oa Webcare als online reputatiemanagement

Webcare as online reputation management: the use of webcare strategies and conversational human voice in the Netherlands, and its effects on the corporate reputation

While Twitter offers organizations chances to improve their reputations, tweets can also threaten reputations by attacking the organizational legitimacy. In this article, we studied (1) what webcare strategies Dutch organizations use to preventing reputational damage, (2) how effective these strategies are, and (3) how conversational human voice influences the effectiveness of these strategies. A content analysis of online dialogues (Study 1) shows that we should distinguish three rather than two types of webcare strategies: Organizations use webcare to accommodate (1) their own needs (through denial or justification), (2) individual stakeholder needs (through information, sympathy and compensation), or (3) collective stakeholder needs (through apologies and corrective action). In the Netherlands, stakeholder focused strategies are used more for web care than defensive strategies. A scenario study revealed that accommodating individual needs protects reputation better than defensive strategies, and marginally better than collective accommodative strategies.