FreshNetworks Blog

I missed the morning sessions at the Social Media Influence conference in London yesterday, but turned up in time for Alex Burmaster from Nielsen Online.

The core themes from his presentation were:

• Listen and respond
• Exploit your website

Talking about consumer feedback and measuring it online he showed that not only is most feedback still emailed directly to the brand (54% of cases) but 55% of people would go first to a company website or blog to get information, and not somebody else’s site. In this context therefore, it is critical that you not only have a compelling and informative website (to increase the use people get from visiting it) but also that you listen and respond to comments and feedback you get (to encourage this kind of engagement).

In fact both of these elements are about thinking that your web presence is less about just marketing (pushing out a message) and more about engaging. Alex stressed that it’s important to make your website personal. This can be as simple as using personal phrases (such as “Meet us” or “Get involved”), to exploiting video on our site or integrating some community elements (such as blogs or forums).

For Alex, every product should have a video and every brand can have a community. Videos are the easiest thing to spread virally or embed. And he thinks that there is a community element to every product - people need it in their daily lives or they wouldn’t buy it.

For me, this shows that the best way of monitoring and controlling your brand’s image online is to be proactive - much of the key to success is probably something brands themselves can control.