Monitoring Your Brand Online – Is It Enough?

Have you read the Advertising Age article from February 15 titled, “My Life as H.J. Heinz: Confessions of a Real-Life Twitter Squatter” yet? If not, read it: http://bit.ly/aKwHIS [select first article listed]. Then, answer this question: What are you doing to monitor your brand across the various social media channels? Are you doing enough?

In this particular example, I find it amazing (and embarrassing) that someone outside the H.J. Heinz company created and used an @HJ_Heinz Twitter account for two whole weeks before the Twitter handle was reported and then changed to @NOThj_Heinz. The H.J. Heinz company spokesperson responded at one point stating that “as part of our regular monitoring practices, we actively monitor the social-media space, which is how we discovered the Twitter account ‘hj_heinz.’” Really?! Then why did it take you two whole weeks to discover the Twitter handle and have it changed? Even if Heinz had identified the Twitter squatter on day one (or even day two), I find it hard to believe that it would take a full two weeks to have the Twitter handle changed – especially when the person was willing to turn the account over to H.J. Heinz and explain his intentions.

In this example, the Twitter Squatter was sharing positive information about the company and its products, so what’s the problem? Well, the main issue is that the @HJ_Heinz account was the company’s only representation on Twitter for that entire time (and still is to this day) and went unnoticed by the company. What if the person had been sharing negative or inaccurate information? That could have easily been a PR nightmare! And certainly there are messages that could help boost the H.J. Heinz brand beyond just the information being picked up by the Twitter Squatter from various online sites. So what is the H.J. Heinz team waiting for, and why are they letting an “unofficial company spokesperson” continue to be the only voice on Twitter for the brand?

My simple advice:

1. Actively monitor your brand (and that doesn’t mean performing occasional Google searches).
2. Have a presence at the “social media cocktail party” so you are in the “room” and know what people are saying about your brand.
3. Come to realization that you cannot control all messages being shared, but you can control messages communicated by the company.
4. Get engaged and have a voice – Monitoring from the sidelines is not enough.

Work to build your presence in the online space and it will eliminate the possibility of Twitter Squatters controlling your brand and instead provide room for brand evangelists (hopefully) instead of “unofficial company spokespersons.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Branding, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.