- Twitter to lose its reputation as a free speech platform?
- IIPM worried about Google Suggest, why is it so?
- Reputation Management Tip for 2012: Brands need to tap into social media search!
- Facebook Timeline and Reputation Management
- Apple Siri gender bias or glitch?
- Google+ vs Facebook – its not over yet!
- The Ethics of Self Promotion Through Charitable Causes (A Case Study)
- Google scraps sidewiki – will you miss it?
- Facebook, the trust factor
- BlackBerry Blackout- RIM’s Reputation Takes another Hit
Archive for November 2009
Sarah Palin clawing her way out of bad press?
November 25, 2009 | 
Author Like all public figures who decide to re-invent themselves to stay in the spotlight, Sarah Palin is out with her new book ‘Going Rogue.’
She is clearly taking on her party and trying to give her side of things and no one’s buying any of it. From what we can analyse here, it looks like a step towards becoming a celebrity and from then on probably even onto the White House!
However, if she has indeed set her sights upon the White House, she is in serious need of some excellent reputation management.
For one, though the book has succeeded in generating an initial buzz (as it was bound to), the critics have panned it and derided it, calling it her version of ‘being wronged.’
We feel she has begun her long road to recovery in reputation re-building and with her grandchild’s dad now a Playgirl model, Palin has not had it easy for long time now.
The book has stayed clear of personal issues like dissing on Levi Johnson and is more focussed on explaining her wardrobe budget and problems with the McCain campaign mangers. Sarah Palin is back and everywhere – on Oprah and even the Martha Stewart show and book signing sprees.
If there’s anyone who has seen the highs and lows of public life it is this former Vice President candidate. From a well-loved Governor who made great reforms by taking on the oil lobby to being the Republican poster girl who seriously stole some of Obama’s thunder she has come a long way. The highs were really high and the falls were really low.
The lows began with the Katie Couric interview where she was caught with her foot in her mouth several times to the point of looking uncomfortable and even naïve in the big bad world of politics. She had it all a great husband good looking kids and she herself looked the part. The Republican party splurging on her wardrobe and the repercussions of that and her 16-year-old daughter getting pregnant all came at the wrong time.
Damage control came in the form of coming clean about the teen pregnancy while grappling once more with the effects of her views on abortion. She suddenly seemed regressive despite her ‘soccer mom’ persona that once endeared her to the masses. Modern women turned against her and even as the world were charmed by her including the Pakistan President Sardari praising her looks did not help – Sarah Palin was on the back-foot on home turf. The rest is history – Barack Obama became the President and the McCain camp revealed the rift within the party and before you know there was Palin back in Alaska with a new grandchild.
While we can all assume that she is headed to the White House or trying to get back into politics or attain celebrity status. We suggest that Palin continues on reputation rebuilding with her Tweets, Facebook posts and blogs; and if time is a constraint, why not employ experts like us on Reputation Management.
Posted in Bad Press, Celebrity Reputation, Damage Limitation, Reputation Management, Reputation News | 
Tags: Celebrity, Damage control, Going Rogue, reputation, Sarah Palin | 
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What is Reputation Management?
What is Reputation Management? – I often get asked this question when people ask what I do. So in the simplest terms reputation management is about controlling what people see on the Internet about you and also damage limitation. Damage limitation as you may have guessed is about dealing with negative results on the Internet and reducing the damage it can do to a individual or company.
Imagine if a journalist writes negatively about your product and the article he has written does better in the search engine than your own company website. What if you are a celebrity and you have a very personal court case going on and the last thing you want is it showing up in the search results doe your name. Reputation management helps to take the sting and quite often prevent such negative results staying around the first pages of the search engine and limiting the damage that could have been caused.
What are the steps to reputation management?
- The first step is to see what the actual negative content is and does it have any truth, is it someones opinion or is it a lie or libelous? If it is then hopefully the website can be force to take it down quite quickly.
- Start a strategy to start pushing out positive content about the company or individual.
