Archive for October, 2009

Neat acronym for the process of online reputation management:

• L = Listen
• E = Engage
• A = Address
• R = Respond
• N = Next…

Companies need to start with listening about what people are saying before they respond (aka that does not mean REACT)

Response needs to be thought through and considered and addresses the problem.

Step 1 – Listen…

Try Google Alert (www.google.com/alert) and subscribe for alerts for your company name or key product names. A good way to stay on top of discussions on a daily basis via email. You can then track those comments and remarks back to the source and if appropriate leave a comment yourself. This is free and easy to manage. You can move on to trackur or distilled for more coherent reporting tools.

(Keotag is another good free service – www.keotag.com)

Step 2 – Engage

Reach out to critics and engage with them. Most important, you have to ADDRESS the underlying issue. They have to feel that they have been HEARD and also UNDERSTOOD. You need to know what has happened and what has gone wrong and why. Some criticisms can be unfounded, but many times, criticism has due cause and can be resolved.

Step 3  - Address

Before you can respond to online conversations, you need to address the underlying problems or incidents within your organisation. Criticism offers a learning process, but it is wasted if you dont make use of it. A customer problem can be a one-off or can turn out to be a symptom of a much wider systemic problem that the company needs to work on.

Step 4 – Respond

It is important that the response carries some weight and not be a low level customer-service operative. It should carry executive weight, acknowledge, apologise and then correct . If you give a meaningful and authoritative response then your critic can become an evangelist.

Step 5 – Next…

Move onto next issue… or in other words restart the process. Too many marketing and reputation managers tend to work from crisis to crisis and do not develop a systematic approach to their online reputation management.  An iterative, patient process that builds up a real knowledge of the online enviroment, who’s talking and where and why allows you to shape and join important conversations rather than always being caught out by emerging threads.

Coda:

Executives within the organisation need to understand the brand and its message, but most importantly have a strong sympathy for the reputation. It needs to be important for them what people say about and experience with your company.

So there has been a massive shift and chat about social network sites like facebook and twitter, but in my opinio0n they will be short lived if things don’t change soon.  I know everyone talks about them and how great they are, but like most services once word gets out and people start using it then it tends to get over crowded.

I see it now with my own little network of friends on Facebook, human nature and facebook’s set up encourages you to show that you are popular, no-one wants to be a billy no mates, unless you are one of those few people who are totally secure with themselves.  So most people start adding “friends” as quick as possible, same with Twitter, so here is where the problem begins.  When you post a comment on your facebook and you only have 10 friends, the chances are that all your friends will see your comments and vice versa you will see there’s.  When you have 100 friends, you now have a lot more people posting comments, the set up of facebook means latest news always appears at the top and pushes older comments down.  As people catch on, the only way to get a decent response is to keep posting comments all the time.  After a while out of say 200 friends you will probably find that 5 to 10 people post loads of comments and everyone else does it very very occasionally.  Over time people just don’t bother using facebook or twitter as they are generally not interested whether you are going to the toilet or getting out of a lift.

So how can you combat this?  One simple answer would be limit how many comments one person can make in a day, this way they are more likely to put quality comments in rather than gibberish just because they think they have to.  If search engines like Google and Bing are going to start spidering them, then good luck, they thought they had a spam issue on the website search wait till they start getting into the social network world….

Don’t get me wrong sites like facebook do work and can bring great business if set up correctly, you only have to look at the pages and groups section to see how effective it can become, however unless a quality control is set up it will soon become far to noisy (it already is) and people will just stop using it.  Linkedin have the right idea, it’s a lot more difficult to add people, hence reducing spam, you have to work a lot harder find relevant people and add them to your network.

I still using these sites for SEO and reputation management but to be honest I have stopped using them for all other reasons and from talking to loads of people I know I am not alone.

Celebrities need people like Dean Dunham for legal advice and also someone who understands the importance of a celebrity’s reputation.  Dean has been representing celebrities with great success, not only does he run his own legal firm but also has other businesses including restaurants, nursery to name a few.  Dean Dunham has developed in his own right a successful brand.

