Google SideWiki: thoughts on brand reputations
Jinfo Blog

4th October 2009

By Joanna Ptolomey

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Cadbury, the UK confectionery company, has been in the news recently over the takeover attempts by rival food company Kraft. It created a lot of news coverage, but who can remember the great Cadbury story from a few years back when the ‘power of the FaceBook people’ insisted on the return of the Wispa chocolate bar? And why not, a smooth blend of velvet bubbly delight that just melts in your mouth, who could want more? User generated web content does have a substantial voice and the example of the chocolate bar reintroduction demonstrates its influence on business. Obviously it also has the power to have a negative effect, when inflammatory pictures or negative press starts to have a life of its own and a story that just won’t die. Brand influence, via social media, is an on-going issue for organisations, and I have been reminded this week whilst following chatter in the pharmaceutical sector. The lively debate this week was all about the Google SideWiki browser application (http://digbig.com/5bajxn). This allows users to comment on any website, even if that website does not allow comments. You have to install the application and it will work in Internet Explorer and FireFox. Although my most recent encounter in brand influencing was via the pharmaceutical sector, the questions hold true for any organisation in any industry sector. Does it give consumers another choice? Does it open the door for groups with different agendas other than your organisations to corrupt your messages? Or, in the case of the pharmaceutical industry, is there an issue for marketers and industry regulators? Social media has the power to affect your brand, but with so much chatter on the web it can be hard to find and distinguish the voices that have the potential to make the difference to your organisation. How does an organisation uncover what questions really matter to them and have the power to affect and influence their brand for the good and bad? LexisNexis Analytics think they have found a way to help organisations just do that. Reading their white paper Finding Influence, on discovering the brand conversations that are influencing organisations (http://digbig.com/5bajtt), I came across a tool they call the ‘influencer index’. The index is based on qualitative and quantitative measures to determine the importance of a social media source to a user. That means it takes into account the market share of the social media, the ‘embedded’ nature into a community, and the contributions per site based on context. So if you are wondering how to make sense of the volume of web chatter, you are in crisis management, or are indeed a social media savvy outfit already, then this tool may be worth an investigation for helping to manage your reputation. What strikes me about the recent social media flutters in the pharmaceutical world is that the same questions are being asked in nearly every other industry sector. Google SideWiki may be here today and gone tomorrow, but that doesn’t really matter as it is just another tool. It is the idea, the concept that there is power to influence a brand and with social media that seems to be getting easier than ever. Joanna Ptolomey serves as a FUMSI contributing editor for the Use practice area and also reviews products for VIP.

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