Online Reputation Management – Controlling the Conversation

One of the most difficult aspects of managing an online reputation is managing and controlling how people talk about you or your business online. Those online discussions can often make or break your business communication results. The impact of negative discussions or embarrassing content circulating within social media circles can often be catastrophic to an organizations overall market reach and positive return on investment.

The focus of anyone trying to create consent within a marketplace should be to persuade and not manipulate. After all, the goal of business communication and of reputation establishing media is to create positive and long-term results. How you create these results and subsequently control the conversation will have far-reaching effects on your online reputation.

Western media has taken on a direct sales oriented mannerism and many marketers fall victim in mimicking this approach while trying to establish an online reputation. This approach works for some but for most, it ends up having a very negative impact on controlling conversations, creating consent and return on investment models. The reason for the negative results is that people attempt to manipulate others through presenting information or sales pitches guised as emotional appeals that either are perceived as unfair or are emotionally charged to force consent.

This approach destroys any chance of building goodwill within your target audience. It also affects their willingness to engage or discuss your content in a repetitive or meaningful way. Manipulation creates a violently competitive negotiation environment. The problem with this type of atmosphere is that the people you have induced to be incensed threaten your reputation on a daily basis. Controlling this type of conversation is virtually impossible and most time damaging.

The resolution to this problem is to create a participant group within your target audience of creatively conservative and loosely guided members. The only effective process to accomplish this goal is to employ a persuasion-based campaign. The difference between a manipulative campaign and a persuasive campaign is symbolically holistic. Manipulation employs tactics that force a participant to act through emotionally charged and fear based tactics. Persuasion based campaigns employ a mutual benefit based model that affects both sided positively and creates good will over time. Persuasion causes people to act because of relational connections at both logic and emotional levels. Persuasion leverages opportunity and complimentary benefits.

Using persuasion to control conversations and create consent over time is far more effective measured over long-term return on investment models and easily employed within indirect marketing campaigns. Indirect marketing leverages the benefits and opportunities presented to an audience without the need to commit or be responsible. Messages embedded into indirect marketing presentations allow you to effectively groom and control conversations without the propensity of manipulation and possible destruction of good will.