- 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 January 2010
Echoes of Vietnam, anyone
January 19, 2010 | 
Author 
Marines land in Port au Prince - looks like Vietnam again
There’s something about the way US military looks and behaves. I know this is a relief effort, but they look ready for war and they must be trained not to smile. No wonder the Haitians are worried!
Microsoft Weekus Horribilis
First is was Steve Ballmer at CES looking an idiot. Then they decided to side with the Chinese government against Google, reminiscent of the evil empire/dark side jibes of the past, courtesy of a statement by, you guessed it, Steve Ballmer. Last and worst it was an acknowledged security hole in Internet Explorer that may have been the cause of the trouble at Google and has led to both Germany and France advising Internet users to change to another browser – a happy circumstance for Google who are heavily promoting their browser, Chrome. Coincidence?
If I was a PR wonk at Microsoft, I would be holding my head in my hands in despair – each step seems out of kilter with customers and opinion-makers. In PR terms governments dissing a key product is just plain nasty.
Meantime the kids are deserting Xbox because of the network costs and Windows 7 is, frankly, underwhelming as an operating system: the cool kids run Linux Ubuntu and the rest are increasingly turning to Apple. Microsoft is disappearing down a reputation black hole where it is extremely profitable but nobody likes them or their products. One possible fate for them is what happened to Xerox – they dominate the desktop computing market but that market disappears to mobile phones and tablet style computers. Will that happen 2010? No. But the world will look very different in 2015.
Microsoft needs to lose it monolithic response to the world: in short it needs to get cool!
Posted in Company Reputation, Reputation Management, RM Commentary | 
Tags: Internet Explorer Hacks, Microsoft | 
7 Comments »
Drip, Drip… Global Warming’s Water Torture Reputation Problem
Global warming/climate change has a reputation problem! 6 months ago critics of climate change were on the defensive: they were seen as crackpots, right-wingers, heads in the sands denying the “science” of climate change. If you denied climate change you were categorised as misinformed and politically misaligned.
In the past 6 months the debate has changed as the quality and accuracy of climate change research has been questioned and exposed. First it was the leaked emails from a university research centre that implied that research was being either massaged or being positioned to advocate climate change. Notwithstanding the interesting timing of the leaks before the Copenhagen Summit and the conspiracy theories that suggested it was Russian hackers operating at the behest of an unnamed state, it exposed the political nature of climate change research. In short, it reminded us that scientists are human. Hopefully, it reminded them of the same.
This weeks exposure of the inadequacy of data surrounding the melting of the Himalayan Glaciers is a more of an issue as it calls into question all the “reported” research into the impact of global warming and suggests that there is a cavalier approach among the scientific community towards the publishing of research as well as a grasping at any evidence that will support the thesis/hypothesis of climate change.
Climate Change scientists have a reputation problem now as more of the media grow increasingly sceptical of the science. In part it is the sanctimonious attitude of scientists who seem impervious to criticism. Their argument that “yes, this is wrong… but there is tons of other evidence” looks increasingly unconvincing. In part the problem lies with the positioning of the science: no, the case is not proven, but then it never is. We have many of the necessary preconditions for climate change but we do not have sufficient evidence to “prove” the thesis. Critics reverse this statement by emphasising the insufficiency of the evidence. 10 years ago we talked about human impact upon our environment. The debate then focused on climate change and temperature variation and the likely impact of these changes.
Scientists need to revert to a more general question of the impact of human society on our environment and how to manage this. Discussions of the impact of carbon on ocean acidification, deforestation and the use of resources seem more salient compared to measuring the ozone hole whose implications remain uncertain. The scientific community should investigate the ideologisation of climate change research and clarify the remit and potential of science to inform debate. In those terms, science should not drive the debate.
Posted in Reputation Management, RM Commentary | Tags: Climate Change, Global warming, Himalayan Glacier | 1 Comment »
Competitors trashing your reputation online
Consumer Review websites are increasingly becoming the source of pernicious attacks on competitors as they allow effectively anonymous attacks on a competitor without any real comeback on the critic. Simply post a complaint without any facts or details and, hey presto, you have damaged their reputation at no cost to yourself. We cannot think of a better example of when a competitor tries to trash a reputation management company name.
What should we make of it?