- Monitor the results and improve.
- Implement measure to stop negative content reaching or staying long on the first page of the search engines. Depending on the severity of negative content and the key phrases that need protecting will determine how much work and costs are involved.
To date we have not lost one client which I think speaks volumes of our Reputation Management service. If you need help please get in touch, all conversations and email are treated in complete confidence. what is reputaion management-reputation management-online
Weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction to your company’s reputation… so often we talk about the doom and gloom of reputation management and how sites like scam.com, ripoffreport.com, facebook.com to name a few can be used to attack your brand, company or individual’s name. We have to talk about the negative side of not taking action all the time because businesses and celebrities just don’t get it. Even if they do they quite often don’t allocate resources or funding to help prevent attacks on-line until its to late and the damage has been done. You only have to look at what happened after the France – Ireland game with Thierry Henry’s hand ball, people are already saying they will boycott Gillette products on facebook and twitter, one profile has already generated over 50,000 followers in less than 24 hours, amazing.
So being Friday, thanks giving and also a new moon, I thought I should talk about all the positives of reputation management and how it can help drive traffic to your site.
So by developing a reputation management strategy, what you’re really doing is taking advantage of all the different sites and channels out there. Sites like the BBC.co.uk are great example of taking advantage of technology, they were one of the first to take advantage of blogging and podcasts. Putting out lots of positive content across all the available mediums not only helps prevent negative content but also allows you to attract more potential customers when they see positive customer feedback and stories.
Social network sites are a fantastic way to get news out quickly and effectively, many developers have been quick to take advantage and build applications for almost everything from your laptop to your iphone. One of our clients next week is going to the RSNA which is the largest conference in the world, the sales guys can walk around taking photos, interviews and general feedback instantly. Anyone can become a journalist nowadays.
Creating pages on Facebook and allowing people to become a member is another great way to build a following of your product or service. Cool applications that allow you to twitter can then be publish to your site and facebook at the same time. There are 1000′s of great widgets and applications to choose from. Blogs are also another great tool, again providers like wordpress have tools you can download to your phone so when you are sitting in the airport bored and feeling like you are wasting time you can bang up a post.
In today’s world where customers expect things to be instant its critical you keep your on-line presence up to date. What’s almost as bad of course is if you don’t keep content up to date, I know I have to really get into a strict routine each morning to make sure I keep my blogs, twitter etc up to date. If a customer finds a blog that has not been touched for 6 months, it can send out a negative message, is the company still running? Do they not care about keeping information up to date? And so on.
The internet is becoming a really noisy place, so it’s important you use every tool possible to shout the loudest, much of the work we provide for our clients is daily posting and writing news articles and so on, the benefit of this is just how much traffic this can generate to your site. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the more nets you throw out the more fish you will catch.
Using on-line PR sites is another fantastic way to also get stories to the top of search engines, often these types of services offer links to your own site, so more often or not if it’s an interesting enough story you can also get traffic. If your really lucky and people start to Digg it, reddit, tweet it etc then it can really take off and generate a lot of traffic.
It’s very easy now quickly to generate over 50 plus urls all promoting your company and publishing articles and press releases you have written, ultimately you have more control and more of a chance at keep positive stories at the top of the search results as well as attracting more traffic and ultimately generating more sales.
Reputation management in my eyes is advanced search engine optimisation (SEO), its about developing a online presence which attracts more customers and at the same time control the content. In very simplistic terms when ever you type in a search result there is always at least 10 results on the first page of Google, if you only have one website (and assuming it is optimised) then when someone searches your business you have absolutely no control what the other 9 results will show. It’s a bit like owning a shop front but only using 1 tenth of the window and allowing anybody else to use the rest of the window for what ever they like.
Reputation management must be part of a companies strategy going forward the old ways or going out the door no longer can you rely on the traditional PR ways and damage limitation solutions, of course they have a part to play, but a shrinking part.
