The White House seems defensive and even apologetic to a growing number of people in the US and they are growing in numbers. The Tea Party Convention is the most striking example of the culmination of anti Obama views. This is a very large group of people against the healthcare plan and the large amount of taxes they are being charged by the Obama governement.

Quick to ride the Tea-Party wave is Sarah Palin, who with her appearance as a speaker at the convention, made it clear she has her sights set on the presidency. Palin has been clawing her way out of bad press,  planning out her candidacy  after resigning as governor. She has penned a book and is now a political commentator on FoxNews and the stage was set at the Tea Party Convention when she said…

“This is about the people, and it’s bigger than any king or queen of a Tea Party. And it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter”

Palin took a dig at Obama at the tea party convention and has even gone on to say if its right for America she is ready to run for President in 2012.

“Now a year later, I got to ask the supporters of all that, how is that hope-y, change-y stuff working out for you”

Statements from Palin, quite like the ones used during election campaigns.

Bad press continues: The speaker’s fee of $100,000 paid to Sarah Palin has been in the news and Palin has claimed it does not go to her but to her party’s campaigning fund but this had been dogging her. Other news reports talk of how involved her husband Todd Palin has been in the Alaska governance.

Sarah Palin is simply great bad press material, sometimes ridicule and most importantly great NEWS! One thing’s for sure Palin is everywhere and there she will remain for a long time to come.

As for the Democrats, it will be unwise on their part to take her lightly, the US has elected movie stars like Regan to the White House and even the first mixed race President in Obama, so could a woman be far behind? ?

If Obama bungles up the healthcare program and national security issues and continue to remain on the defensive chances are Sarah Palin is right there to take his place.

For now even the Tea Party Convention don’t want her as their leader but in the times we are in, the Democrats better be wary even though Sarah Palin may seem like no Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi!

The Sarah Palin brand chugs on and she as a politician is building up both her celebrity and her reputation.

3 Labour MPs Elliott Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and a Tory peer Lord Hanningfield will face criminal charges over alleged misuse of their expenses. They will be charged under section 17 of the Theft Act relating to false accounting; if found guilty the four could land in jail for seven years.

Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer while announcing the charges said ‘that one other case was still being investigated, as there was insufficient evidence to charge the Labour peer Lord Clarke of Hampstead.

According to Sir Thomas Legg, who carried out the audit of the expenses, stated the system as “deeply flawed”. Hundreds of MPs were ordered to pay back a total of £1.12 million.

So what’s next?
Do we start thinking about reforming the British Politics and Democracy? High-time to give it a thought, the public fuming about the expenses scandal is justified, so faith needs to be restored.

Having had to finally get a new PC after 4 years from Dell I opted for the 64 Bit Windows 7 hoping I had not made a mistake.  After only 48 hours I have to say the is the best thing to come out of Microsoft for a while.

It maybe that my expectation dropped dramatically after Vista but this operating system so far seem very quick and intuitive.

The Windows 7 is controlled mainly from in its Taskbar – especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

So will the more positive than negative feedback be enough to sell more windows 7, sure some reviews have not been totally positive but the overwhelming consensus is that windows 7 is moving in the right direction.  Lets see what happens with sales in 2010

Have the public lost faith in MPs? The expenses file shows MPs more than half the entire House of Commons are involved in the controversial expenses scandal. They exploited the system of parliamentary allowances to promote their lifestyles and homes. The revelation has angered many voters and the reputation of the MPs has taken a beating.

People at large knew nothing until the scandal was out in the open and how MPs claimed for items far beyond what was allowed. Change in the system was voiced, but unfortunately there weren’t many takers. The after effect of not heeding that advise is all out in black & white.

It’s not easy to get this scandal off the mind of the taxpayers. While some MPs are guilty for the wrongdoing it has tarnished everyone in the house of Commons with the same brush.

So what does this mean? Is there a need for an urgent damage control to restore public faith?

