- 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 December 2009
Constant monitoring to manage your Online Reputation
December 21, 2009 | 
Author When talking about Online Reputation Management(ORM) we mean monitoring web 2 media like; blogs, social forums or network or video streaming sites for negative content. So how do you defend your product or organization when somebody is beating you blue with all that negative comments. Needless to say negative comments severely dent the reputation of an organization and the brand.
It’s a global phenomenon – positive or negative if attracts million hits will always rank on top. We need to understand that negative comment comes in all notorious forms and languages, type ‘Microsoft sucks’ on Google and see for yourself. So it becomes extensively important to protect your brand when consumers/competitors have larger ground to air their views.
Pushing down negative comments on search engines is what most Reputation management companies do, but it’s a temporary solution while the issue is still at large. So in our opinion relegating negative comments monitoring along with brand content optimization is the best option. Branded content in the search will stave-off negative contents.
Constant monitoring becomes very important to manage your online reputation. But how do you keep track about all that bad mouthing your new product gets? Setting Google or Yahoo alerts can be handy. Searching with adjectives or modifiers like “sucks”, “worst”, “bad” with your keyword will give you a better idea what others think about your product.
Implementing manual monitoring will be more effective to check results. A tool in place that would alert the business owner if there is any negative comments about the product out there will be great. You will be able to check the authenticity of the negative comments and take action immediately if urgent.
Employing proactive monitoring system enables you to get an insight about the content and the customer’s understanding about your brand. This further will let you interact with the customer directly and sort issues amicably. Your instant action can save your product identity, and let Reputation management be a part of your best practice.
Toyota in damage control mode
At least a dozen fatalities have occurred when Toyota or Lexus vehicles have surged unexpectedly with drivers finding that they are unable to stop by stomping hard on the brakes. The complaints were rising up and Toyota has quickly come up with the damage control plan, lest it effects its reputation and ultimately the business turnover.
Toyota has proven to be a quick damage rectifier when they announced the news of solving the problem with a new brake override system. The 2005 through 2010 model-year Toyota Avalons and 2007 through 2010 Camrys and Lexus ES350s are to be recalled by the automaker, who will reconfigure the floor surface beneath the pedal to create more space between the pedal and the floor. The company spokesmen announced, beginning from January, dealers will cut nearly an inch off the lower edge of the gas pedal and adjust the width and not only that replacement pedals will be available from April.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that on most recalls, only 72% of affected owners bring their vehicles in for prescribed repairs. That means Toyota dealers can expect to see 2.7 million of the 3.8 million vehicles recalled. That’s more than Toyota’s total U.S. sales in the pre-recession year of 2007.
Those recalls will be a lengthy process and a pretty tough job to re-establish their business reputation with the dealers alone, but with some online reputation management strategies along with the technical rectification will bring in a great deal of damage limitation briskly for Toyota.
Posted in Company Reputation, Damage Limitation | 
Tags: business reputation, Reputation Management, Toyota | 
3 Comments »
Google’s real-time search integration – Need for reputation management just went off the charts!
Rage Against the Machine vs X Factor
Having just listen to Rage Against the Machine, it would be hilarious if they were number one for Christmas, it’s the least Christmas song I’ve ever heard. Somehow though, I think Joe McElderry might just win this close competition. It’s a reminder, gone are the days of TV being the only way people can be influenced. How many decisions will made in the future depending on Facebook polls outcomes?
Social networks are here to stay, knowing how to work them will be key for online marketing in the future.
X factor certainly did very little to protect their contestants from some pretty harsh attacks online, maybe that’s their goal. I’m sure the contestants would prefer not to have such a rough time though.
Posted in Journalists and Reporters, Reputation News | Tags: Rage Against the Machine, xfactor, xmas number 1 | No Comments »
Flyglobespan is part of a long list of failures
Flyglobespan, British Airways, where does it stop, the tourist industry has been hammered with negative news and press. On the BBC last night they were talking about the average staff’s wages, the average BA cabin crew gets almost double what they get at Virgin. Either BA is paying way to much or Virgin is under paying either way there are no winners when figures like these are released.