Consumer Sites will need to sharpen up their act:
As companies pay more attention to these sites, so the role of website publisher will put consumer complaints websites in the legal frame. They will need to capture more structured and verifiable data about complaints or risk being repeatedly sued. At the moment, they publish without proof, soon the burden of proof will be on them to be more proactive in establishing the veracity of complaints.
The ReputationManagementFor Experience:
We have been the victim of a hoax complaint that we have assumed is originating from a competitor. The same complaint has been posted across a number of consumer complaint boards:
- http://www.ripoffreport.com/seo-reputation-management/reputationmanagement/reputationmanagementfor-com-r-678b4.htm
- http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/reputationmanagementforcom-rip-off-c299764.html
- http://www.scamfound.com/f13/reputationmanagementfor-com-scam-reputationmanagementfor-com-rip-off-89581.html
- http://reputation-management.pissedconsumer.com/i-have-been-duped-by-reputationmanagementfor-com-20100115167881.html
Coincidentally, other reputation management companies are being criticised in relatively similar ways at the same time:
- http://search-reputation-management.pissedconsumer.com/searchreputationmanagement-org-scam-20100114167737.html (14th January 2010)
- http://erepute.pissedconsumer.com/erepute-net-are-scammers-don-e2-t-trust-erepute-20100113167601.html (13th January 2010)
- http://tsavoagency.pissedconsumer.com/tsavoagency-com-is-a-total-ripoff-tsavo-agency-20100113167616.html (13th January 2010)
- http://repuclean.pissedconsumer.com/repuclean-just-a-nightmare-20100111167363.html (12th January 2010)
- http://ez-positioning.pissedconsumer.com/ezpositioning-it-e2-s-ezpositioning-com-complaint-20100112167458.html (12th January 2010)
- http://reputation-repair-center.pissedconsumer.com/reputationrepaircenter-com-reputation-repair-center-20091216164639.html (December 2009)
Interestingly PissedConsumer.com offers reputation management services of its own: there may or may not be a coincidence there.
Other consumer complaints sites seem to have a number of new complaints:
- http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/reputationprofessorca-scam-c300462.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/reputationmanagementfor.com-con-artist-sucks-1912.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/reputationprofessor.com-is-a-scam-sucks-1929.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/reputation-repair-center-is-a-huge-mistake-sucks.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/searchreputationmanagement.org-sucks.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/tsavoagency.com-is-a-total-ripoff.-tsavo-agency-sucks-1899.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/erepute.net-are-scammers-sucks-1898.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/ezpositioning-it%E2%80%99s-sucks-ezpositioning.com-scam-sucks-1890.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/repuclean-,-just-a-nightmare-sucks-1886.html
- http://www.companynamesucks.com/guardmyrep-sucks-1852.html
- http://www.ripoffreport.com/seo-reputation-management/reputation-repair-ce/reputation-repair-center-is-a-d6be8.htm
If you read through RipOff report (http://www.ripoffreport.com/Search/reputation.aspx?p=2 ) you get a strange feeling that everybody suffering from Reputation Management issues was taught by the same English teacher.
Reputation Management is not exactly a widespread phenomenon so it is unusual to see so many complaints all at the same and all written in very similar terms and tones. Coincidence?
You are the next victim…
We monitor our clients and also our own site and brand names so we picked up on this attempted sabotage straight away. Damage limitation and reputation management is all about stopping such negative and non-factual content effecting your business.
Reputation Management does not only protect your company from negative customers, but as this post shows it also defends your brand from competitors who have no ethics.
How you deal with such negative comments is essential to show potential customers that some comments on the net will be completely false.
In future…
Hopefully search engines like Google will devalue these sites like they did with directories and links or will develop algorithms that can measure these complaints. These sites can be used to trash a company reputation and quite often these companies won’t know until the damage is done.
Posted in Damage Limitation, Examples, google alerts, Online PR, Reputation Management | Tags: complaintsboard, pissedconsumer, Reputation Management, ripoffreport, scamfound | 3 Comments »
Microsoft’s IE – the weakest link in the China Google hack
While Google and China battle it out with threats and innuendos after the great Google hack in China, we now have the weakest link of ‘em all in this murky affair unveiled – Microsoft and its browser IE!
