To get a good picture of how the outside world sees your organization, we distinguish four fields: media image, opinion maker image, the image of your organization among the target group and your image among the public. The distinction is made because it can occur in situations that the media image is very moderate, while your target group is busy discussing something. By assessing situations from these four fields, you can quickly draw conclusions about where and how you should take action.
If you look at the media image, it can be valuable to look at the most important sources where you are discussed. Tools such as OBI4wan, Clipit or the Brand Monitor of Buzzcapture give you a good overview of this.
Want to know who influences public opinion? Look at the top influencers who talk about you and, if necessary, engage with them. This can be done in front of the screens through webcare or behind the scenes by really engaging in conversation and inviting them to share their vision of your brand with you.
Tweets, comments on public Facebook pages and comments on news items, blogs or review sites can also give you buy phone number list substantive insights into how people view your organisation and how this aligns with your brand values. Complaints and compliments are valuable for identifying strengths and weaknesses of your organisation.
Once you have mapped this out, you can start looking at where you need to adjust your strategy.
The final step is to translate insights into actions. By knowing what is happening, where this is happening and what the most important factors and influencers are, you can determine what your first step is. Is the image that the media has of you not the same as your brand values? Then it may be important to pay more attention to your media strategy and contacts with (trade) journalists. Do you want to influence the image that your target group has of you? Talk to them, for example by properly applying webcare, to see where the bottlenecks are and how you can change this within your organization.
Then you analyze the steps you have taken and look again to see if the core values still fit you and your target group. It is possible that you give new accents to your focus and that your anchor point shifts. And so the circle starts again.