Plastic Surgery & Reputation Management
Thinking about Katie Price inevitably led to thinking about plastic surgery and what it means for a celebrity. We all know about Michael Jackson and his endless trips to the surgery for a little more construction, and the British male population have followed with admiration the varying shape and size of Jordan’s breasts as she has had them augmented and then reduced.
In the UK, plastic surgery is seen as lacking authenticity and somehow revealing of the mindset of a celebrity. In other words, if she (or he) needs it, there must be something wrong. Most people treated Michael Jackson’s addiction as symptom of a wider psychological malaise and no just a bit of fun, but then again it was okay Pamela Anderson to have surgery.
Plastic surgery is usually considered a sign of lack of superficiality. If we perceive the celebrity as superficial then “some” plastic surgery is ok; but too much is not. The principle applies differently to each gender.
Men with plastic surgery are disparaged – so if you are a celebrity, hide it. Blaming image-obsessed media a la Kenny Rogers does not work. Act like Tom Cruise who must have had some but has never shown it. Be careful you don’t do a Mickey Rourke who used to be so cool and now according to one critic looks like a “prison bitch”. Paul McCartney has done his reputation no good (or his looks) by acquiring a cosmetic sheen on his face.
For women your choice depends on your career needs and your reputation.
- If you have a reputation as a “real woman” then take it easy and hide it. You dont want to lose your reputation as an authentic, know what I like woman. If you are going down the surgery route a have a reputation management plan in place.
- If you are perceived as “superficial” then remember that cosmetic surgery may help in the short term but …
- You will never be seen as a beauty thou you may be seen as sexy
- You will never be seen as authentic – so developing your serious career will be difficult
- You will be tarred with it. People will nod their heads and say I told you so.
Whatever you do, don’t do a Jocelyn Wildenstein who was reviled as bride of Frankenstein. What her plastic surgeon was thinking: god only knows!
The most important thing to remember is that people will talk and you need to know what to say.
Posted in Celebrity Reputation, Reputation Management | Tags: Authenticity, Cosmetic Surgery, Plastic Surgery | No Comments »
Katie Price’s Bushtucker Terror
It’s been some year for Katie Price (aka Jordan) and in the process she has done untold damage to her celebrity reputation. Her split from Peter Andre divided the nation between a majority who hate her and a minority who see her as a female hero. In so far as she lives her life in the spotlight, it is hard to know what she is really like. Does she even have a life outside of that cruel spotlight?
The behaviour of Peter has been a critical ingredient. He seems so decent, such a “new man” with his love for the children and his calm in comparison to her stormy, sharp mouthed personality.
Her decision to return to “I’m a celebrity…” looks like a mistake. The public seem to be relishing the opportunity to vote her onto every nasty task every single day. The other contestants seem almost irrelevant in the process. They sit an watch as she has to do the dirty work. You have to have a sneaking admiration for her as she grits her teeth and plunges her face into something truly nasty. Will it move the public? Let’s see.
I think the real issue for her is that even choosing to do this removes her from her prime role as the public see it: being a mother. We see her in the jungle and wonder about the child-care. Oh yes, good old Peter is doing that even for the kids that are not his – but whom he loves.
Her key problem: people perceive her as a bad mum and a real “catty” number. Being a good mother is sacrosanct. She needs to select her tasks carefully and focus on improving the perception of her as a mother in the same way Pete Andre has foregrounded his role as father. She needs to win the parent fight.
She also needs to reduce her exposure for a while. We are tired of her and want to punish her. Will punishment be redemption or the end for her?
Managing your online reputation – why and who with?
A lot of businesses sit in a tricky space when it comes to their brand reputation, and no where is it more vulnerable than in the online space. Now that this area has become the mainstream for brand engagement, promotion and peer to peer advocacy it really presents a difficult issue, especially if you have a brand that serves tow distinct audiences slightly differently.