The tourism industry as a whole is under attack with hotels reputation being tested with negative feedback on sites like Tripadvisor putting potential customers off. This latest news about Flyglobespan certainly will not help the industry, who wants to go abroad and worry about not getting back. The hotels miss out big time on all the destinations that Flyglobespan flew to. The knock on effect is massive, restaurants, shops, taxi drivers, the list goes on.
The Internet can be very one sided, hotels, air carriers, tour operators by the very nature of what they do have tens of 1000′s of customers. It is totally down to the laws of average that no matter what you do or how fantastic your customer service, you will have someone, somewhere not happy about the service. Obviously having a bad customer service and ignoring issues can compound negative press online. In the good old days word of mouth was normally the only place annoyed customers would vent their frustrations. With the dawn of the Internet came along blogs, social network site, forums and other avenues for people to write about a bad experience they might have had with a hotel, restaurant etc. Now the whole world can listen rather than just friends and family.
Customers who have had a very good experience do not often tell people about it unless asked, and they certainly don’t write about it, so because of this the Internet can become a company’s worst enemy rather than best friend.
Fixing this could be easier than you’d think, yes it does take time, resource and require systems in place, but done correctly it can not only help manage your reputation online but even attract more customers. Having for example a facility to capture customer feedback and publish them to the web is a good example.
The big lesson with PR and reputation management is don’t leave it until it becomes a crisis and you are loosing business, make sure you are take a proactive approach and protect your businesses reputation.
Have Builders heard of SEO, PR and Reputation Management
It’s amazing to see a whole industry melt down in such a short time, with the credit crunch and now the recession many house builders have gone belly up. This is not helped by the fact that many have forgotten or never had to market themselves. In the good old days you just built a house and bingo 2 days later it was sold. Actually many were sold before they were even built. It’s not just builders whole countries also got it wrong, you only have to see places like Dubai who have had to been bailed out.
The result is many builders just don’t know how to market themselves, today its now more critical than ever to do it right. With a few buyers out there you have to fight to get their attention and ultimately their business. More often a builder will spend more on grass than they will on marketing their properties.
Question, if you have an estate to sell worth say, 10 million, how much would you spend on marketing your homes? Topsider Homes and Perthshire Builders are great examples of companies who do understand the importance of marketing. Never has it been easier to communicate with customers than today with twitter, blogs and other social network sites.
Should a builder just rely on a estate agent will they do the best they can? or do they have so many properties on the books they just don’t have the luxury of putting you at the top. The only person the builder can rely on to market it’s business is the builder itself. Embracing online PR, SEO and search engine marketing could be the difference between a builder making it through these tough times and the one that does not.
Posted in Online PR, Reputation Management, SEO | Tags: builder, Online PR, perthshire builders, PR / Public Relations, Reputation Management, topsider homes | No Comments »
What lies behind the British Airways Strike
At first it seemed like a straight forward industrial action. Now newspapers are suggesting that a power struggle with Unite union is a key ingredient along with a seeming total breakdown in relations between cabin staff and British Airways.
You can sense a massive behind the scenes PR programme from both sides as they attempt to salvage their reputations in the face of total consumer disgust at the strike. For all participants this is a high stakes strategy with a lot of questions.
- Did the BA management think they could bluff thinking that staff would never strike over christmas period.
- Does Unite’s McCluskey think he can prove his credentials and force a climb-down from BA?
- What attitude will investors take? This last question is critical. Many investors will take the view that the management need to break the cabin crews once and for all and the price is worth it if BA can achieve a lower and more flexible cost base.
- What is the long term cost to BA’s reputation? Xmas is the worst time to ruin people’s holidays.
The Stakes for Unite
Unite are trying to suggest that management are incompetent and wanting to run a Ryanair (the world’s most profitable airline, by the way) whilst management are countering with the assertion that crews are massively overpaid for what they do and the value they add.
Watching Twitter it is clear that BA is winning the reputation battle as customers beg staff not to strike. For Unite’s leadership they are charting a course that is perilous in the extreme.
For Unite, the existence of other planned strikes at Heathrow by baggage workers make this period a PR nightmare. There is a strong strong whiff of union activism which for struggling consumers, many of whom are facing job threats, is distinctly out of step with the times.
