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Archive for the ‘Reputation Management’ Category
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
If you have been an active publisher on the Internet, then you will most likely have content in a wide range of websites. You have probably also put together profiles on a range of social media websites. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all of your content linked to your name and searchable? It’s almost impossible to connect everything online at present, however, there is a lot that you could be doing that will make either (or both) your name and your brand more searchable, especially in Google.
There is a guest post on Marketing Pilgrim by Ann Smarty that goes into some depth on this issue, and she has some good advice on what you should be doing, and how to do it. I won’t go into the hows; you can read her article for that. What is important is that, in most cases, her tips are once off actions, and they don’t take too long to accomplish. The end result could be far more exposure in the search results than you currently see. Ann suggests three must do actions:
- Verify the authorship of your articles
- Create a master feed of your contributions
- Claim your brand (or name) in the major social networks
You should already be working to claim your brand and your name in the major social networks. The more popular you become, the more likely it is that someone else will claim it to capitalize on your hard work. That can be a real danger to your long term reputation management, especially if they use their account (with your brand or name) for negative, illegal or brand damaging activities. It can be hard to prove that the account being used is not attached to your business.
It doesn’t take long to complete the three tasks that Ann has suggested. The end result is better brand and name protection whilst helping to boost your presence on the Internet.
Tags: content, Social Media
Posted in Reputation Management | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011
If you ask Forbes Media and Reputation Institute, Amazon is the most reputable company in the world today. Did you think it was Google? Sorry, but the search engine ranked ninth.
According to Reputation Institute’s managing partner Anthony Johndrow, reputation is based on these three criteria:
- Trust in company and leaders, not products and brands
- Multiple stakeholders and interactions
- The connection between reputation strategy and business strategy
Using these criteria is very telling. Amazon’s reputation is not based on its brand or its products, which makes me wonder if Google would have ranked higher had product been a criteria. Amazon’s leadership clearly has some clout, but controversies over privacy and several other issues around the world have caused many people to go sour on Google’s leadership even if they like the search product the company is leading its competition with.
That tells me something. Your company’s reputation is an extension of your leadership’s reputation. It is not extension of your product’s reputation. You might have the best product or service in the world, but if those people at the top of your organization cannot command respect, then your company won’t command respect. This is a universal truth. No matter how small or large your company is, reputation is all about leadership.
Tags: Amazon, google, leadership, reputation
Posted in Reputation Management | 1 Comment »
Sunday, April 3rd, 2011
GoDaddy has been the center of controversy before. Their Super Bowl commercials with scantily clad women have upset some people despite the Web hosts increasing business as a result of the advertising. But recently, the company has taken controversy to a new level. Bob Parsons, GoDaddy’s CEO, filmed himself shooting an elephant in Africa and posted the video online. Was that a good move?
Believe it or not, Parsons is defending it. Here’s his defense:
“Most Americans understand that people need to eat,” he says.
Are you wowed?
Parsons so believes in his mission of killing elephants that he is on the prowl for interviews just so he can defend his actions, but those actions have a lot of people “up in arms” if you’ll pardon the pun. PETA, the very visible animal rights group, has pulled its websites from GoDaddy as have several other animal rights groups and even many people who are not associated with animal rights.
So here’s the question: Would any amount of reputation management help GoDaddy at this point? Did Bob Parsons screw up badly or can he convince people that his concern for farmers in Africa is genuine and that his desire to help them by killing the elephants was necessary?
The lesson to learn from all this is this: If you are going to step into controversy deliberately, be sure to count the cost. This kind of “charity” is going to make you enemies. If you can live with that, go with it. If not, you’d better think twice about what it is you do and what it is you allow the world to see you do.
Tags: GoDaddy, marketing, Reputation Management
Posted in Reputation Management | 4 Comments »
Friday, March 18th, 2011
One of the most frightening things in the world for a small business owner is a negative review. But should you be afraid of them? I think there are several reasons not to be afraid of negative reviews, the first of which is that no one can please everyone all of the time. If someone had a negative experience with your company, try to find out why and look at it as an opportunity.