Take Totaljobs.com for example, as the most highly visited commercial recruitment and career site across the UK, we serve an audience of over 2.5 million users each month, and we engage with them at an often difficult and stressful time of their lives, as they are job seeking, so our brand needs to be helpful, empowering and provide a ease with which to cut through the confusion of finding a new job. This done well, with supportive advice like our CareerDoctor service ( http://blog.totaljobs.com/), and a secure environment in which personal and professional details can be stored and searched and market leading jobseeker tools (Instant Job match, Location Proximity Search, Suggested Synonym Matching), can give the support and confidence for our users to find their next job, and as we all know happy people are our best advocates.
We also serve a huge audience of recruiters, of all sizes, and their needs are for a brand and service that can provide highly targetable, responsive groups of job seekers using simple recruiter tools such as Keyshots (targeting the latest 500 people to register to Totaljobs within the set criteria of location and job role the recruiter sets) through to live interactive chat forums such as GradU8.com. Again, this done well leads to enhanced brand value across a powerful set of voices in our market.
But what about the people who can’t find what they are looking for, or don’t feel the user experience or service they receive is valuable? Naturally, when serving such a wide and deep audience with two distinct needs, there will be people who feel this, and online provides them with plenty of opportunity to voice their displeasure, either publicly or privately. So, as a brand, what do we do in this situation? To be honest, it’s more about what you don’t do.
Getting involved in a public spat on or offline is never going to end well for a large brand, but at the same time you have to know what is being said, by whom, online. Once a rumour, a venting of dissatisfaction or damaging information gets out to the masses and goes viral it is next to impossible to stop. Having control over the message is key and to have control over the message you must be able to see everything that is happening in real time. Tools such as Google Alerts can see everything that is being said about our company on social websites like Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter to major news organizations such as BBC, Guardian and Sky News. The only way to have control is to be honest and transparent engage with the unsatisfied, but not in an ell encompassing public arena, you must have the channels for them to engage, question and seek clarity and advice, but you have to control the message in terms of forum and tone.
So, in ending, the internet has now become a very powerful and complex place that if managed right can be a great asset to a company such as Totaljobs.com, but if you do not have someone monitoring and being able to act with strategic actions then it can be a very dangerous place for you and your company. As newspapers decline and bloggers take over it may even become more vital to high profile individuals and companies. The question may well be how much people value their online brand? The answer right now? Probably more than the amount of resources they are willing to apply to managing it.
John Salt
Website Director
Posted in Examples, HR Reputation, Reputation Management, Reputation Online | Tags: Gradu8, HR, Reputation Online, Total Jobs, Totaljobs | No Comments »
How does Reputation Management relate to web management?
In business and in life, reputation is everything. So it goes on the web as well. Your web site is considered one of the representations of your reputation of your business. You and your business together forms your web site. When disatisfied customers complain about your company in discussion forums, and chat rooms around the web, that is another representation of your reputation.
You are what people are saying about you. The blogs convey the public thoughts and moods to express good or bad points and emotions. To minimize damages due to inflammatory websites and weblogs launched by consumers, some use the same reactive tactics. Given the increasing popularity and development of search engines, these tactics have become more important than ever.
In the years ahead, reputation will become even more important on the web. To be successful, you will need to manage your reputation on and off your web site. Software services are emerging nowadays that measure and record reputation in quantitative and qualitative ways. Search Engine Reputation Management tactics are often employed by companies and increasingly by individuals who seek to proactively shield their reputations or brands from damaging contents.
These tactics have become more important than ever due to the increasing popularity and development of search engines. We can help your company develop a reputation management strategy by assessing high-level analysis of the business, industry, competition, and customers. That is the analysis of the key phrases, web site visitors,source of prospective customers and competitiveness of the search results for those phrases.
Hotel Reputations Across Europe
A recent survey of hotels across Europe by travel comparison engine suggests a correlation between high hotel prices and low reputation; cities where the average price for a standard double room is very high, appear at the bottom of the Reputation Ranking. Why?