Stakes for BA
BA are facing a customer melt-down of epic proportions if the strike goes ahead. But equally problematically, investors want to see who is running the airline – management or cabin crews. Walsh feels he must impose changes and most investors agree. If management lose or even blink, expect the shares to go south, fast. Investors see this like the Miners strike in the 1980s. A defining moment in BA’s history.
Stakes for the Government:
This is a lose-lose situation for this government. They cannot support either side without alienating one community and yet platitudes just make them look weak. The sense that UK Inc is broken continues.
Posted in Company Reputation, Damage Limitation | Tags: BA Strike, British Airways, Unite | 1 Comment »
British Airways – Legal action to save reputation!
The 12-day strike called by Unite union looms large this holiday season putting hundreds of thousands of people and their travel plans in jeopardy. As British Airways fears the backlash, forums are swamped by passengers venting their anger against the insensitive approach of more than 13000 cabin crew who have voted for the strike.
The strike is planned in protest to the proposed pay and job cuts that BA has planned to ease its pension deficit of £3.7 billion which is likely to more than double to £8 billion this year. Unite union’s 13000 cabin crew are expected to join the strike even though they are paid double that of other airlines like Virgin.
In a bid to get the union to call off the strike and save its reputation, British Airways have resorted to legal action. “The airline called on Unite to call off the industrial action by 2pm today. The union has not done so and BA is now seeking an injunction to prevent the strike from going ahead,” the flag carrier’s chief executive Willie Walsh said in a statement last night. The legal action is taken on the grounds that there were irregularities in the strike ballot.
The papers are full of articles citing passenger anger at the strike which is to begin on December 22nd to Jan 2nd 2010. Would you plan your holiday booking with British Airways after this fiasco? Chances are you will not, if this issue does not resolve well.
It would almost be impossible to recover from this bad reputation for BA. The service industry is constantly dogged by bad reviews, bad press, and negative forums and an internal crisis like this will be nothing short of a disaster for BA’s reputation.
Damage limitation is what is being resorted to and BA plans last-ditch talks to solve the issue.
Bad press, damage limitation, PR, crisis management, brand protection
Bad press, damage limitation, PR, crisis management, brand protection, call it what you like, the minute you put online in front of any of these phrases changes the requirements of a company who can help. So who do you need to help mange your reputation on the net?
When you find you have negative content appearing in the search engines where do you go? Sure negative comments can be a positive thing if you have had a serious issue and have shown to have dealt with it after listening to your customers. More often than not however it can be an ex employer, competition or customer who has taken a particular disliking for the company and very difficult to show you have dealt with the complaint.
Reputation Management is about showing your company in the correct light and create understanding. It is unlike advertising, whose main goal and focus is to generate sales and awareness. Like PR, reputation management should be a planned exercise, with the goal of making the public, customers and suppliers see that the company understands the needs and wants of all parties involved. You can’t do this if there is only negative content showing on the first page of the search engines.
How you go about producing this positive content must be done honestly and in a manageable structure, otherwise you could take the wrong path. See this example from the NY Times
Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company, has reached a settlement with the State of New York over its attempts to fake positive consumer reviews on the Web, the New York attorney general’s office said Tuesday. The company had ordered employees to pretend they were satisfied customers and write glowing reviews of its face-lift procedure on Web sites, according to the attorney general’s statement. Lifestyle Lift also created its own sites of face-lift reviews to appear as independent sources.
One e-mail message, discovered by the attorney general’s office, told employees to “devote the day to doing more postings on the Web as a satisfied client.”
So it’s important that you get the right advice, having an online reputation management strategy can save you a lot of time, effort and money. Leaving it till its a big issue can sometimes hurt you and damage your reputation beyond repair.
Is the British Airways strike all bad?
One friend is hoping that the BA does go ahead. He has planned a family holiday in the USA and is scheduled to return to the UK in time for a major visit from the in-laws. He has booked himself on British Airways in the hope that they strike and he can stay away throughout the in-laws visit. Every dark cloud has a silver lining, as they say.