Toby Bell, a leading analyst at Gartner Research, has just published a great new paper entitled “Policies and Procedures to Manage Enterprise Internet Reputation“. The Gartner team refers to the space EIRM or Enterprise Internet Reputation Management, which entails both search as well as social sites that can have an impact on corporations and brands. Although, that term is unique to Gartner others in the space like Forrester, Aberdeen, and IDC have dedicated analyst’s leading practices in this area as well. Toby lays out some ground rules and steps that organizations should be actively putting in place to understand and interact with search and social media conversations that consumers are having. I strong encourage brands to take a look at his findings, recommendations, and steps to enlightenment.

Some of the key findings:

- “Social media is an unfamiliar territory for enterprises, with very different rules for engagement”

- “…Social media blurs the demarcations between public and private information, increasing the likelihood that consumers will unintentionally or negligently say publicly what they meant to say privately”

- “Time scales on the internet are more compressed and the implications of a negative event can be far-reaching”

Net-net is that organizations need to understand this medium and have a plan for understanding, interacting, and engaging with consumers that are already talking about them.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies