Essay Sample on Reputation Management: Communication Crucial for Company Success

Introduction

Communication skills underscore reputation management (Waeraas & Dahle, 2019). Maintaining a favorable image in the face of customers is critical to company success. Such images need to be consistent and predictable for the notion of the company to remain etched in the minds of their prospective and existing customers. Being part of the company for which I have worked for the past few years, I initially decided to incorporate the factors that support the company's reputation into my behavior. Although this was not an official title, I considered myself a brand ambassador. In this respect, the type of information about the company that I forward to interested parties has to align with our mantra and core values.

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Waeraas & Dahle (2019) claims that human resource managers should work collaboratively with reputation management to control their organizations technocratically and ideologically. I mostly use Instagram and Twitter, with Facebook being the site through which I interact with family and high school alumni. Twitter is where my interactions with prospective customers occur. In terms of reputation management, I initially intended to use my platform to connect with new people, be they in our line of business or not. With time, this role has grown due to my willingness to support the company's value system. I additionally wanted to improve my communication skills. As a generally introverted person, my initial plan was to push myself to participate in conversations, including those with which I disagreed. In the course of working for this company, these skills have grown and, although they have not reached optimal level, they are sufficient to handle negative feedback because I have the thick skin not to take anything customers say personally.

Social media is an important tool for communication but some are better than other or others are more social specific. Facebook and twitter could make an ideal communication tool to reach friends whereas LinkedIn could be instrumental in reaching professionals and work mates. Also, criticism pushes an organization or individual to improve upon themselves. Therefore, I take the constructive bits of such criticism and seek discussions on how to pivot it for growth. Aula (2011) claims that reputational advantages of online communications are immense. Social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest - hosts almost half the world's population. Therefore, reaching people through the internet should begin with social media. Aula (2011) further argues that such communication provides a peek into customers' attitudes towards their products and services. With such information, companies can craft more impactful advertisements and subsequently reach their customers in a more unique way (Freberg, 2018). Consequently, the organization's reputation improves tremendously. The most essential factor is, however, ensuring that the company speaks with one voice.

LinkedIn can be used in work place to share experience between employees and also to create important link for people with similar professional and careers. Connecting people with similar experience in an organization makes it easy to share resources and experience regarding mutual problems in the field. LinkedIn allows professionals to share their achievements and exploits in a particular career. The social media tool also requires a new member to identify their professional backgrounds which helps match them with people with similar education or professional background. The potential drawback of social media tools such as LinkedIn is the existence of imposters and fraudsters who take advantage over the unknowing users, Hence, the importance of managing one's reputation in social media.

The modern concept of social media has existed for barely over a decade. For this reason, it may be beneficial to understand the contemporary meaning of the term before proceeding. Social media is a term used to refer to all applications through which users can generate content that they can share with each other, directly or indirectly (Freberg, 2018). Twitter, widely regarded as one of the most used social media sites, is a microblogging platform through which users can curate content of whatever size to share with friends and strangers alike. When the site was launched in 2007, it only allowed users to craft content that does not exceed 140 characters (Ernst & Brem, 2017). However, continued pressure from the public prompted them to double the number to 280, before eliminated the restriction altogether. This minor change may have influenced the growth of Twitter to 262 million users outside of the US and a further 68 million within the country (Ernst & Brem, 2017). Today, the number of monthly active users stands at 330 million.

Twitter has arisen to become the go-to platform for breaking news, most of which take much longer to reach the mainstream media. It has further been responsible for helping political activists spread their message across borders (Freberg, 2018). About a decade ago, social media was credited with the Arab Spring, which is the name given to the widespread ouster of dictatorial regimes across North Africa and the Middle East. Fairly recently, the #MeToo movement, which enabled victims of sexual assault to have the courage to speak about their experiences, gained momentum on Twitter (Ernst & Brem, 2017). Consequently, public personalities like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby were charged with these accusations and faced the law (Freberg, 2018). A more recent example, perhaps, is the incessant use of the platform by US President Donald Trump, who relays his thoughts to the whole world at each passing opportunity without regard for decorum or criticism.

Like all the other social media platforms, Twitter has unique challenges and benefits. The major benefit is enabling information to reach people across the whole world and receiving immediate responses (Freberg, 2018). The ability to spur the movements mentioned above is also monumental and critical in a world bent on solving past transgressions based on gender or bad politics. Twitter is one of the avenues through which people can reach wide audiences which could be beneficial to one's career or business organization. Twitter today can be used as an avenue to deliver customer service through a two-way communication which makes it ideal for any business to succeed as well as resolve potential problems with customers before they could escalate. Twitter is an important source of brand identity and personal identity for companies and individuals respectively. The use of social media allows people to share a great detail of their philosophies and ideologies which contributes to the creation of solid personal and corporate identities. Another advantage of using twitter is that it allows instant feedback which can be used as a resource for conducting individual and corporate research on pertinent issues. Instant feedback is important for organizations and individuals decision making processes. Lastly, twitter use for business and personal career growth is free of charge and also there is a possibility of using paid ads. However, there is already enough benefit through the use of organic posts and interactions to engage potential customers.

The downside, however, is Twitter's apparent elevation of followers; users with many followers seem to have a more important opinion than those with fewer ones (Ernst & Brem, 2017). For this reason, the ease with which positive opinions drown in the noise and fellow users fail to access such messages points to inadequate accessibility in a platform that meant to solve that very problem. Maintaining one's Twitter presence require a heavy time investment and commitment. Besides, those that are responsible for the corporate Twitter accounts should have the necessary communication skills and etiquette to ensure that they do not ruin the reputation of companies in the process. Besides, the potential of negative criticism in using Twitter is high for corporate individuals and organizations which could be detrimental to one's reputation (Freberg, 2018). However, it is important for corporate and individuals to invest in skills that can be used to deal with negative criticism which can have a positive impact on one's reputation. Lastly, Twitter only allows a limit of 280 character limit which requires one to learn how to communicate effectively with less words and brevity.

References

Aula, P. (2011). Meshworked reputation: Publicists' views on the reputational impacts of online communication. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 28-36. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2010.09.008

Ernst, M., & Brem, A. (2017). Social media for identifying lead users? Insights into lead users' social media habits. International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, 14(04), 1750022. doi:10.1142/s0219877017500225

Freberg, K. (2018). Social media for strategic communication: Creative strategies and research-based applications. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Waeraas, A., & Dahle, D. Y. (2019). When reputation management is people management: Implications for employee voice. European Management Journal. doi:10.1016/j.emj.2019.08.010