Join Pulsar and Lansons at Social Media Week London, 15 September

Next week Lansons, a full service strategic consultancy specialising in corporate, media, and political communications, and long-standing Pulsar client, are hosting a panel at Social Media Week London - and we're joining them. The 'How companies manage their reputations online' event is held on Thursday 15 September, 3.30pm - 5.00pm and aims to get to the bottom of the following three questions:

• How can regulated companies use social media for business results?
• How can you convince C-Suite that managing and measuring reputation should be a priority?
• How can data be used to better manage reputation online?

The panel was specifically chosen to provide a wide range of opinions based on knowledge and practical experience. The expert line-up is as follows:

• Francesco D’Orazio, Co-Founder and Vice President of Product and Research at Pulsar
• Magnus Boyd, Partner at Schillings
• Ed Coke, Director of Consulting Services at Reputation Institute
• Rebecca Mayo, Joint Managing Director at Lansons

If you want to attend tickets are still available - sign up here. Still need convincing? Last week I sat down with Michael White, Lansons' Digital Account Director, to understand his thoughts on how social media and online content has a direct impact on reputation management.

Ed: Of all events, why Social Media Week London? 

Michael: Social Media Week London is important to us because reputation management is at the heart of our business - that's what we do, we manage how organisations communicate.

We've been attending SMW for years and realised most speakers and exhibitors had a similar agenda, presenting ideas and insights on similar topics within the social media sphere. No companies previously have showed any expertise into how social media and reputation management are linked.

That was a gap in the agenda. We believe it's important for SMW to have representation from every corner of the communication industry. We all talk about how the communications industry is integrated and teams shouldn’t be silo’d, but this isn’t always practically the case when reputation management services are delivered.

So, we decided to host our own independent event as part of SMW. The event is a great platform for our sector; it ties in with digital and provides us the opportunity to see what other organisations are doing.

Ed: Can you explain why is social media is so important to your business?

Social media is important because of transparency - journalists were once the gate keepers, now any social media user can spread awareness of information. Journalists are no longer the number one source of information; we now look at influencers across the social sphere.

PR expert and theorist David Philips has this theory about it: the internet makes organisations more transparent, but at the same time, this transparency can cause a loss of control for companies. Information has a way of revealing itself, which is not always what a company needs.

Today every type of business is a media company, or has the potential to become one, which is exactly the same for our clients. Social media allows you to target specific people, it eradicates hierarchies making the way we connect with people easier. For example, we had a tech client who wanted to speak with people in IT - networking through companies and other avenues didn't produce results. So, what they did was get on LinkedIn and network directly with senior people. It was simple, but it worked.

Ed: How do you use social media intelligent platforms?

Michael: the work we're doing is varied - we're mostly using social media in regulated industries; finance services, health & energy. Pulsar gives us the best picture. It can go across the main stream social networks and is great for identifying influencers, including bloggers.

We have four main uses for Pulsar:

• To highlight sales opportunities by using GPS targeting, which has proven to be extremely useful
• Image recognition shows that we can see your brand online, making it easier to visualise reputation management
• To identify the most relevant bloggers and Twitter users by using the Influencer Network Graph
• We visualise and map social media networks by using Gephi - a data visualisation tool built into the platform.

Ed: What's the most surprising/ interesting insights you've pulled from social media so far?

Michael: we hosted an Asset Management event which included a panel of experts - one of the panelists did a report on how Asset Managers are using social media. They created a breakdown of investor profiles, and found that all investors will visit a website before investing - to ensure the company is legit.

Asset Management companies in the US make a real effort to attract investors using the internet, but in the UK it's not as advanced. The panel shared insight showing that the profile of investors are changing in the UK and, on the whole, UK asset managers are missing out.

We're really looking forward to hosting a panel on how companies best manage their reputations online next week. If you want to learn more, join us at Social Media Week London, tickets are still available - sign up here.

Interested in discovering for yourself how audience intelligence can help you understand reputation management, send an email to: [email protected]