Bad Reputation on MySpace and Social Sites?
Browse through some pages on MySpace and other social sites and you may be convinced that these sites do not pose much of a threat to your business. After all, many pages on social sites are personal networking pages, containing personal pictures and listings of favorite books and movies. The conversations on these sites are often about personal, everyday things. Pretending that these sites don’t affect your business is a serious mistake, however.
People use MySpace and other social sites the way that earlier generations used the phone – to gossip and pass on information. You may not even be aware of it, but your company reputation may be affected by what is said on these sites. There are many reasons why you need to be aware of your reputation on social sites, and always work to improve them:
- MySpace pages and pages on other social sites can be set to “personal” meaning that they will not show up in Google searches. Even if you occasionally run a Google search on your company name, you may not be aware of the misinformation or negative comments being spread about your company. You could be experiencing a drop in business and not even know why – unless you are monitoring the social sites.
- Social sites can spread misinformation quickly. If you have ever played the childhood game “Telephone” you likely know how quickly accurate information can become distorted. In the game, players sit in a circle and the first player whispers something – such as “I have red hair” — to the next player, who then passes on the message. By the time the last player listens to the message, it is often garbled beyond recognition. Social sites can work the same way, with members passing on half-understood or incomplete information as facts.
- Information about social sites often gains authority because these sites are friend-to-friend networks. If a stranger told you some bad news about a company, you might or might not believe them. However, if a friend told you the same information, you would be more inclined to believe it because you trust your friend. MySpace and sites like it rely on networks of friends. Therefore, when a negative piece of information starts making the rounds on this type of site it tends to get accepted as fact, since every member hears about it from a friend.
- Information on social sites spreads geometrically. On MySpace, each member page can be viewed by all the friends that member has. When someone posts a negative comment about your company, that member’s friends will see the comment, and all the friends’ friends will see the same information.
- Authoritative sources about your business – such as your employees – may be passing on very believable images and ideas about your business. It is one thing when a complete stranger makes an accusation about your company – but what happens when employees use their MySpace pages to portray themselves and your company in a less-than-flattering light? Wouldn’t you want to know if one of your managers or supervisors has a MySpace page that describes your company as “workplace hell” or worse? Only monitoring can tell you if this sort of activity is occurring online.