HOW TO MANAGE AN ONLINE BRAND WITH MARK SOOHOO OF BURSON-MARSTELLER

Mark SooHoo, Managing Director of Digital Health at Burson-Marsteller spoke with Doug Simon, CEO of D S Simon Media at the “How to Manage an Online Brand and Reputation” panel hosted by PRSA NY and gave his take on how to manage an online brand. Both Mark and Doug were panelists at the event. Mark touches on the need for analytics and tailoring your message for the appropriate audiences. Watch below.

Mark’s VlogViews: 

“It has to do with real deep listening and real analytics on what are people searching for? What are people talking about online? How am I mining that information to appropriately tailor the stories that your audiences want to hear?”

” One of the things that we focus a lot with our clients on is moving from KPIs like tweets and likes and retweets and things like that, moving more toward how am I truly achieving business objectives?”

Transcript

DOUG SIMON: So how do you manage your online brand reputation? That was the subject of the session from PRSA tonight here at Burson-Marsteller. I’m with a fellow panelist, Mark SooHoo, from Burson himself. Thanks so much for being with us.

MARK SOOHOO: Oh, thank you for being here. We are really happy to have hosted this panel.

DOUG SIMON: Yeah, it was a great session. What were some of the key takeaways that you gave to the audience?

MARK SOOHOO: I think the number one thing for me is thinking about the three Ps– people, process, and platforms– and thinking about it in that order. We are working with a lot of our clients who are thinking platform first or thinking tactic first. We’re really backing all the way up to think about the people, internal and external, thinking about how are you telling your full organization’s story.

From there, building the process– be it IT, legal, marketing, communications, digital– all those components fitting nicely together. And then finally, thinking about the platforms. So thinking about your people, process, and platforms in that order.

DOUG SIMON: Makes a lot of sense. And we also talked about the importance of really having your goals in mind. Are you trying to turn your leaders and experts into influencers– for example, create awareness? And that you can actually use data to get feedback on what content is working. What are some of the best ways to do that?

MARK SOOHOO: Yeah, from our perspective, a lot of it has to do with real deep listening and real analytics on what are people searching for? What are people talking about online? How am I mining that information to appropriately tailor the stories that your audiences want to hear?

And making sure– one of the things that we talked about on the panel is that it’s not about one size fits all. It’s about really tailoring messages that are going to resonate with the audiences based on what they’re telling us, based on what they’re searching for, based on what they’re telling us from social media.

DOUG SIMON: Yeah, and those messages have to help build organizational authenticity, not damage it.

MARK SOOHOO: And this is one of the biggest challenges that we face as an industry is really making sure we’re understanding true business objectives and understanding how do we need to move audiences to take actions that are going to really ladder back up to business objectives? One of the things that we focus a lot with our clients on is moving from KPIs like tweets and likes and retweets and things like that, moving more toward how am I truly achieving business objectives? How am I moving audiences to take action that’s going to help us as an organization?