When you see a negative review of your company online, the best thing to do is try to resolve it. Here are 5 ways you can turn a negative review into a positive:
- Thank the person for their review. Be positive and let them know that you will try to fix the problem they pointed out. Be proactive and make good on your promises.
- Don’t respond to the negative review right away. Instead, walk away from your computer and don’t respond until you’ve had time to cool down and think of a reasonable response.
- Apologize for the bad experience. Offer some way to make it up to the reviewer.
- Offer to resolve the issue in private. If possible, send a private message to the reviewer and offer to resolve their issue in a positive manner over the phone. Offer a discount on a future service, present them with a coupon, or make a positive move to resolve the situation amicably.
- Leave your phone number. If you cannot private message the reviewer, leave a phone number on the review website with an invitation to call you and resolve the situation. Be positive and make every effort to ensure the reviewer will see that as a way to get the situation resolved in a peaceful, nonthreatening manner.
Online reviews are nothing to fear. If you perform good customer service on a regular basis, then you’ll encourage your customers to leave you positive reviews. Look at negative reviews as an opportunity, not an obstacle.
Tags: customer service, negative reviews, online reviews, positive reviews
Posted in Reputation Management | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Online marketing is no longer an option. You’re either doing it or you’re not, and if you’re not, then you are falling behind the competition. The only question to ask, really, is what kind of online marketing are you going to do?
You can do link building, focus on SEO, engage with your target audience through social media, specialize in Facebook, pay for clicks, or use a combination of all of the above or add some other channels into the mix as well. But it all really boils down to one thing. Online marketing is reputation management.
There are really two kinds of reputation management. There’s proactive reputation management and reactive reputation management. The first is what you do every day, and how you do it. The second is what you do when you need it. But here’s the catch: If you’re doing the first kind of reputation management well, then you’ll need the second kind less often, maybe never.
Proactive online reputation management is staying active. It means you update your website on a periodic basis, you engage with customers through social media, you write articles and publish them online. In effect, you always have something going on.
Online reputation management is about more than building links, conducting effective SEO, or branding yourself through social media. It’s about creating and maintaining a positive image across all channels. Are you doing that?
Tags: link building, online marketing, Reputation Management, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Reputation Management | 3 Comments »
Sunday, February 13th, 2011
Customer service is one of the most important issues when it comes to reputation management. Handling customers’ queries and problems quickly, quietly, and efficiently is a must in today’s online world. It takes only one disgruntled customer to have their say on a social media site and every other disgruntled customer will join them. Of course, not every customer will complain directly to you. Sometimes they will go straight to their Facebook or Twitter page.
This is where your customer service needs to lift a level and you need to become more proactive. Rather than getting involved in any online discussion with the customer, do a little research first; you may be surprised at what you find. There have been several reported news stories in recent months related to employees of one company pretending to be a customer of a competitor, and making disparaging remarks about that competitor.
A little research soon discovered that these individuals were not customers at all. This can make your approach much easier. For example, a simple response to a complaint could point out that you have not found any transactions related to that person so you might have to dig a little more for the details. In many cases, they will not respond at all leaving their complaint looking very weak. If they do respond, it will generally not be in answer to yours. Be nice – just restate your request for more information.
Don’t wait for customers to make complaints directly to you. Be proactive and keep your ear to the noise that is occurring on social media sites. You should also balance the need to respond with the overall effect that one comment could make. Does that person have 1,000 followers, or just 10? By making a big issue of the situation where there are only ten followers, you could escalate the issue and suddenly find they have several thousand followers, all watching the interaction.
If your customer service is up to scratch, you will able to identify what real problems are developing, and to be in a position to deal with them effectively. Your business’s reputation will depend on how well you manage this area of customer interaction.
Tags: customer service, Social Media
Posted in Reputation Management | 1 Comment »
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Reputation management is important. But it’s growing in importance every day, and I think very soon the average person will spend a lot of time thinking about managing their reputation online. It won’t be just for businesses any more.
An article in WebProNews illustrates that 90% of Americans want more control of information about them online. There’s no doubt this is true. As more and more people go online, real world conflicts will also go online. People will use the Internet to make accusations, pass on bad information about another party, and generally wreak havoc in the lives of people they don’t like. It’s an easy thing to do with minimal access to the Internet.
