The Role of Online Reputation Management in Crisis communication.

Any successful crisis management strategy will encompass online reputation management techniques, they aren’t one in the same but there is significant cross over.

A crisis is a live issue- an event occurring now. These events are often news worthy and will impact an organisation or businesses current standings. An Online Reputation management complication is often a legacy issue which has been plaguing an organisation or company for some time and remains a thorn in their side.

To mitigate a crisis event, it’s imperative to react quickly and the best strategy is to prepare for a crisis whether you are expecting one or not. The investment of time and resource now could prove to be invaluable later. Once a crisis hits and you have been able to identify the what, where and when an immediate response is required, and the message being delivered must be committed and clear. 

A newsworthy crisis event can not be averted completely but limiting the impact of such event should be the overall goal for any crisis management campaign. A successful strategy allows a business to recover and resume as quickly as possible limiting the short-term loss to the business.

But what comes afterwards?

Quite often in the aftermath there can be somewhat of a reputation hangover. You may have been able to navigate your business through the eye of the storm in one piece, but you will still have to deal with the legacy of the event and the lingering impact it may have on your online reputation.

Google doesn’t forgive and forget so easily, and the long term impact on your online reputation shouldn’t be underestimated . As pointed out earlier most crisis events tend to be news worthy which means they are picked up by the google news aggregator, once this news indexes and plants itself on your search results the results can be catastrophic. For new business alone, the effect of a crisis on your search results can be decimating.

• When potential customers find one negative article on the first page of the search results, businesses risk losing 22 % of new business
• Two negatives entries on the first page of the search results can risk losing a business 44% of its customers
• If a search query returns three negative articles, the potential for loss increases to 59.2%
• Four or more negative articles appearing in the Google search results is likely to cots the business 70% of potential customers.

Every audience imaginable will have unfiltered and unrestricted access to the narrative of the crisis including employees, investors, MPs, journalists, suppliers and business partners. All of these parties will be making assumptions and critical decisions based on the sentiment of the content they find about you online.

Most businesses and organisation take years to recover from a crisis in its entirety. Part of the recovery strategy must include an Online reputation management campaign which can take up to a year to execute correctly. Your search results are your online shop window. Even if you feel as an organisation you have dealt with crisis adequately and executed your step by step crisis plan implicitly If your search results tell a different story you haven’t truly recovered from the event.

There is no denying the most critical time for any business in crisis is the here and now. But a common mistake most businesses and organisation make is believing the rehabilitation is completed after their immediate response and crisis management plan is rolled out, in truth it’s just the start.

What do we mean?

The date is 27th of June 2018, news breaks “ Ticketmaster admitted that it suffered a security breach, that affected up to 40,000 customers”. Ticketmaster sells over 250 million tickets each year , because of the scale and profile of the company this naturally is national news. This is covered in most national newspapers and online media sources and it becomes viral news with in just minutes of the announcement.

The TicketMaster PR machine jumps into action immediately, Initially using their twitter account to deliver a response to the crisis. It clarified the events and the steps now being undertaken to solve the issue "Forensic teams and security experts are working around the clock to understand how the data was compromised," They also emailed all affected customers and set up a website to answer any questions and advised them to reset their passwords. It also offers them a free 12 month identity monitoring service (nice touch). They followed this up by emailing all other customers advising not to be worried as they were not affected.

The way in which the event impacted the business for now cannot be truly measured as there is still a lawsuit ongoing. News on the outcome of the lawsuit won’t be as widely covered as the incident itself, so the impact and interest of the event online will have peaked in June and July of 2018.

After spending considerable time, money and resource Ticketmaster may feel they acted swiftly and accordingly in in response to the crisis. They have by all accounts addressed the security issues surrounding their websites and are now in legal discussions regarding compensation for those affected. They probably believe after a year they are ready to move on from the crisis, but their search results are not.

Even after 12 months, the search results for the brand keyword “ticketmaster” Is still displaying content and news around the incident, this content is also over a year old. So new and old customers will be presented with news of the data breach every time they search for ticketmaster. As we already know when potential customers find one negative article on the first page of the search results, businesses risk losing 22 % of new business. So with the crisis event still being covered on page 1 it will undoubtedly be affecting the bottom line of Ticketmaster.

The long term effects of a crisis events are often overlooked. Many businesses and organisations are prepared and equipped to deal with a real time issue or at least willing to invest in a strategy, but so many aren't so willing to invest in the fixing of the legacy from the crisis.

 [TM1]