It suggests that consumers are finding hotels are high priced, or put in marketing speak, the value proposition is wrong so that they are dissatisfied by the experience that they have paid for. Low priced hotels satisfy consumers, not because they are better, but because they seem worth the price.
All UK cities perform poorly with Edinburgh hotels at the top of the list at 29th and London near the bottom. UK hotel prices are uniformly high.
Hotel reputation management face a number of challenges:
- monitoring and responding to hotel review sites like Trivago and Tripadvisor
- working more closely with travel guide authors who are key in the decision process of travel planners
- creating change within the hotel to address failings that are being criticised.
- Working to improve the hotel’s internet position and prominence.
Many hotels are already struggling with SEO activity but the visibility of review sites when customers search for individual hotels means that reputation management has to encompass both traditional search engines like Google as well as Web 2.0 tools like hotel review sites.
PR Companies Vrs SEO Vrs Reputation Management
I wrote a post back in 2007 called PR – Be Careful which was my first real insight into how pr companies work. A few years on and a bit more experience, has shown me how PR, SEO and Reputation Management should be a combined strategy.
I have seen the best and the worst of PR so here are some healthy tips going forward:
- PR companies would normally take 2 different stances when it come to damage limitation either respond positively to the story or ignore it and hope it goes away. Both can be a dangerous game on the Internet, if you react to a story or someone’s comments on a forum directly then quite often than not it will attract more negative comments. If you ignore it, then again it can attract even more negative comments if it appears high in the search results.
- Using a PR company to create press releases is a great way to get positive stories out there, make sure you use online channels as well.
- SEO, make sure your own website and or blogs can be found, a customer should be able to find your site easily and quickly so ranking number one for your own site is critical.
- Reputation management is a combination of content, SEO and PR by filling the net with positive stories that rank highly for your company is how best to protect your reputation online.
SEO (search engine optimisation) , PR and Reputation Management services all play a significant roll to protect you name, company or brand. We have built a working relationship with many of these types of companies over the years and have achieved great success with it.
We do provide a article and content service, but do find it very useful if clients can also provide content which we can use to fill the Internet with positive stories and feedback, customer reviews are also a great source for stories.
Posted in Reputation Management, SEO | Tags: PR / Public Relations, Reputation Management, Reputation Management online, SEO | No Comments »
Birmingham Wragge team is this the way forward for Law Firms
The law firm Wragge & Co have started to fight back by developing a Cyber Tracing team, see article from Birmingham Post. Is a move in the right direction to evetually stop annonymous posting? To be honest how can they really tackle it, there are so many variables, people, ISPs, you may be able to trace a few people, but if I set up a Gmail account or Hotmail account and use Internet Cafes to post comments how can they trace that? The resources and costs involved will be massive. OK a lot of people won’t realise how easy it is to track people through their IP number which is just like a telephone number, but given time people will wise up to it and won’t post from their home pc.
What happens if the person making the attacks is based in Russia or Africa for example, whats the chances of stopping them and taking them to court? So although I think law firms are starting to think in the right direction I do feel that the only real way to prevent such attacks on companies and peoples reputations is to protect them through reputation management and if necessary through the legal channels.
By the time the courts have ordered a blog, website, forum thread to be taken down the damage has been done and you’ll probably find another 15 have already replaced it. Also you can’t remove a comment if it is factual and someone’s opinion (as long as it’s within reason).
So the easiest and most cost effective way is to protect yourself is through reputation management and damage limitation, if you can’t bury the negative content then the final step would be to take legal action. By being proactive and filling the net with positive content, will help prevent this happening in the first place. Like Cancer if treated early and preventive measure put in place then you can stop the spread and quite often eliminate it all together. So don’t bury your head in the sand and ignore it, it’s much easier for us to work with a client who is not already bombarded with negative content in the search results.
Posted in Company Reputation, Reputation Management, Reputation News, Reputation Online | Tags: Cyber Tracing team, law firm, Wragge & Co, Wragge and Co | No Comments »