It's a WAR and brands must engage and defend their stake to stay ahead.

Current articles regarding social community and online PR spheres are suggesting a very strong need for prudent brand management within social communities and online forums. And the poor execution of it or complete lack thereof can be detrimental to a company’s image.

Katy Howell, managing director of Immediate Future, said: "Social media and consumer participation are growing at lightening speed. Conversations about brands are unfiltered, unchecked and outside the control of marketers.


"Brands are being discussed, applauded and criticized across the web. It is time for companies to pay attention to the online conversations and look at strategies to get involved with their audiences."

Social media is frequently driving news agendas, affecting


“Trying to manage your company’s image and reputation online and communicating with your publics can be a challenging task,” said Weinkrantz. “The old days of just listening to and responding to what trade and business journalists are saying about you online are long gone. And while this age of social media and the prosumer generation makes your job a lot more challenging, it also gives you the opportunity to make a much broader impact. The key is having the right message, the right strategies, and becoming part of the conversation.”

The world of the prosumer has evolved to the point where the consumer now supports and controls much of what some brands represent and mean to online community participants. Think of it this way, it's been taught to me that if one customer you deal with is unsatisfied with your service or company at least 250 people will hear about it. Now I'm sure this old adage was created many years before the promise of the Internet was realized, which leads me to believe the reality of one upset customer telling 250 friends has now multiplied many times over in this day of interconnected unencumbered dialogues.

So what is a company to do if issues occur and online buzz turn negative or even hostile? Most articles and posts I have seen focus on brands becoming involved on a personal level with their consumers on territory familiar to bloggers, social community members and forum junkies. The company needs to further it's transparency and get engaged one-to-one with their most irritated and often times supportive fans.

As I worked my way up through sales/PR ranks in technology firms it seemed the engineers within all or most of the companies I worked for got it. They realized very quickly to keep a product selling strong you need to manage and communicate with your core user base on their turf not yours. At one of the first firms I worked for ZyXEL North America, I knew we hosted our own forums for various test groups and power users worldwide. But we also had multiple task manager engineers focused heavily on various boards dealing with issues, questions, and negative opinions as they developed in real time not well after the fact.

I think the tech sector has long known you have to stay close to the people that know how to tear you apart the quickest, what's the quote... "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." ;-)

I think now that social community and blogs have taken significant attention away from mass media channels, mainstream brands which may be otherwise non-technical in nature are faced with the reality; there is a war of opinion raging everyday and it's being hammered out on keyboards worldwide.

It's time for business to become more like your client base and get down and dirty in our favorite spaces and places.

Enjoy!

Kenneth Knapp
Founder/CEO
socialFIEND