Microsoft has now admitted this and has even come out with a warning about the critical unpatched vulnerability in the IE. Mike Reavey, director of Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC) had this to say:
“We have determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and possibly other corporate networks”
For Microsoft, admitting this is the first step in damage control and they have gone on record with a security warning which Computer World reported as shown below:
The security advisory said that the only version of IE not containing the critical flaw was IE 5.01 running on Windows 2000. All other versions, including IE6, IE7 and IE8 on Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are vulnerable to attack.
A patch for the vulnerability may miraculously arrive any minute now as part of crisis mangement from Microsoft. After all Google’s threat is keenly watched the world over and for an Internet giant like Microsoft there’s nothing as big as a security flaw in terms of reputation mangement.
In other Microsoft news today, Steve Ballmer has announced that Microsoft intends to continue to stay in China and obey the country’s rules. (yawn)
The interesting question now is -Will Google really pull out of China after China has scoffed at Google’s threat saying that they are going to continue filtering Google content come what may?
Google and China - the tussle continues and further developments on this front may just take the heat off of Microsoft for now.
Posted in Company Reputation, Damage Limitation, Reputation Management, Reputation News | Tags: China, Google, hack, IE, Microsoft, Vulnerability | 4 Comments »
Google Query Suggestions – Google Suggests Scam
Recently we have been contacted by companies being hit hard by Google Query Suggestions. If you are not sure what these are, when you start typing words into Google, it will come back with suggestions as you type. See example below:
So sounds harmless enough? I am sure it was intended to be, if you check out Google’s Query Suggestion page
Why it’s helpful
- Rest your fingers.
Need to do a big search on a tiny keyboard? Suggestions come in real-time, so typing [ great w ] and clicking ‘great wall of china’ is faster and easier than typing it out. - Catch a mistake.
Did you mean: Melbourne Australia? Start searching for [ melborn ], say, and Google Suggest will offer more common spellings for what you might be trying to find. - Skip a page; save some time.
If Google detects that a specific site is relevant to the search you’re typing, we’ll provide a link straight to it, so you don’t have to wait for the search results page. If a link is to a site in our adversiter network, it’ll appear in a colored box labeled ‘Sponsored Link.’ - Repeat a favourite search.
If you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, we may show some suggestions based on searches you’ve done in the past. You can tell a suggestion is from your history if it has a Remove link next to it.
Splitting the atom, scientists at first looked at this as a way to generate power efficiently, of course it didn’t take long for some people to look at how they can use it for weapons of mass destruction. Guess what? Some people are now looking at query suggestions as a weapon of mass destruction to a company’s reputation.
So how can this very innocent feature that google introduced become a company killer? The search query is set off when when people start searching for specific keyword terms, so for example people searching for Olympics will start adding specific years. Google picks up on this and starts to offer it as suggestions.
If you have a large number of customers and some of them have had a bad experience, then they may start looking for a way to complain and start searching terms like “Your Company Name + Complaints”, enough people start doing it and it can soon become a Google suggested query. Even worse is someone could add a few negative comments about your company in a forum and before you know it not only is Google now making negative suggestions but also the negative forums are now showing up for your company name or brand quite often above your own site. Look what happened to Tiger Woods in a very short time.
So it won’t take long for unscrupulous competitors to catching on to this and start seeding such search quires. Once it takes hold it will be very difficult and costly to fix in both time and effort.
Another issues that can cause you problems is your business model, if you ask for money upfront people are incredibly suspicious. We have had several companies approach us about this exact problem, a potential customer will type search terms like “Company Name + Scam” or “Company Name + Hoax” again it does not take many of the same searches to trigger Google’s suggested query and now you have a massive online reputation problem. Follow this up with a few negative comments in a forum or a site like scam.com and it could cost you your business.
Make sure you are on top of you customer complaints procedure before issues get out of hand. If you product is not up to scratch don’t be surprised if it does not take long for Google to pick up on this. We have managed to help companies reputation online by introducing certain procedures to reduce and water down the impact once negative suggested queries started to effect their business.
Taking a proactive approach will help defend your company name, brands and reputation online, make sure you listen to customers and remember to show that you have. A journalist cannot follow a story if you have shown you heard the problems and are addressing them. If you bury your head in the sand then it will be a very costly exercise.
Posted in Examples, Reputation Management, Reputation Online | Tags: company name, complaints, Google, hoax, query suggestions, scam, suggested search, Tiger Woods | 3 Comments »
Google and China
Google’s behaviour in China has always been something of a reputation menace for them. Are they colluding in censorship? How can they square their business objective of organising the world’s information with the censorship requirements of China’s state? They might not need to any more after effectively accusing the Chinese government of sponsoring a sophisticated hack of their systems.