Its important whether you are a sports star, pop star, actor, presenter, politician, etc to protect your brand which is often your own name.   Taking a pre emptive approach to online reputation management is much easier than trying to bury negative results once they start to appear in the search engines first page.

Using services like Dean Dunham, Celeb Agents and our Celebrity Reputation Management would give you important tools to protect your personal brand on line and off line

Consultancy BrandReputation research suggests as much as 84% of online users now turn to the net for reviews before making purchase decisions.  But few marketing executives are either aware of the fact or equipped to manage these reviews which are often negative or mis-informed.

• Consumer electronics 56%
• Home Furnishings 33%
• Apparel 21%
• White Goods 45%
• DIY & Garden 18%
• Entertainment Products 12%
• Sports Goods 9%
• Food 2%

As consumers become more savvy about using the Net, so they will increasingly turn to 3rd parties for advice rather than trusting the brand owner who is seen as dishonest and opaque.

Marketing executives need to rethink brand reputation and who constitutes the owners of the brand.  As Dr John Sullivan described it, “the new owners (of your brand) are a complicated mix of individuals who use a variety of communication channels to influence your brand without your knowledge, consent, or guidance.” As more consumers turn to reviewers, so their first experience of the brand comes through third hands, these opinion formers are now meaningful stakeholders in the brand, but few marketing executives actually pay them much attention.

It has been a truism of brand marketing that you talk to the heart rather than the head, but if the warm fuzy communications are taking place in an ocean of negativity, you will get no traction.

A paper from UCLA (Magic at Work: Quasi-Magical Explanations about Colleagues and Leaders by Maia Young) suggests that mystique and shamanism is a key criteria for the reputation of CEOs. The research showed that being hardworking and loyal was not as significant to employees as having a CEO who was a visionary; someone like Steve Jobs of Apple. We know from research that the CEO’s reputation is a key component of the overall company reputation, the UCLA research suggests that the important characteristic of the CEO is that he should be seen as magical in his effect. (There is more details in Psychology Today here)

Ryanair is the most fascinating case study for the student of reputation management. Brilliantly successful and yet widely reviled.

Reputation theorists argue that truthfulness/honesty are key ingredients for long term reputation. With Ryanair it is always hard to tell where truth and fabulation meet. If you take Ryanair’s word for it: they never make a mistake and simply have to change their scheduling or drop airports because of new taxes or airport fees.

For example is Ryanair’s threat to reduce services at Shannon by 75% about the 10 Euro fees or because they are struggling to make the numbers – who can say (Irish Times). Likewise reductions in winter services was anything from 40% to 7% depending on how or who you listened to. (see Financial Times report)

Journalist reporting often makes it no clearer what is happening. For example when Ryanair announced it was terminating most of its schedule from Manchester airport, the Guardian reported that 600 jobs were threatened whilst the Telegraph simply stated 600 jobs to go.

One of the key attributes of Ryanair’s PR strategy is to draw attention to hidden costs in the system. Announcing their departure from Manchester they provided a telling narrative for why it was necessary: “Airlines have been reducing fares in this recession but the one static factor has been in relation to airport charges. It is a huge undertaking to fill planes on a rainy winter day in Manchester when you can fly them down to the Canary Islands from somewhere else,” they declared, never acknowledging that the landing charges of £3 was covered by the fees they charge for accepting debit card payments which costs Ryanair only pennies.  As their own hidden costs rise, this could become a dangerous risk to their reputation for honesty. Complaining of Stansted charges, O’Leary declared, “”People have to pay £10 just for the privilege of getting on and off this rain-sodden and weather-beaten island,” but surely we could say something similar about getting an online check-in without which you cannot even get in the airport.

Ryanair’s strategy of blaming someone else rather than themselves helps to position themselves as “people’s champions”. It will unravel if customers begin to question the veracity of what Ryanair says – do they believe Ryanair or Manchester Airport. Ryanair will struggle to radically cut more costs in future even if they charge for toilets or make people stand.  Driving up profits through charging more for luggage or checking-in does not seem, long term, the way to grow the brand.

