Companies which adopt a social media strategy recognize the need to listen and participate in discussions going on about the company across the internet. These visionary companies realize the limitations of traditional feedback channels such as the Suggestion Box in the company lobby and the feedback@companyname.com email address. Still, many companies continue to ignore the importance of these conversations. These others fail to see two things. First, they fail to recognize that social media has rendered the Gutenberg Principle, where the means for the distribution of information was institutionalized and beyond the reach of most, irrelevant. Second, and closely related to the first, the web, search and social media make it just as easy to find the non-institutional views as it is to find the institutional view. Sometimes, it may even be easier to find the non-institutional views, what we call the guerrilla narratives. That companies are missing this is not totally surprising. The world has been organized around this principle for so long that it is not immediately obvious that a tectonic shift has occurred. Many persist in thinking that so long as the institutional position is pushed out via the traditional channels, then all is settled. This is so wrong. Today, what used to be the institutional position is just one of several positions. To win acceptance in the contest of narratives, companies need to learn the new rules and play by them. There is no alternative. This one will not pass away. It is not a fad or fringe movement. Companies need to commit the resources and personnel to enter the fray of online exchanges and remain there. They abstain at their peril.
This year’s ThisDay Award for Bank of the Year award was won by Diamond Bank ‘in recognition of the Bank’s sterling performance and resilience even in dire times.’ Two weeks later, ‘Ayoola22′, posed a question on Nairaland.com, the popular online forum, challenging the bank’s emergence as winner of the award. As far as ‘Ayoola22′ was concerned, all the bank had going was its popular ‘Save-and-Win’ lottery. As far as ‘Ayoola22′ was concerned, even the popularity of the lottery would not yield anything for the bank. In his words, the whole sweepstakes was ‘the biggest nothing for them.’
In another post on the NaijaReports blog, ‘Baron’, the commentator, stated his own views that ‘if Diamond bank is the best in Nigeria then we are in worse trouble than we think and my aunty in the village will soon get an award for her esusu business.’
A year earlier, ‘Che Oyimnatumba’, a disgruntled customer of the bank, had expressed his frustration at difficulties he was having redeeming a laptop he had purchased under a lease agreement in another of the bank’s promos.
Perhaps, it would be easy to dismiss ‘Ayoola22′, ‘Baron’ and ‘Che Oyimnatumba’ as isolated incidents. One could cite that the first two did not provide any compelling reasons why the bank did not deserve the award, while the third did not provide his real name, and other pertinent information to verify his claims.
Curiously, among those commenting on ‘Che Oyimnatumba’ post was a ‘Henry Nwagwu’ who stoutly defended the bank against the blogger’s comments and discounted his experience as false. Nwagwu’s response may have been motivated by his own experience or relationship with the bank. He may even have been a staff of the bank. Unfortunately, his use of vulgar language did more damage to the bank’s cause than any help it may have offered. Here is the verbatim quote.
Mr. Che,
Why are you just a bundle of lies? Why do you derive pleasure in running others down? Have you really sat down to analyze the weight of the lies you have just told?
Have you really done your research on your claims? or you just imagine stuff and put on paper (blog, internet) because you want to be heard?
Even your article is not coordinated. Your subject talks about about Diamond Bank and fraud yet you talk about other banks, ATM, Dangote (imagine), Premier League and so on.
Come on man, get real, shut the f*%k up and stop crying over spilt milk. Get your facts right on issues ok.
By the way, i heard that you are not even the recipient of the ACER laptop, not even a customer of Diamond Bank so what da f*#K?
I’m only speaking my mind, just like you. Difference is, your mind is full of sh#t.
Fortunately for the bank, these posts did not resonate around the web. With only a bit more savvy and dedication, they could have been amplified causing severe headaches for the bank.
The following presentation by Sandeep Arora is an excellent primer on the implications of social media on the corporate reputation.
Yet, important as online reputation management is, as it must be for companies in Diamond Bank’s situation, it is not the whole point about why companies need to pay attention to what is being said about them online. In fact, it should not be.
What then is the point or what are the points?
That the ease of online publication and distribution, which we refer to as the dismantling of the Gutenberg Principle, creates more opportunities than risks for companies with a record of doing right by their key stakeholders. First, the web makes these guerrilla narratives discoverable, making it easier for the company to find them and respond in an appropriate manner. Second, for every critic who posts a malicious story or forum comment, there are several other clients, investors, suppliers, employees who can take up the mantle and present contrary evidence.
That the corporate website as it is currently designed, excluding transactional websites, is at its best a repository or shelf of official information. It can hardly generate or foster topics of interest.
That companies would need to be a lot more transparent and open as their actions, statements and policies will be queried, probed and examined again and again. ‘No comment’, except in extreme cases where the law demands so, is an anachronism.
That participation in discussions is not a zero-sum game of winning an argument or a marketing opportunity to sell a product. Rather, it is about presenting the company’s side of a story or position, while respecting the views of others. Conversations are a means to an end. That end is a community. The company is not the community. Its members are. The company or its representative is only one member.
That the relationships that the company builds by participating in and fostering communities are a type of capital. The value of these relationships will be realized when there is a pressing need to push out the company’s position, for instance, in a crisis or scandal.
That companies will have to reschool and retool how they communicate and measure the success of their media outreach. It will no longer be sufficient for their agencies to bring in piles of newspaper cuttings and electronic media mentions. The social decibels will be just as important.
The question then is: What can Diamond Bank and other companies caught up in similar situations do about this? Fortunately, a lot. We list some below:
Recognize that it (the bank) is the direct or indirect subject of conversations right now. These may be about its stock price, business strategy, employment policies, customer service, prices, social responsibility, sector, peers, etc.
