Measuring The Cost of Bad or Good Online Reputation

By noblelgnoble via flickr

I received this question from Nathalie Seoteman after she read my free ebook on using social media:

 

How [can you] calculate the value of a company’s online reputation and (marketing) PR 2.0 efforts? What did these activities produce, put in figures and – preferably – in euro’s/dollars? I would like to include both the reputation damage that has been diverted and the positive/negative/neutral online coverage that has been created.

 

This raises an interesting and very complex question. There will inevitably be tangible and intangible ways to measure the value.

 

Measuring Positive and Negative Reactions

Assuming that you’re using a tool like Trackur, Radian6 or just Google alerts to track your coverage, the first thing you have to segment the coverage by what Radian6 calls sentiment – negative, neutral or positive. Once you’ve done this for media coverage, video responses, Twitter responses, blogs postings and more, you can get a visual representation of the sentiment over time.

 

The question then is how do you assign a monetary value to this. One way is to use ad equivalence, which is how much would it have cost you to advertise in a magazine for the same space. The obvious drawback is that this will not cover a significant portion of your coverage and you have to do the time consuming research to find the ad values. But let’s assume that this works for 40% of the videos, blogs and media coverage out there. How do you measure the remaining 60%?

 

The Value of a Single Customer Won or Lost

I am assuming that you have a sense of your sales pipeline and what the average deal size (let’s keep this simple, ok? =). If you delved into the content of what is being said, how many would say they would 1) hire your company; 2) never work with your company again or 3) are neutral.

 

I’m making a huge assumption that each person is a potential customer regardless of their company affiliation and title. For example, there are over 589,000 fans on the Skittles Facebook page. If I assumed that each person bought at least one Skittles product that cost $0.75, then the potential value would be $448,500.

 

You can then do the same with your business: positive = gain average deal size, neutral = zero, negative = costs you average deal size

 

Conclusions: Not an Exact Science, Yet

I admit that I am ignoring the relative influence and weight of differing outlets, people or prominence of coverage. I also know that not everything can be easily dissected into the three sentiments I highlighted above. But frankly, I didn’t want to turn this posting into an essay

 

While technology is catching up to help automate the process, I believe that there is still a very manual process involved to evaluate the coverage, put it into the appropriate bucket and then assign a value to it. Hence, I recommend that you start simply – take the most simple measurement and build upon it over time. Otherwise, you may find yourself spending more time assembling reports about your online reputation versus managing it directly.

 

In the end, there is no right answer for measuring the value of bad or good online reputation management. I hope the above provides a starting point for those seeking to calculate this value.

 

I would love to hear of how others would go about calculating the value of bad and good online reputation.

 

The “formulas”

Positive Ad Equivalence – Negative Ad equivalence = Total Ad Equivalence

Potential Customer Deal Won – Potential Customer Deal Lost = Value of Potential Customer Deal

 

Total Ad Equivalence + Potential Customer Deal = Total Value of Positive/Negative Online Reputation

 

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@csalomonlee seeks to answer the question – how to measure good/bad online reputation?: http://twurl.nl/my548k 

 

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All content copyright Cece Salomon-Lee, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By Cece Salomon-Lee, PR Meets Marketing, and a link to the post.

 

PR Meets Marketing Weekly Article: April 24, 2008

You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed.

 

If you feel that you have an article that would fit in the weekly articles, leave a comment and I’ll check it our for the following week’s digest. Enjoy.

 

E-Mail Marketing – According to eMarketer, don’t underestimate email. Relevancy to your audience is key to the success of email marketing promotions and offers.

 

Delicious Measurement – Courtesy of measurement maven, KD Paine, I found this article about how delicious can be used for measuring PR. I do use delicious to track my personal blog postings and company information. This posting reminds me I should look into them more closely.

 

Persistence Counts – Mr. Tom Pick underscores the importance of persistence when pitching bloggers. Great tips for getting through to key bloggers and getting their attention. Note to self – add to page about pitching bloggers.

