“Google is not a search engine. It’s a reputation management system.”

Was a quote in a feature article called The See-through CEO in the April issue of Wired magazine (yes, I am a little behind on my reading). It is amazing how thoughts dance around in your head like a swirling cloud and then something comes along and solidifies it all into a nice solid chunk that you can start to break down and examine it. That line is one of the best things I have read in a long time and crystalizes so many things about the way I have been thinking about corporate reputation, the internet hive mind, transparency and social media. The overall article was good, but this line was the soft chewy center in the tootsie pop.

There is no question that google is a powerhouse brand, an essential tool for net navigation, and a serious innovator, but it has also become the arbiter of corporate reputation. For three reasons:
1. The system – The Google Page Rank system places an immense emphasis on blog posts, so the most prolific and linked blog posts about a brand will rise to the top.
2. The Lower the Fewer – Few people bother to go much further than the top 10 or 20 returns on google when doing a general search.
3. The human voice – A brand does not live in the mission statement, brand footprint, logo, or even in the marketing department. It belongs in the hearts and minds of the audience. And as stated in Edelman’s trust barometer “someone like me” is now the most trusted source of innovation.

The social mediators have immense influence on how brands are perceived. Irritate the social media world (as Edelman, Wal-mart, Dell, Comcast, and many others can attest to) and your google juice starts to turn sour, resulting in the top search rankings for your own trademarks owned by the ones who hate you. On the other hand the companies who tell it like is through transparent corporate blogging, unleash employees to engage with consumers, collaborate, redress past wrongs, and deliver on expectations reap the benefits of positive page rank brand equity. This is also true of technorati and other search engines to a lesser extent.

To successfully engage with social media is extremely time consuming, requires dedication, diplomacy and most importantly requires enough clout and support at the highest level of the company to be credible and effective (i.e few companies would permit a Customer Service Rep to apologize on behalf of the entire company for the crappy product they just launched).

While the C-suite is getting pretty crowded these days. We have CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, CFOs, CMOs and likely much more. Some great CEOs blog, but perhaps it is time to let the CEO actually run the company and create a separate role. Perhaps it is time for a new CXO acronym: The CDO or Chief Dialogue Officer – someone with enough clout to speak authoritatively on behalf of the company, make change when necessary and speak openly to the social media world.

[tags] Wired, Google, Transparency, Page Rank, Corporate blogging, social media, CDO, Chief Dialogue Officer [/tags]

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Posted in Attention Culture Public Relations Social Media Tools by dwalker 1 Comment