Posts Tagged ‘online reputation management’

If you have no idea what has been going on between Southwest Airlines and actor / director Kevin Smith, you have probably been living under a rock. The purpose of this post is not to give a recap of what happened. You can find that by going to CNN.com, ABC.com, Kevin’s Twitter account and Southwest’s Twitter account and blog. The purpose of this post is not to take sides, or ruminate about what this incident means for airlines and airline customers of all sizes and shapes, either. The purpose of this post is to measure the buzz created by this situation across all social media sources, as well as to address the impact on sentiment towards both parties involved: Mr. Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines.

I scoured the social web and found close to 45,000 relevant mentions of Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines within the relevant time period, across blogs, microblogs, discussion boards / forums, and online news. On the trend graph below, you can clearly see that the event occurred on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, garnering 14,000 mentions that very day. The next day, even more discussion ensued, with 16,000 conversations taking place on the 15th. At this point, however, this topic has pretty much run its course, as interest waned after the 16th.

Judging by the chart below, the incident was discussed in microblogs more  than in any other medium (66% of total conversations). This makes sense, because Twitter became the hub of all activity, as this is where Kevin Smith voiced his strong opinions against Southwest, quickly mobilizing his followers.

The key issue that SWA and Kevin Smith should be concerned about in the aftermath of this proverbial storm, is the impact that the whole ordeal may leave on their respective brands. Yes, Kevin Smith is a personal brand, and, just like SWA, he should be concerned about what happens to it. Perhaps he is even monitoring social media with a monitoring and engagement solution? Hey, Kevin, we can help you with that! Southwest, we would be very happy to help you too!

So how does the public feel? Let’s take a look. For this type of discussion, I like to use sentiment trend graphs to understand how sentiment ebbed and flowed each day. For the purposes of this discussion, I did not analyze neutral sentiment, as it adds less value to the discussion. Looking at sentiment towards Kevin Smith (below), it becomes obvious that this incident has hurt his brand in the short term. Whereas negative was a bit above positive even prior to the incident, the gap between the two was never as large as it became during the 14th and 15th of this month. The day after the story broke on Twitter, negative sentiment soared high above positive, returning to a lower level, albeit still higher than positive, on the 16th and 17th.

Now let’s take a look at sentiment towards Southwest Air. During the days prior to the big event, SWA tended to have mostly positive sentiment. However, between the 14th and the 17th, positive and negative sentiment were both elevated and went pretty much neck in neck. Of note is that although fairly evenly split, negative sentiment never exceeded positive.

Based on sentiment data presented above, I would say that both brands suffered in the process with increased negative sentiment; however Southwest Airlines has netted out ahead of Kevin Smith (in terms of sentiment) by garnering more positive support than Smith did. It’s important to realize that these are short term effects only; the real key would be to understand the long-term effect, if any, that the episode has had on public perception of both brands.  I am going to do a follow-up post on this, to track sentiment in a couple of weeks and maybe even further out.

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Net neutrality.  It’s the idea that the net should be open and uncontrolled by major broadband providers.  While politicians have been mixed on the issue, most leaders in the web space agree that giving broadband providers access to control how much bandwidth is allocated to whom could slow progress for many sites on the web.

On the 30th birthday of ARPAnet, the predecessor to the internet, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski called for network neutrality and transparency rules.  Genachowski determined that the open nature of the internet allowed it to become what it is today.

This endorsement obviously propelled “net neutrality” to the top of the online space, boosting mentions 2800 percent.

Most Americans don’t even know what net neutrality is but would be heavily impacted if it were not protected.  Given America’s fascination with “Twilight”, Jay-Z and the latest in reality TV, mentions in so many blogs as well as MSN, Yahoo, CNet and the New York Times, it looks like the FCC scored a public relations victory with this announcement.

If you missed it, Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s speech at the Video Music Awards to announce that Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. Let’s see how this affected mentions of Kanye West:

As you can see, Kanye went from mentions in the hundreds to mentions in the tens of thousands. Theoretically, if Kanye used Community Insights, he could log in and address all of his detractors directly instead of using the filter he did in Jay Leno. Community Insights actually lists blog mentions of keywords by influence, so he could and perhaps should start there.

It’s hard to succeed without a great product, but it’s also hard to succeed without creating a strong perception of your product. A press release at the right time to the right places can help ensure your brand is always on top of the dialog on the web.

Community Insights allows you to monitor the dialog about your competitors. Updating in near real time, you can see when your competitors are getting press, what the sentiment is, and where they are getting coverage. If your PR team is agile, they can quickly issue messaging that can prevent your competitors’ campaign from gaining traction.

We used Community Insights to measure the dialog about three hosting cloud providers: RackSpace cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon EC2. Here is the coverage for the past 30 days:

If you track the red line, you can see that on August 25, RackSpace announced the tools for their cloud. This was a pretty big announcement as these tools only make using their cloud easier. On the 26th, Amazon announced their virtual private cloud, which you can see by the spike in the blue line.

Would Rackspace’s announcement about its cloud tools have received more attention if Amazon had not launched their virtual private cloud the very next day? How does this affect people’s perception of what is available to people competitively shopping for cloud hosting?

The Google algorithm is about to change.  It’s changing significantly and it will affect how you can shape the relationship you have with your customers online.

That’s a pretty drastic statement.  Can you explain why this is?
Everyone knows that sites listed highly in Google get more traffic than those that don’t.  This can be achieved through search engine optimization.  Search engine optimization at its base level is fairly simple.  Sites listed highly in Google are 1.) relevant to the keyword a searcher types in 2.) linked to heavily by other sites that are relevant to that topic and 3.) archived frequently, which means Google’s crawlers have repeatedly “viewed” what is on their pages.

In a new shift in how websites are indexed, Google will soon be moving more towards a “real time” web.  To what extent we are not sure about yet as Google doesn’t reveal its methodology, but they have a test site where you can check how results will differ.

What does this mean?
It means that fresh content, both by you and about you, will take a higher level of precedence over content that has simply been there a long time.

Why does this affect how my company interacts with customers on the web?
If a customer complains about your company in social media, it has the potential to usurp your own website in Google search engine result pages much faster than it used to.  If he or she gives a glowing review, this could also be the case.  As someone who is monitoring your company’s reputation, competitors, and your industry online, you have the potential to help shape how this dialog unfolds and affect how your site is listed in Google.  Brand managers will have to act more like customer service reps than ever before.