Recognize that these online conversations are becoming increasingly as important as the traditional offline ones like newspaper articles, op-ed pieces, TV business program interviews, etc. They are becoming much more influential on how key stakeholders form their views about a company.
For every bad experience or event a critic of the company describes, there are several satisfied and applauding stakeholders. Otherwise, the company would not be in business. Even critics are rarely permanent in their condemnation. They are only voicing a problem. The company has an obligation to address this one way or the other. Therefore, while participating in other conversations across the web, it is a good idea for the company to have its primary conversation space where it pro-actively encourages a wider segment of its stakeholders to participate in, which will naturally produce more balanced exchanges.
It is not about jumping in to douse a fire and then getting back-to-business as usual. These conversation spaces are now a fact of life and are here to stay. It should be about going in and staying there.
The publishing-distribution facility of the ‘new’ web are only two legs of a stool. The third leg are the communities that are fostered around these user-generated content.
Perhaps, most important of all, this new landscape will require the full time attention of the company. Nothing will guarantee greater ineffectiveness than gatecrashing a discussion on blogs, forums and communities only when there is a complaint or negative post about the company. As with other unfamiliar technologies and expression tools, it is the nature of the beast that practice makes perfect.
Full time means that the company appreciates the significance of the role sufficiently enough to appoint a Community Officer to that position. This role, which, by definition, will cut across a number of verticals (customer care, corporate communications, investor relations, sales, marketing, IT, HR, etc) is not a vertical. Instead, it co-ordinates how each of these verticals responds to external queries or requests.
Four inter-related responsibilities of the Community Officer would be:
Develop and implement an online social participation strategy for the company. Encourage its adoption within the company (laterally and vertically) according to clear rules of engagement.
Monitor online discussions and mentions of interest on the company. This also involves how employees are taking part in the social web to see how it supports the company’s business goals, opportunities that arise from that and possible risks that may turn up.
Participate by contributing to these discussions, seeding new topics, making clarifications on topics as they affect the company where necessary and addressing issues of interest to other members in the communities, networks or other cyber-locales. The simple act of participating in communities when there is no desperate need to do so, such as a scandal, will reassure other members that the company is around to build long-term relationships.
Provide intelligence back to the company on what is being said, why, by whom (investors, analysts, customers, prospects, potential hires) in a format that enables the company to take decisions that support business goals including sales, investment community support for the business strategy, end-user participation in the ideation process, etc.
Be the voice of the different communities [on blogs, forums, social networks] within the company, and the company’s voice within those communities.
According to Chuck Brymer, CEO of DDB Worldwide, the worldwide advertising agency, in a paper ‘Introducing the Chief Community Officer: Marketing has changed. So must its Leadership’
A chief community officer should be someone who understands all patterns of influence online and offline, in much the same way that a media planner understands patterns of media consumption.
So rather than focusing on dousing fires on Nairaland.com, NigeriaVillageSquare.com and StockMarketNigeria.com, companies should focus their energy on understanding the emergent trend and devising strategies for how best to participate with success in it. Certainly, the focus needs to be much broader than simply online reputation management. Let’s see another VizEdu presentation.
Companies have so much to gain from the new web. A frank blog post by the CEO of Diamond Bank on the bank’s customer service, which goes so far as to admit that there may have been times the bank has not lived up to the expectations of a few customers [with examples and how these were solved], will likely turn up higher on search results for the query ‘customer service in nigerian banks’ than its own website or the website of any other bank for that matter.
It is the duty of the Community Officer to counsel management on what is being said, and how to respond. In most cases, the officer will respond directly and follow up internally on the issue to report back to the community or specific member. In other cases, the officer will get the responsible officer in that area within the company to respond directly on the community.
So why are companies not moving faster into this new world? There are a number of reasons.
Like all novel phenomena, observers persist in viewing the new with old lens, and force-bottling new wine in old wine skins. Hence, a company may think it is sufficient to put out a press release addressing issues raised in a blog post, without posting their response on that blog.
Distaste and fear. Since many of the early users of the new publishing, distribution and community used it in ‘revolutionary’ ways to challenge the institutional version that had dominated during the Gutenberg era, many companies retain that view of it as an unconventional channel and two-edged sword. They would rather stick with what they know. So they divide the world of information into two. The Gutenberg world where they still retain significant control, and the post-Gutenberg world, where they are not in control. Their natural instincts lead them to cling to the former.
Companies are typical late adopters of new technologies even when they stand to benefit the most from it.
Even visionary companies that recognize the significance of the trend, persist in seeing the role of a community officer as a vertical strain in the company, under a communications department, rather a strategic one whose importance and relevance cuts across the entire company, internally and externally.
Local agencies that should be advising companies on how to move forward in this area simply do not have the skilled and experienced personnel to do so. Besides, because its metrics of success are less clear, the billing presents more of a problem so they prefer to avoid it.
Right now, the names Ayoola22, Baron and Che Oyimnatumba may mean nothing to the heads of customer care, investor relations and corporate communications at Diamond Bank. If they have ever heard of them or visited their posts, they almost certainly dismissed them as minor incidents not worth the time. For now, maybe they are right. As individuals, these three may be ignored. But as part of a trend, they and the tools they use will become more powerful judged by the audiences they can reach and influence to form opinions about the bank.
Seen in this light, that is, as a gathering trend, individuals like these will wield the power to either make or break the reputation of companies like Diamond Bank. If they fail to see this, that where there is a bee, a swarm is not far off, then they should expect a lot more stings in future without the benefit of the honey. The writing is on the wall.
Twitter: CustomsStreet