A need for a strategic reputation management to get back the lost glory. There is no quick-fix method to fix the problem, but MPs need to realize that they are  the representatives of their constituency and are not traders.

Politics and politicians are definitely not immune to bad press or negative comments, the above scandal shows how a politicians online reputation can go for a ride even if you are not at fault. You need to apprise the public your accomplishments, and what you are planning to do. This will allow people to respond positively and garner faith in the system.

David Cameron, when said ‘all MPs who do not repay will be sacked and be termed not eligible for election. This is a welcome statement and will infuse confidence in public, and also minimize the resentment in public for those in the House of Commons.

Politician’s reputation holds greater significance as electorate comprising of different age and group will have a common thinking about their representative, which makes sense to them. Let your positive image be known to the public, after all that is all you need to face the polls.

We have been approached by many tourism companies both agents and hotels alike requestiong help with negative comments appearing about them on the search results.  More often than n0t they come from sites like tripadvisor whose business model is based on customer feedback.

There are 2 big issues with this:

1. You tend to get more genuine feedback from customers who have had a negative experience rather than a positive one.
2. Competitors write negative things about another company which are false.

So quite often Tripadvisor will not give a overall balanced feedback from customers because the same old saying is true “a customer who has had a bad experience will tell a 100 people where a customer who has a good experience will tell 10″.  Customers will normally only give feedback to a site like Tripadvisor if they have had a negative experience rather than a positive one.

We are also now seeing what we believe to be competitors writing bogus negative feedback about competing companies in order to trash their reputation.  It’s very bad practice and something we frown on and will certainly not get involved in.

What can you do about negative comments on Tripadvisor?

1. Make sure there is genuinely not an issue that needs addressing if  many customers are complaining about the same thing.
2. Offer customers a gift if they write something positive about their stay at your hotel on Tripadvisor
3. Hire a company to help protect your reputation online and bury negative results in the search results.

The outcome, although you can’t get rid of negative comments totally is you can show a much more balanced view, in many ways this is much better than just positive or negative views.

What would you do if a customer was standing outside your business front door shouting negative things?

There are certain types of industries that seem more prone to getting negative comments and competitors playing dirty tricks and trying to trash their company’s reputation.  Here are some of the main industries our clients come from recently:

• Recruitment and HR
• Construction and building
• Celebrities
• Travel agents / hotels and other accommodation types
• Dating websites

I used to hear business owners talk about the Internet and not really understand it, back then companies just missed out on another great sales channel.  Today, however, I have to say when I hear a business owner having the same attitude I have to hold back from calling them crazy and telling them they will be out of business in 5 years.

Why do I feel so passionate about this, well in the past when you played ignorant to the Internet you were just loosing possible sales, but now people and competitors could be killing your business by trashing your reputation online.  Never has it been more important to take SEO and Online PR more serious, as a business owner you may not use the Internet much, but I am sure as hell your customers do.  You may not only be missing sales but loosing them when customers Google your company and see negative feedback and unhappy customer experiences.

If you had someone standing outside your business’s front door saying “your company was a scam, sold terrible products, had terrible customer services” then what would you do?  I am sure you would do something rather than ignore them, well the same thing could be happening online right now.

Every company now needs to take reputation management serious and not wait until negative comments and results appear on the first page of the search engines.  Businesses need a to have in place a proper procedure for complaints and feedback.  Monitoring or having a company like Reputation Management For defending your reputation online could prove invaluable.

Mrs Bercow Twittered  EyeSpyMP “I am not an MP. I just live here. So stop reporting my movements.”  Mrs Bercow who is the wife of the Commons Speaker.

EyeSpyMP reply to Mrs Bercow”You Twitter your movements far more than we do. You love the limelight.”

EyeSpyMP has reported sightings of Mrs Bercow drinking coffee and playing with her daughter.

Mrs Bercow replied “I am going out now. To do school run. I am not an MP. I just live here. So stop reporting my movements. Thank you. “  This is just like pouring petrol on a fire…

Another tweet  “You are not being v. nice. You are clearly a bunch of Tories.”  Hmm not the smartest of responses…

John Bercow the elected Speaker last year, is a frequent Twitter user hopefully he is more selective about what he tweets.