 

ROI of Online Press Releases – Larissa Fair of The Buzz Bin provided a summary of a survey regarding the ROI of online press releases. I have to agree with Larissa, I’m little surprised that the main goal of the release was to reach media. Frankly, press releases should be to reach your target audiences – media find out about your stuff when you contact them =)

 

What’s the Trend? – TechCrunch has a useful post about apps to help find trends in Facebook walls and Twitter. This is useful for getting a sense of what people are writing about and tracking it. Wonder when someone will combine Google with these other apps for one big trending application?

 

Customer Approved – Golden Practices provides some useful tips on how to get those tricky customer testimonials. What I usually do is offer to draft a quote for customers, but it’s based on what they’ve told me over the phone. I like some of the approach and will file this away for my next customer call.

  

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PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: March 11, 2008

I’m a little late in posting my Weekly Articles. I will try to post another set of articles at the end of the week. However, future weekly updates may be more spotty as I’m focused on an upcoming launch. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed.

Disclosing Everything? – Scott’s Morning Brew discusses how Mitch Ratcliffe of ZDNet discloses his professional affiliations. This raises an interesting question about ethical blogging. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I work for ON24. Mitch previously invested in ON24 when the company was a financial multimedia services company.

Next Gen Marketing – Richard Karpinski of BtoB Magazine’s wrote a recent article about next generation tech marketing. The article provides a high-level view of widgets, social feeds, mash ups and more.

More than Media Relations – a shel of my former self highlights why PR is a two-way dialogue. Though media relations may have the “highest” visibility, Shel discusses how this is a small portion of what PR truly is.

The True Measurement of Social Media? – In this post, KD Paine highlights why trying to develop a standard way to social media is not possible. Rather, she ends her post, “Sorry to inform you folks, but a standard metric will not solve the problem. Listening to your customers will.”  

More than Media Databases - Peter Himler of the Flack blog provides his perspective on how Vocus is systematically spamming people in their media database. Frankly, in the age of permission marketing, these databases should be forced to take people out of the database upon request. 

Quality Versus Quantity – Brian Carroll of B2B Lead Generation Blog is an expert on lead nurturing. In this post. Carroll brings up the issue of measuring the effectiveness of programs by cost-per-lead. Rather, he advocates looking at the cost-per-opportunity. This way, better quality leads are forwarded to sale. Sending quantity doesn’t do anything if sales views the leads as “poor.” Hence, you may be generating lots of leads and blame the sales team for not following up. But who’s truly at fault?

Online Marketers Don’t Feel Recession – Betsy Schiffman of Epicenter writes that online marketers are bullish despite overall industry indicators of a recession. Unlike the dot.com crash, if there is a recession, online marketing will weather it better than other types of marketing spends, such as print advertisements.

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PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: February 15, 2008

This past week has seen some interesting conversations about press releases/newswires, how to conduct social media campaigns and the relationship with customers. Enjoy this last issue before the President’s Weekend Holiday.  You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed.  

The Power of News Wires – Read/WriteWeb has an interesting post about how BusinessWire’s influence and ability to be a top Techmeme source. If newswires are able to gain this much influence for a press release, does this mean PR folks will be “lazier” in getting placements for press releases?  

When a Release is Not a Release – B.L. Ochman highlights her experience with PR Web’s decision not to post a release because it didn’t satisfy their standard of a press release. The release was a funny announcement for procrastinators on Valentine’s Day. The tone was perfect for this type of announcement, yet PR Web insisted that B.L. make some changes. Frankly, who’s to decide what is and isn’t a release. I could understand profanity but because it wasn’t written in the third person? Puh-lease! 

Blogs are the Music to My Ears – Mack Collier writes about how blogs have contributed more to music sales than MySpace. Need I say more?

