ORM, online reputation management, what the hack are you talking about?

Note: Please do not waste your time reading this article if: you already know everything there is to know about marketing management and business strategy; you limit yourself because you have learned how to earn money by using Chat GPT and think you already know everything about marketing and business management; or if you think you know everything about business management and marketing just because you have earned your first million selling PLRs or NFTs.

Part 1 of 6

Achieving brand success/brand health requires overcoming constant challenges, and marketers must navigate a range of different sectors to do so. This often means breaking through uncharted territory and exploring new pathways, whether that involves tapping into emerging markets, adopting innovative marketing strategies, or something else entirely.

That’s where the online reputation management (ORM) team comes in. They are your bodyguard, always open for you with keen insights (just press the backup button).

To understand what the #orm team is and how they can help you, let’s take an overall look at your online plan and how the ORM team can fit as a valuable resource (multiple hands-on wheels).

Towards the right framework

There are some frameworks that are essential when working with online strategies. It’s impossible to proceed with our activities without planning metrics and effective KPIs (key performance indicators) to better understand the state of the art of the market and then plan further actions. Therefore, in this case, let’s consider the SPACES framework, to explain the role of the ORM team.

Developed by the CMX, based on the experience of dozens of community managers worldwide, this framework fills all the gaps in brand development. As seen below, the model is composed of the areas: Support, Product, Acquisition, Contribution, Engagement, Success, and Support.

Altogether these areas fetch the most important needs for creating business value for a brand. The effectiveness of this framework is proven and it is overtaking those who are developing marketing activities through online communities. Also, as soon as you consider the ideal KPIs for each field, you will reach the brand success that you are looking for. Divide to conquer.

However, is this framework enough? The answer is no, nops, not, never, नहीं, нет, لا, KHÔNG, TIDAK... Let's talk about that.

The framework peculiarities

The SPACES framework was developed with a deep focus on community product development and covers all touchpoints of a user's experience with the brand. However, brand managers still face the challenge of assigning roles within this strategic scheme. To address this issue, I have developed an optimized model, which we will discuss shortly after reviewing the below concepts.

What are Outcome and Income flow?

To understand the proposition of this article and get along with the concept of online reputation, see the below figure. It shows that being far from the brand can enhance the capacity to see the hidden places in which the brand can fit. Furthermore, it allows an outside view of the brand, having an amplified perspective of the market. Therefore, it benefits the propensity to contribute to the income flow of the knowledge database of the brand through research, data analysis, and critical insights.

Also, in the same way, the distance from the brand increases the capability for the incoming data, also allows a higher potential to spread the news and make the brand fly high through #eWOM and #ugc. The disconnection with the brand enlarges the credibility of who is doing the e-word of mouth, increasing the promptness to solidify the core goal of the launched brand’s campaign. Also, amplifying the reach of official communication when it is required or asked for.

Two other concepts that can help to optimize the #decisionmaking towards brand success, define the right metrics and navigate through the model are brand-driven and market-driven. A brand-driven approach emphasizes the importance of aligning your #brandidentity with your values and purpose and understanding how your brand is perceived by customers. A market-driven approach, on the other hand, focuses on understanding the broader market landscape, including customer needs, competitor activity, and industry trends.

By combining these approaches, you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of not only how your brand is perceived, but also how it fits within the broader market context. This can help inform decisions around which metrics to prioritize and how to best leverage the SPACES framework to drive customer engagement and growth.

Complementarily, by convening these concepts with the previous ones (income and outcome flow), you will be able to have a full overview of your brand. It brings a deeper perspective to guide you through the process of applying different marketing matrices on behalf of the lifetime value (LTV) of your product.

Applying the framework to the optimized model

Then, once we got along with the previous concepts, let's look at their application to the SPACES framework. In short, there are four main fields addressed to the healthy development of a product. From in (micro perspective) to out (the macro view) we have the official channels, the official social media, the official communities, and the online reputation assets.

• Official channels

We know the product is what will keep the energy for the payroll. So, the first thing we must understand is, the sectors that are closer to the product are very important and have intra-product information that is not always shared. They are official channels that follow strict protocols for their interaction with the community and are always up to update their actions based on the achievement of the proposed financial goals. Their metrics are harder and mostly quantitative by nature. The master professionals who make these teams up are hard workers that will be the face of the brand and are the core financial substance of the company besides collaborating and pointing the directions.

• Social Media Marketing

The loved pearl of most online marketing professionals, these teams are responsible for being the dynamic business card of the brand.

They will be the superstars that besides highlighting (with all their talent and hard work) the big deal that the brand is, they will interact with their followers as part of the brand’s family. Their closer perception of the brand, the knowledge acquired with the official channels, and the understanding of the users who are constantly engaging, will bring a soft way to deal with the issues or appraisals.

By the way, they are not just pretty faces (Always committed to A+ designs), their KPIs have become each day more quantifiable since they have high proximity to the product core. Besides awareness, they also work on diminishing the load charge for the official channels, while contributing for enrich the differentiation of the brand in the market.

• Social Media online community

These are the ones that will amplify the reach of the #smm channels. They are not only responsible to create a fly high about the brand, but also to boost the content and make it reach the moon.