Of course, the reverse is also true. You can say a lot of good things about people too. But most people won’t bother to present the good; the negative gets far more airplay. That’s what makes reputation management important.
If you find yourself having to combat negative untrue statements about you on the Internet, learn how you can combat those statements and the perception of you that they create among people you’d like to interact with. If your reputation is being damaged, you can do something about it.
Tags: internet, Reputation Management
Posted in Reputation Management | 2 Comments »
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010
Last week we talked about Quora, a relatively new service that presents a great reputation management opportunity for small business owners. This week I’d like to discuss Yahoo! Answers.
What advantages does Yahoo! Answers have over Quora? Actually, a few:
- It has a lot more traffic going to it.
- Yahoo! Answers is one of the forerunners in the Q&A space so it has built up a reputation for being a place people can go to for answers on just about any topic.
- Answers provided by experts like you often show up high in the search results.
- Yahoo! Answers has more topics.
- It’s an older site so has earned more trust among questioners and askers alike.
I’m not saying Quora isn’t a good opportunity. It is. I’m not even saying that Yahoo! Answers is a better opportunity. In some ways it is and in some ways it isn’t. I am saying that it has a built-in reputation element to it with a lot of traffic that you can tap into. And you can use it to boost your reputation as an expert in your field.
If you are the type of person who likes to provide answers to others’ questions then try Yahoo! Answers.
Tags: Reputation Management, yahoo
Posted in Reputation Management | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
I have some friends who are very good at SEO. One friend in particular swears by it. According to him, it’s the most important thing about doing business online, or Internet marketing. But is it?
I think SEO is very important. But I don’t think it’s the most important thing.
If you listen to the SEO enthusiasts then SEO is the most important thing because it’s free and that’s where the lion’s share of traffic comes from – the search engines. I can’t argue with either point. They’re both a matter of fact. But the problem I have with the “SEO is the most important thing” philosophy is that it ignores the one essential thing that every business needs to focus on – relationships.
SEO is important. If you want to succeed online then you’ve got to put in an honest effort to excel at it. But it doesn’t matter how well you do SEO, if you can’t maintain positive relationships with your customers then your business will suffer. You might gain some customers through SEO, but you will lose them. And word of mouth will spread about your people skills.
When it comes to online marketing, doing business with people is the same as doing business off line. If you want them to like you and to like doing business with you then you’ve got show them that you care. It’s all about building relationships.
Tags: online marketing, relationships
Posted in Reputation Management | 1 Comment »
Saturday, October 16th, 2010
There’s a new service online called Quora that looks like it can be a great site to help you establish yourself as an expert in your field. Marketing-wise, it can do a lot to help you manage your reputation.
Quora is a lot like Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com with a few differences. Once you join you’ll be able to ask questions and answer them along with all the other users of the website. However, unlike other websites of a similar nature, anyone can edit a question posed by another user. You can add a description to the question or even edit the question itself. You can also add and delete tags.
Perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of Quora is the ability to connect to your Facebook and your Twitter accounts. You can ask questions then answer other questions and have them broadcast to your followers on the two most popular social media websites online.
From an SEO perspective, Quora has some value as well. In your bio you can add links to the websites that you own and manage. Those links will be permanent inbound links for those sites, but just like any other social network, if you link to your sites then you’ll have to use Quora on a regular basis and become an active member in order to get the full benefit of your links. Quora’s profiles are crawlable and search engine indexable – though you can opt out of that, I would not recommend it – making your profile itself an SEO tool and another possible way to be found in the search engines for your name.
These tools of Quora make it a valuable new Internet marketing tool in two ways – as an SEO and link building tool and as a reputation management tool.
Quora, being only about a year old, still isn’t as popular as Yahoo Answers! or Answers.com, but it has the potential to reach a respectable point of popularity and it at least holds some value for Internet marketers who want to be seen as an expert in their industries. Follow topics related to your niche and answer them. You will receive notices by e-mail when someone answers your questions or a question that you are following and re-enter the conversation.
Tags: Reputation Management, Social Media
Posted in Reputation Management | 4 Comments »
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