Online reputation experts say the recent incident involving two Domino’s employees un-hygienically handling customers’ food and posting the results on YouTube will force companies to increase their monitoring of social networking sites.
The incident, which has led to the arrest of the two employees involved, has brought to light the power of social media to rapidly identify and spread information that may be harmful to a company’s reputation.
Eric Wang, general manager of internet marketing group WebSalad, says that these incidents will increase the emphasis on online reputation management, which remains a relatively small industry in Australia.
“In the US it’s been around for longer than it has over here, but it’s gaining a lot of prevalence from the amounts of focus that’s being driven towards places like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. They’re gaining users and gaining popularity.”
A new Sydney-based firm SR7 is using that popularity to its advantage, and now offers “online risk and reputation management” services that includes monitoring of social media networking profiles of clients’ employees.
The company formed eight months ago after it noticed that employees will speak candidly about work-related issues on social sites while remaining reserved at work.
SR7 director James Griffin has told The Age that the company’s business is growing after recent public relations fiascos, including the Domino’s incident, and the “fake Stephen Conroy” Twitter account controversy.
“If there’s a competitor or if it’s a company of interest to a journalist and they stumble across [controversial posts], then it’s out there and it’s gone,” he says.
“I think that while employees have the right to have their personal conversations, if they’re going to mention or say something or do something ridiculous online in relation to a company, then that’s what they’ve got to deal with.”
Wang says companies such as SR7 will continue to have business as the greater business community learns to deal with the rapid spread of information on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“It’s definitely going to grow. I think the real question is, exactly what direction is it going to grow towards? You can look at this whole movement as a level of transparency that wasn’t there before.”
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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