They will talk on behalf of the brand, but most of the time say to their friends (yes, this is the place in which the customers feel like the brand’s friends) to get a solution with the right official channels or even with the SMM channel. Their responsibilities also became highly metrified through time, and although still in the process of becoming an imperative part of the work, it is already incorporated for most of the successful brands around the globe. Its chilling way of dealing with the “brand’s friends” makes the engagement runs smoothly, consequently an easy way to deal with crisis management and deflect even hard cases that could become large issue.

• Online Brand Reputation Management (ORM):

The ones we are presenting in this piece are not celebrated as the others. As a dusty of the winds, people will not see and not talk with them directly. These bodyguards will see everything (from product to market), and be aware of everything (from in to out/out to in), but not always with official credentials to talk on behalf of the brand. However, it is indeed what gives them the “towards-up” stamp.

They have no spotlights. On the other hand, they are not only surrounding the product with their #serm strategies, but their mission is also to see the overall, considering all the markets in which the brand is inserted. The ORM team is far from the brand but always qualified to participate in all the touch points and develop several tasks due to their rich degree of data capture, to turn it into information and then knowledge for business intelligence integration.

They are not only a friend, but colleagues, and enemies on behalf of understanding and closing any risk open edges. Unofficially, they are responsible for developing activities in each part of the above framework:

Support: They deflect cases before it comes to a crisis. They are ready to increment the FAQ of a company and at the same time establish it throughout different communities, officials or not. They are a tool to gain time for any matter, while the other teams are dealing with technical issues. The tasks they are involved in include not only replying to the answers but spreading the official answers from the official channels through different channels/communities as organic “colleagues” (a real eWOM/UGC boost). They can educate the client either about the brand or about the market. Imagine the resources (time/money) they save while enlarging the connections of new customers with the market/products. Furthermore, they incur to support the other teams with some sensitive matters when occurring with competitors/product/market. A win-win situation in each (internal/external — local/external) interaction/ touchpoint.

Product: The amplified local #orm view over the field saves resources for the R&D team, scrum product owner, product development, and marketing producers. They are not only responsible for pointing out issues (UI/UX/CMS/legal/Ads...), but also for conducting in-depth market research to stay a step ahead of direct and indirect competitors. They breathe innovation before it is consolidated in the market. Their inputs based on their market critical (quant/qual) overview help to point out directions through a well-developed knowledge discovery process. By updating the database in a unique way, the brand will always stay one step ahead of its competitors from both micro and macro perspectives, resulting in a database that is constantly evolving and setting new standards. A real deal for competitive advantage.

Acquisition: they have not only hard #kpis to deal with, but also soft ones. They kick the ball for the ace’s teams to score the goals. Their inexhaustible research and audit capabilities, recycling the metrics, historical data points, and actual actions from different indirect or direct competitors on the market (primary/secondary data source), guide the process of predicting different scenarios. Therefore, based on this, they manage to use the right analysis techniques, using mixed method approaches (quant/qual) to impact even the “hardest” KPIs, for instance, NAU, AR, CLV, ARPA, or new customers.

Contribution: they will be the ones elevating the level of talking. Yes, they will not only increase the number of user-generated content but also “buzz up” this content, making advocate users sound official. Cumulating engagement even over the focused community, the user goes global, talking about our brand in others brand communities. They will reduce costs on the development of products, campaigns, affiliations, and productions. They bring substantial information to the process of business intelligence regarding influencers and affiliates. It is due to their capability to see the full picture “flash-lighting” their research with well-defined metrics and their market-driven expertise.

Engagement and Success: It goes to another level, internal or external. The NPS question is no longer about how the user would indicate the brand to their families or friends; it becomes how the user’s friends would indicate the brand to their relatives. The ORM team works towards turning the neutrals and promoters into brand advocates. Assuming an indirect relationship, they will be able to soft by the detractors acting in other communities other than the brand’s one. In the end, they will talk about the brand in such a way that impacts not only soft KPIs but also hard ones as the ARPU, MRR, or churn rate.

Instead of being in the spotlight and receiving applause, the most important function of the ORM team is to optimize and enhance the branding process by working closely and collaboratively with other teams, whether requested or not, often behind the scenes.

This is the basics of this model and its compass with all the delineated explanations to work with this framework. It enriches the knowledge about online reputation management and emphasizes the importance to implement an ORM strategy for brand success and #brandhealth.

The ORM is knocking on your door towards enhancing your business outcomes: They see what you are not looking at.

Now to understand how you can benefit from an online reputation team (ORM) for brand health and brand success, follow me on this example.

Let’s imagine that you are feeling your heart beating due to a crush (someone that makes you get on your feet) you may not see some details about it (you only can see partially because you are attached to it). However, most of the time you go to your colleague and tell her/him, then since she/he is not feeling the same, it allows her/him to see the big picture.

This is what happens with the ORM team that is far from the product and profit (although having a deeper knowledge about that). They are not only eager to see the brand correlations, but also the “furthermore” that is important for the brand.

They will not only read the attitude toward the brand, but also the attitude toward the market. It makes them a thorough asset to deal with the upcoming movements of the market, being crucial to enlarge the database with the metrics that are on hold due to not timely relevance for the other sectors.

Their capacity of optimizing the process of predicting scenarios, through their contribution to the knowledge discovery database, will set a turnaround for business intelligence. Their prompt diligence is always aimed at preparing for a turnaround strategy implementation, equipping you and your teams with the right tools to deflect crises and create strategic business plans that enhance the performance of your brand.

Thank you for reading this far, and I hope to have your attention again for the next installment of this novel.

To the moon. 🚀