Valentine’s Day Special: It’s About the Relationship -Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog put together a special post for Valentine’s Day. She lists 62 responses to how to create great business relationships.  Tons of great tips from all walks of life and industries. I like #4, #7, #12, #27, #34 (this one is tough for me.. ask my husband =), #62. My tip? Be humble and admit that you don’t know everything. 

Successful Customer Case Studies - Jeremiah Owyang is on a roll. He’s providing great insight as an analyst that should help every PR person out there. This week’s nugget of wisdom, creating successful customer case studies.  

SMRs in the Real World – Brian Solis posts an email from Steve Kayser who has outlined his experience using SMRs in the real world. Very informative regarding what to be aware of as one proceeds down this avenue. 

Social Campaigning… Not! – Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Technology highlights a good point about Social Media. Social media can’t be considered a campaign as a campaign eventually ends. It require diligent work and commitment. Only then can you see reap the rewards of entering the social media world. 

Measurement Makes Your Executives Care – Dave Fleet reminds us that measurement is key for executive support and understanding. Like Social Media, it can’t be an one-time project. It has to be monitored constantly. I previously wrote about the PR measurements I track. It’s quick, easy and can be maintained weekly. Leave a comment if you’re interested in learning more.  

Six Deadly Sins of Social Media

– Geoff Livingston of The Buzz Bin provides some common mistakes that people make with social media. These points resonate with me. Are you committing a Social Media Sin?

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PRMeetsMarketing Weekly Articles: December 6

Here is this week’s of interesting articles. You can click on the Weekly Articles tag for previous issues or subscribe to the Weekly Articles Feed: 

Online Video Kill the TV Star –Blip.TV interviews Vivian Schiller, general manager of the NYTimes.com about the differences between online and TV video. To paraphrase that iconic song, “will online video kill the TV star?” 

Or Did ROI Kill Marketing? – Paul Dunay of Buzz Marketing for Tech makes a good point about ROI. His point is, if everything is measured against an ROI, then there are probably some campaigns/initiatives that wouldn’t be done because it wasn’t measurable. 

Does the Long Tail Work for PR? – Now Is Gone does a great job at highlighting the Long Tail for PR.  I’m in the middle of reading the book so this posting will help me to position PR/marketing as I read through the book. Also included as part of my 2008 trends piece.  

WPP Lands a Big Whale – Dell selected WPP to create an integrated marketing agency that will serve Dell’s business over the next three years.  It’ll be interesting to see how WPP organizes this new entity before March 2008. Will key individuals throughout the WPP group be hand picked to lead the charge? Will smaller (less profitable?) agencies be merged together to create this new agency with instant staff? Or will WPP create an entirely new entity and poach talent from the competition? Only time will tell. 

Social Media Reaches Into Your Lives – I’ve started reading the Lonely Marketer, which provides ideas for small business marketers. In this post, he writes about how social media can be used to find target customers, thereby increasing touchpoints for increased engagement/participation.  

Video’s Political Influence? – Granite Slate posted an article about how KD Paine & Partners is measuring the impact of online videos on a candidate’s influence and surge in the media. This is an interesting concept and would love to see how accurate this is as the caucuses approach. I could envision this having a larger impact on younger people who normally may not go to the polls to take action and participate. And isn’t that what it’s all about in the end?? 

Bribes Aren’t Conversation Starters – Mike Volpe of Small Business Hub highlights how Vocus tried to follow up on a “sales lead” from a white paper download. Love the cookie idea, but no connection to the value that Vocus provides to Mike’s company. As Mike pointed out, you need to start a conversation with the person which can be started via phone follow up or email with links to valuable information. Provide value, not tchokes. 

Note to NYT – Keep up with the times… – Read Kate Swisher’s post on BoomTown about a recent speech by Bill Keller of the New York Times. Keller bashes on bloggers and the quality of reporting. Does this mean I should stop reading the Bits blog? The issue isn’t about quality of reporting but how blogging augments the information flow out there. You can’t tell me that all “traditional” media have excellent standards. Keep up with the times Mr. Keller. 

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