If you are or have a partner are in the public eye, it’s always a good idea to have two accounts, a public profile and a private one for family and friends.  This goes for photos and any other personal matters you don’t want appearing on the net or in newspaper articles.

Also do not fire fight in public view, you can make things much worse, if you find negative things about you, try and resolve it out of the public eye and especially avoid using tools like Facebook or Twitter.  In public view no one ever wants to back down.

A good book to read is “How To Win Friends and Influence People”.

I love watching and learning from Max Clifford, for the most part Max seems very open and honest which makes a refreshing change compared to most celebs and politicians.  However I’m not sure he has got it totally right this time reference John Terry.  Terry is meant to be an example for people, especially having been a captain for England and possibly will be  again in the future.   Max said on the BBC breakfast show this morning that he did not believe fans would be that bothered by what Terry allegedly got up to, but is that true?  Football is a really matey sport and quite frankly there are some lines mates don’t cross and that’s sleeping around with friends partners.

These are allegations at the moment but regardless John Terry will find it very difficult to distance himself from it.   Fabio Capello has the fortunate position of not having to show his hand till next month when he can judge the public reaction.

So what will this do for Terry’s reputation?  Well we know he has a young wife and 2 young children, this will make  many people feel he has completely let his family down.  So husband, father and captain of England, Terry stands to loose a heck of a lot.

On the members-only England fans message board on the FA’s official website, Terry was described as having “the morals of a rat”, with many English supporters calling for him to be stripped of the position of Captain.

Tiger Woods was absolutely slammed, he kept quiet about the whole ordeal until it was to late.  What should Terry do?  Should he come clean and apologise?  Should he keep quiet and hope it goes away?  Gone are the days of newspapers being thrown away as most of the articles go online and stay there now.

I think someone on £150,000 per week, a husband, father and Captain of England football team  should learn to control their loins.  They should be honest and upfront and apologise not only to his wife but also the nation.  Is that not how Bill Clinton got away with it?

What will happen with sponsorship deals?  Will Durex be the only company left who would might want John Terry to represent them?

Already Google suggested query is giving negative results, that certainly won’t help his reputation online.

Kindle with ye olde books

Despite all the Hoopla over Apple’s iPad, I still want to buy a Kindle because I love reading. It doesn’t have to be a Kindle, there are loads of competitors emerging, but Kindle is both the market leader and gets the most coverage. So off to Amazon and a look through the literature and the hard choice – Kindle 1 or Kindle DX (aka Kindle 2). Of course Kindle 2 is way more expensive than Kindle 1, but it is bigger and preumably better. This being Amazon, it all comes down to the user reviews.

So what’s my decision? Kindle 1! Why? because the most commented and reviewed review gives Kindle 2 only one star. Normally one star reviews are rants and often irrelevant to product quality bit this is lucidly argued and systematic in its criticism of the device and also Amazon’s upgrade systems. 20,000 people have read it and 19000 have found it useful which implies that 19,000 have been put off upgrading their Kindle. The reviewer finishes by stating that he has returned the Kindle 2 to Amazon and will wait for the next upgrade.

Amazon do not seemed to have responded to the complaints in any way which seems extraordinary for Amazon for two reasons. Amazon is founded on excellent, well thought out customer service and this is a new product category where the difference between success and failure is measured sometimes in Nanos. There is a tsunami of ereaders hitting the shelves (shopping carts) this year and with all this choice, small matter a lot.

Amazon need to be careful that one well aimed review does not upset the reputation of Kindle DX and allow competitors like Apple, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and the new Que Reader from Plastic Logic from killing their product’s reputation.

Now if I am right that all these people  have decided not to upgrade from Kindle 1 then possibly Amazon may have forgone $900,000 in revenue from people who were planning to buy Kindle 2. That is one painful review!