives you are trying to achieve.

A McKinsey Global Survey of marketing executives from around the world entitled "How companies are marketing online" offers some solid insights into the future of digital marketing together with an excellent synopsis of Web 2.0 and online tools effectiveness as well as how they are increasingly being used to develop customer engagement.

Spending is expected to increase on all types of online advertising vehicles over the next three years with over 10 percent of marketing professionals expecting to be spending a majority of their budgets online by the end of the decade.

One may consider that marketing is "simply" getting the right message to the right target audience, at the right time, using the right media mix. But except for those companies that use online tools across the full spectrum of marketing activities, from building awareness to after-sales service, few marketers truly integrate their marketing efforts and get the most out of both their online and offline marketing investments. Their message doesn't communicate and connect with their target audience and usually lacks consistency that flows through a variety of media.

The majority of marketers consider online vehicles as being more efficient than traditional media. In addition to established online tools, a strong interest is shown in the interactive and collaborative Web 2.0 technologies for advertising, product development, and customer service. But while digital techniques are increasingly considered as an effective component of the marketing strategies, the lack of capabilities, at companies as well as their marketing agencies, the difficulties convincing management, together with concerns around the absence of meaningful metrics (which is actually counterintuitive since the ease of measuring return on investment is among the key selling points of most online marketing techniques) are critical reasons why digital marketing is less frequently used than their importance would actually require.

Online tools are used by marketers in a variety of ways in order to achieve their marketing goals throughout the customer decision-making process, sometimes in ways that contravene the common wisdom about where these techniques are delivering their maximum effect. Emerging vehicles including blogs, podcasts, social networks, wikis, virtual worlds or online games are mainly considered as an effective way to achieve customer retention and, to a lesser extend, brand building. It is actually interesting to note that as much as 35% of marketers are not able to clearly identify which marketing objective(s) should be achieved though the use of these "less traditional" communication channels. This is probably showing an enthusiasm - mainly from frequent users of all digital tools, serving all marketing purposes - for experimenting such collaborative and interactive tools.

The evolution under way in digital marketing reflects fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour. Leveraging the digital universe now requires marketers to look beyond traditional tactics. As the Internet gains influence and online techniques take on a larger role in strategies, digital marketing may well be the next frontier for consumer engagement and marketing effectiveness.

Core marketing competencies has always consisted of driving market awareness, creating demand, growing customers, and accelerating sales. But marketers are increasingly facing complex multi-channel processes, dynamic interactions, extended integration, growing customer-generated information, and increased use of sophisticated technologies required to successfully deploy cost-effective marketing initiatives.

36 online techniques to supercharge your 2008 digital marketing plan

Got your marketing plan ready for 2008?

Let me first ask you this simple question since you would be surprised (or not) to discover that a startling 40% of marketing professionals don't even have a formal marketing plan. Surprisingly, not everyone develops a plan - even though most will agree that it is the foundation to successful and effective marketing.

If, on the other hand, you are not among that 40%, you and your team likely have a 2008 digital marketing plan devised by now. But are you confident that this plan can boost your sales and exceed your goals? Did you organize your marketing efforts to deliver maximum results quickly and efficiently? Have you actually developed the roadmap enabling you to leverage online marketing techniques in order to supercharge your sales and marketing efforts in 2008? 

In many instances, your product and services will lend themselves to a variety of online marketing tactics, many of which are extremely well suited to reach your intended audience and highlight the value of your offer. One of the key advantages of online marketing is indeed the ability to utilise effective low-cost techniques that are typically easy to implement and are highly effective at producing, capturing, and capitalising on inbound traffic in a very cost-effective manner.

Jeremiah Owyang, Web Strategist, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research and leading social media blogger has recently released an excellent article: "A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008" which catalogs no less than 36 tools and tactics available for corporate web strategy CMOs, VPs and Directors of Web and Marketing. I would highly recommend that anyone looking to come to grips with the multiple ways by which the Web can deliver effective and impactful ways of addressing the market, spend a few minutes working through this exhaustive list. You are very likely to come up with a few new ideas and identify the relevant opportunities that would be worth exploring and testing as part of your 2008 digital marketing plan.

I do agree with Jeremiah that being aware of the drastic changes that occurred in our digital landscape is critical and require organisations to adapt and evolve. As stated by the author, this list is not prioritised and should simply be considered as an index of tools that is not a substitute for a strategy or a plan. 

Once your marketing objectives are identified and your plan developed, only should you then choose the most appropriate tools in order to use the Internet to its maximum effect. From my perspective, the secret is usually residing in how you will be handling the customer experience, using various appropriate communication channels and online tactics in order to engage with the prospect, generate interest, develop the relationship and finally generate (repeated) sales. Experience as shown that efficiency and “creativity” (ie. creative ways of using these communication channels) is mainly coming from the intelligent way you will be combining and using strategically various marketing tactics; cost-effectively mixing traditional ways of addressing your target audience with more innovative ways of engaging with your customers.

