On the darker side of Social Media, it can effectively be used as a weapon to discredit a competitors product or service. It can be used to discredit a person/celebrity or to even shake up a stock. More importantly, it does not just affect big corporations. Today, Social Media can be used as a competitive weapon to hurt local or regional businesses.

We come into the area of Online Reputation Management here, but from the angle of competitive intent. What is often overlooked, is that sometimes an individual, business or stock is not under attack by a “random blogger” or group of legitimately frustrated consumers. Sometimes the attack is planned and highly coordinated; by a competitor or rival celebrity. It’s an aspect of Social Media that until now, has not been generally discussed. Through our experience however, we know it’s very real. We also predict it will become an element in corporate competitive strategy in the future.

So how come we haven’t heard about it much before? If you’re the company under attack, you may never know it was coordinated, or the way in which an outcome is settled is not one you want to announce publicly. Just dealing with the ensuing crisis is expensive enough in terms of brand reputation, PR costs and stress on internal resources and stakeholder communications. The ability to gather evidence of “where” the issue started or by “whom” can be challenging at best and is murky in legal terms.

Our case was with a petrochemical company (I can’t give any data other than the industry) who faced a sudden upswing in public complaints and was registering increased hostility from consumers and government. The story was close to hitting mainstream media. Instead, quick research was done and the story was countered effectively before it spread across more of the blogosphere or hit traditional media.

So in what way are these attacks occurring and why? A competitor can “plant” information with “apparent” evidence with a series of bloggers known to have the right following, or in bulletin boards used by retail traders, as an example. The story is usually “emotional” in nature, designed just so it will be shared and incite discussion. Then the consumer takes over, adding to and building on the story. The primary objective is to have the “issue” hit traditional media and accelerate it further.

So, why then, and who? Social activist groups are learning the power of targeting companies they feel are committing social wrongs - no surprise there. Competitors can discredit a product on launch to either stop or divert their competitors attention on the product, culling marketing and sales efforts. Damaging a brand via Social Media can result in setting a victim back many months and weakening their market position. There are a number of tools including “splogs” or “Spam Blogs” that can aid in driving a negative attack, seeding misleading messages through anonymous accounts, link spamming and more.

Such actions, if a person, organization or company is caught, can lead to serious litigation, defamation of character and slander suits. Is it happening? yes. What can you do? Certainly a monitoring tool helps, but there are certain indicators that can be analysed to give indicators an attack is not random. Proof can be challenging, but there are ways. Caught quickly, most attacks can be diverted, but monitoring remains an essential element.

(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Partner)