Corporate reputation is influenced by a wide range of factors and can have both tangible and intangible effects on a business.
Although some aspects are readily measurable, such as sentiment analysis on earned media content, others can be a bit harder to pin down. Additionally, some components deserve to be weighted a bit more heavily. A financial services firm, for example, must be viewed as having high honesty and trust as a core part of corporate culture, whilst a luxury handbag maker may prioritise ethical sourcing of materials.
Tracking these elements over time can be simplified by implementing a reputation scorecard. Every organisation is different, but there are many common elements to reputation.
Corporate-level components
General Sentiment – Tracking media mentions, social content, and trade publications can provide valuable sentiment information. And, with AI increasingly adept at parsing tone, automated sentiment is getting more and more accurate. Depending on your industry, you may wish to create separate scores for mainstream media, social content, and trade, weighting each appropriately to match business goals. For example, a skincare brand that relies heavily on word-of-mouth and influencer recommendations to increase sales may wish to prioritise social content, whilst a more business-to-business concern could see more value in trade and traditional media.
Direct Customer Feedback – Direct customer feedback, good or bad, is a high contributor to overall reputation. Retaining customers is more cost-effective than trying to find new ones, so keeping existing audiences satisfied is essential to profitability. Feedback provided by this group should earn a placement on your reputational scorecard.
Share of Voice – We’ve written before on the importance of monitoring for share of voice as a key component of corporate intelligence. Knowing where the business stands vis-à-vis its competitors is also an important part of reputation, particularly when paired with sentiment. A competitor that has just been through a product crisis may have very high share of voice, but when viewed in conjunction with high negatives, reputational scores would be affected. Reputational scoring could also be moderated despite a crisis if the competitor was perceived to handle the situation deftly.
Corporate Culture (external view) – How a business is perceived to treat its employees (by outsiders who do not work there) can have an impact on its reputation, which in turn can affect other business needs such as hiring and recruitment efforts.
Corporate Culture (internal view) – How a business is perceived to treat its employees by the people who do work there can also have an impact on reputation, affecting things such as employee retention and productivity. Monitoring and assessing corporate culture reputation is important, both externally and internally.
Giving Back – This is a catch-all category that looks at how philanthropic efforts are contributing to reputation. It does not have to mean monetary contributions to specific causes (although those do apply!), it can be something as straightforward as building recycling efforts into packaging decisions. It can be a corporate match to employee giving, or team sponsorships for charitable fundraisers. Essentially, this is any corporate effort that falls into the general bucket of philanthropic or charitable support. The amount of weight put on this element of scoring may vary.
Regulatory Compliance – Clearly, companies are expected to comply with existing laws. The inclusion of this on the scorecard is not so much about whether a business complies, but rather how far above and beyond they may choose to go. Additionally, there is a potentially negative impact on scoring if gaps in compliance exist, so it makes sense to include this as a possible risk to reputation.
CEO/Leadership components
CEO Sentiment – Highly visible CEOs will have more prominent sentiment scoring, but that does not mean that less-visible leadership should not be tracked. It simply means that from a reputational scorecard perspective, lower visibility from leadership will have less impact on reputational scoring—good or bad.
Perceived responsiveness (external view) – Leadership’s responsiveness to issues that affect the business can impact reputation. Being too slow to respond to external challenges can leave the impression that an organisation’s leadership is too passive or is unable to adroitly pivot in a manner that protects the bottom line.
Perceived responsiveness (internal view) – A similar issue is employees’ perception of leadership’s responsiveness to internal issues that can affect the business. Labor struggles, dissatisfaction with hiring and firing decisions, and even poor internal communications can lead to employees who believe that the organisation is not doing what it needs to do to remain a healthy and viable business.
Impact on sales/stock/share prices – Leadership decisions and statements can have a direct impact on key business indicators such as sales and stock prices. And, sales and stock prices can subsequently have an impact on reputation, leading to a potentially upward (or downward) cycle. Sometimes leadership makes decisions for the long-term that land the wrong way with the public. This is bound to happen at some point, and appropriate messaging and clear explanations will go a long way to mitigating negative impacts.
Building and using a reputational scorecard
Once you have selected the elements that contribute to your organisation’s reputation, you will need to determine if any need to be weighted and, if so, by how much.
As noted in the example above, a skincare brand may wish to double the value of social media sentiment, as that is where its core, high-value audiences are. In contrast, a company that manufactures industrial parts used in factories may wish to increase the weight of trade publications.
Use AI to summarise these elements if you wish, but be mindful about what you provide to generative AI platforms. This is especially important for any internal or proprietary data, such as employee feedback and regulatory compliance information.
The ability to rapidly analyse multiple forms of data to provide actionable information on corporate reputation is valuable, but only if a business uses such intelligence to guide strategy. Building corporate reputation can help to insulate a business when times are hard, and can help if or when a crisis hits.
