Social Media and Corporate Reputation

The Conference Board of Canada’s report “What Others Think of You Matters: Manage and Boost Your Corporate Reputation Using Social Media” (creating a free e-Library account is required to access the report) discusses the steps involved in creating an effective corporate social media strategy. The steps discussed include:

FIND: Begin with a reputation audit. What are consumers saying about you on Facebook, MySpace, blogs, etc?

LISTEN: Read the online conversations/comments about you.

PLAN: Make the information that you collected in the previous steps actionable. How do you want to position your company/firm? Do you want to develop relationships with influential bloggers? Who is your key audience? What messages do you want to convey? This step includes formally launching your social media initiative.

MONITOR: Read the online conversations again to see if your corporate reputation has changed. Be sure to do this on a continual basis.