After reading Richard Branson book “Stripped Bare”, it’s no surprising the Virgin brand has done well for its self.  Richard has totally understood the importance of positioning his brand and creating a positive reputation about him and his Virgin Companies.  By creating this positive forward thinking extravagant reputation he has really benefited by people also being very positive about them, especially when it comes to Virgin being the under dog and taking on the big companies.  You only have to see what they achieved in NZ and AU in terms of taking over the domestic and short airline business, who else would also take on a giant like Coca Cola?

Creating positive stories, events and also different companies trading off the the brand name Virgin has allowed them to keep positive results in the search engines.  I typed in search this morning and got the following results and see the SERP’s:

1. www.virgin-atlantic.com
2. www.virginmedia.com
3. www.virgin.com
4. www.virgin.com/music
5. www.virgintrains.co.uk
6. www.virginmobile.com/vm/home.do
7. www.virginholidays.co.uk
8. uk.virginmoney.com
9. www.virginmoney.com
10. www.virginradio.co.uk

This shows the power of having a positive brand, I don’t think I have seen such a positive set of results for any company in Google’s search results.  Virgin’s group pretty much have control of the first 4 pages of google.

Virgin’s attitude to doing business has been completely different to Ryanair, I wonder how well Ryanair would do if they try to move their brand into other industries…

Managing your reputation online does not mean that you are a celebrity or you own your business or you are a well known public figure. Each and every person should manage your reputation online, and track what people are saying about you. Just keep these things in mind before you are going to say something about you, or your friends, or family online.

The Do’s

Always think before you write something

In our world everyone is free to write what they like, but when you write something about your friend, your words may be harmless by your point of view. But that may affect your friend and affect his/her reputation. Always keep your language clean and don’t insult any one through your posts.

Track what people say about you online!

It is not a must that you should update your blogs for several hours in a day. But you should spend some time weekly once or so, to study about your online reputation. You have to check what people say about you online in order to manage your reputation.

Market yourself wisely

You may not be comfortable talking about yourself online, but you can market your special skills,experience etc. wisely, and that will gather good size audience for your blog or website. But what you should really take care is to maintain honesty. For instance, if you don’t speak French then don’t say that you do.

The Don’ts

Do not complain about your job online

You might have heard this several times that people lost their job because they complained about their job online. Those people doing so never realize that everybody can read what they write online, that may be your boss or co-workers.

Don’t write bad things about people online

People like to write negative post or comments about other people. A lot of people feel more comfortable writing bad things about others from the privacy of their homes. You might have noticed everybody is doing it. But try to avoid this mistake.

Watch out for the pictures you post online

The pictures you post online are viewed by different people with different perspectives. Do not post those you find are too personal to you. While you think of posting a picture online have on mind that those pictures are going to stay online and viewed by the public for a fairly long period or possibly forever. So there are chances for it to affect your reputation.

Your online reputation can be well managed by being careful about the stuff you post online. The more honest and productive information you post the more it will favour your reputation.

Michael O’Leary seems to divide opinion violently between those who love him (“he should be president” ) to those who hate him (“he’s a total prick”). There are two great merits about him: he is supremely entertaining and he is unvarnished (or at least gives that impression).

Compare him to other CEOs of large businesses and there are very few to compare. Not one financial services company has a CEO with real charisma, for example. The only comparative CEO is Steven Jobs of Apple. They have different styles, but both command fierce loyalty and exude charisma.

The reputation of Ryanair for being upfront, cheeky and “take no prisoners” is all O’Leary and noone else. In fact, even more than Apple, the rest of the Ryanair is entirely anonymous. When you hear mid-level executives from Ryanair at conferences, they try to come across as arsy but simply sound adolescent. Only O’Leary can carry it off.

A CEO who actually talks straight is very refreshing even if he rarely seems to actually answer questions directly. However, look how EasyJet has lost its visibility since Stelios left. Anybody know the name of the CEO now?

What Ryanair needs is to look more carefully at the reality of its actions and its rhetoric.