As online techniques take on a larger role in marketing strategies, I will be publishing shortly key findings from a survey conducted on marketers from around the world, showing how online tools are being used, which ones are the most effective and on which ones companies plan to spend more. So subscribe to my feed and stay tuned ...

Predictions for 2008 ... Eight business technology trends to watch

While every day seems to bring a whole bunch of predictions and thoughts for this new year (and the decade to come!), I have selected this excellent article from The McKinsey Quarterly entitled "Eight business technology trends to watch". In a Nutshell, this article provides an extremely interesting overview of emerging technology-enabled trends that will shape businesses and the economy in coming years.

These trends fall within three broad categories, namely managing relationships, managing capital & assets and leveraging information in new ways, and include:

1. Distributing cocreation
2. Using consumers as innovators
3. Tapping into a world of talent
4. Extracting more value from interactions
5. Expanding the frontiers of automation
6. Unbundling production from delivery
7. Putting more science into management
8. Making businesses from information

Executives looking for some prescriptive recommendations for 2008 and beyond, should closely watch these trends - many aimed at enhancing the way the Internet is being used - with an objective to change how companies innovate, managers make decisions, organisations lower costs, tap talent and realise new business opportunities.

I can not agree more with the bold statement from the authors that "technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business". It is indeed critical for creative leaders and executives to not only closely follow these trends and identify which patterns may start to reshape their markets and industries, but also work out how new technology-enabled options can be used to craft their strategies.

The bottom line advice is that executives should learn to catalyse change and shape the outcome of their strategies rather than just react to it.

New Year's top resolution: Managing your online reputation!

Well, 2008 has arrived, along with the New Year's resolutions and the ever-present pundit predictions. Now that we're on the other side of the New Year, I thought I would share my thoughts on what I feel should be one of the companies' top priorities - and probably their number 1 resolution for this year: Efficiently managing their online reputation.

Every day, a blogger or forum member is discussing something important to your business, being your company’s brand, your key executives, your competitors or your industry. They may be hyping your company and building positive buzz for your products or criticizing your services, complaining to others about the poor quality of your customer service. When you think about it, companies aren't just potentially facing negative consumer buzz. Criminals are starting to blackmail corporations by threatening to attack their reputations online and competitors can also get online and cause trouble.

Managing online reputation is fast becoming a growing problem for businesses. With the rise of social media and user-generated content, online reputation is not just a matter of tracking influential blogs. Millions of people can alter the content of popular sites, anonymous people can post rumours on obscure chat sites and popular consumer rating sites. The Internet has quickly become a complex ecosystem where public opinion can be created and disseminated within seconds. Keeping your eyes and ears on the world of consumer generated media can be a daunting task for any company. Blogs, forums, wikis and social networks gain popularity every day and without a plan to monitor and manage your company’s online reputation, you could be at risk.

A business's reputation will be based on an almost infinite amount of information sources. The Internet is a huge database of unstructured information. When everyone is a publisher, the likelihood of libel increases a millionfold. Accountability has fallen by the wayside."
Toby Bell, Research Vice President at Gartner, Inc.

A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious and managing your business’s online reputation is key to owning your brand. Many enterprises are only just starting to understand the importance of online reputation management. It is fast becoming critical for marketing and communication, legal counsel, corporate risk management and the line of business alike to really understand how to better monitor, manage and measure online reputation and to remedy problems faster when they occur. There are so many conversations out there that there is simply no effective manual way to identify them all, to figure out whether there is something to take action on, to react to or promote. Companies should therefore create policies and adopt technologies that can help analyse what is being said about them on the Internet and respond to conversations that can damage their reputations.

The proliferation of social media on the web empowers consumers to become influential, opinion-wielding publishers but also enables businesses to take the pulse of consumers as it pertains to their brands. There are a handful of emerging vendors including Reputica, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Andiamo Systems, Market Sentinel or Visible Technologies to name a few, that offer services and technologies to help you monitor, protect, nurture and build a stellar reputation for your business. These solutions will help you gain a comprehensive understanding of what your customers are saying about your products & services, and proactively identify issues that have the potential to affect the reputation of your company, image or brand. You will be able to gain control of crisis situations with up-to-the-minute intelligence that helps you pinpoint the consumer state of mind on issues that can include product recalls, liability issues, consumer activism, negative publicity, corporate issues, news events, rumours or situations you never expected. Advanced monitoring, relevance detection, filtering, classification, sentiment & concept mining, modelling and scoring techniques as well as visualisation technologies will also enable you to leverage candid public conversations so you’re in the best possible position to repair your relationship with customers, stakeholders, regulators, the media, the public and other groups. 

But reputation management should not only be limited to large organisations. Companies of all sizes have competition and are experiencing the new reality of Internet-enabled consumers who are creating and sharing their experiences, opinion and content online. The MarketingPilgrim website published a great list of twenty six free "buzz tracking" tools that can be used to monitor your company reputation, track news that relate to your industry or even spy on your competition! ... well worth checking out.

Now is the time to take control of your online reputation and maintain, enhance & protect your brand identity ... No more excuses!