One side is the Chinese government who insist that “Internet companies and all sorts of websites must recognise their social responsibilities and further strengthen their internet security. They must voluntarily submit to the supervision and guidance of government departments.” ”Must voluntarily submit” is nice totalitarian touch from the government spokesman. On the other side is Google trying to square their “do no evil” with their fraught relationship with China’s government and its censoring approach to internet activities.
Shareholders have already come out in support of Google’s stance, demonstrating that this is likely to be a PR win for the US company. Now Yahoo and Bing will have to consider their own response to the Chinese government. Do they try to exploit the situation commercially at Google’s expense which could be an expensive strategy in the longer reputational terms or do they follow Google’s lead.
For the Chinese government this could not have come at a worse time for their reputation as a place you can do business. As one commentator succinctly put it: “This is a very politically charged environment. Multinationals have been complaining about ‘Buy China’ policies, unfair restrictions and hacking… and this is going to be very damaging if there isn’t a solution. There’s a feeling that China is emboldened and that they don’t need to have the same sort of dialogue. This is the mismatch – people here think no one can do without China, and I think now some companies are thinking no one can deal with China.”
Google has long recognised that government relations is a long term threat to their dominance of their markets. In too many markets they are verging close to monopoly strength. Where the 90s was the decade of Microsoft bashing, it could be the 10s is a decade for Google bashing. Avoiding questionable business practices could be the first part in a more flexible and visible response to working with questionable governments around the world.
Posted in Company Reputation, National Reputation, Reputation Management | Tags: Censorship, China, Google | 2 Comments »
Reputation Management and Social Websites
Reputation management is here to stay as it will be an ongoing threat. The social media has made it easy for all to plug in and play. When user feeds in a negative comment it is more likely to generate new type of threat for your brand. Your infrastructure vendor will be good at blocking malware, but not the negative comment circulating on the web. So most companies will need to find way to shield their repute. We need not have to dig deep to take into consideration what the future holds, but we’ll see that in coming year companies will take a serious stand to monitor their reputation.
One of the main factors why I chose to pick on social networking sites is because they are a very important part of reputation management. If there is one thing that we learned from social media is that user content ranks very well in the search engines. Just sit back and do a search, I am sure you will come across at least a couple of social media sites in first page of your search. So imagine the height of damage these hi-speed information portals can do in a click of the mouse. The usage and access to social media in workplace will be on top priority to help protect companies from getting their brand tarnished.
If you notice many of these social websites allow users to register in company user ID and even generates URL that ends with the name of your company.
http://twitter.com/companyname
http://companyname.Wordpress.com
http://www.myspace.com/companyname
You need to be the first to register with your name and URLs on these sites and do it fast. The problem with such provision is that you are always at risk and someone use these sites to damage your brand reputation. It will be immature to say that such things will go off and settle down by itself. Companies should not take for granted the power of social websites and its impact. The one-click-connect-to-all kind of platform is powerful to damage your reputation and is an established form of media today. Remember when a user tweets about the pathetic service you offer, it will obviously put your business in trouble, that’s the power of social media
While you want to remove bad press or comments on social website, you need not have to change the way you do your business. Even if you run your business perfectly you are bound to get a dissatisfied customer who will do the rest to tamper your reputation. The best way to counter malicious content on the web is to hire a reputation management firm to take care of your stake. They will counter these allegations, build up your profiles and gets them listed on search engines with keywords that are important to your reputation. It’s one method to gain access and be in control. It also provides you with a chance to reach those customers who never visited your official company website. Safeguarding your brand reputation comes with a cost and should be included in your business budget.
Australia reputation – crimes against Indians on the rise!
Australia has been a favourite destination of Indian students looking for higher education and more. The country has also been very welcoming to the youngsters from the sub continent and more than 90,000 Indian students study in Australia, today. For Australia, students bring in $12.6 billion a year and that is no small change and for the first time there’s a huge drop in student visa application from India and elsewhere all thanks to crime.
The crimes began slowly and went up to a high of 10 attacks in a single month. While the reasons for the attacks are being called as racist in India, the Australian authorities say they are not and are similar to other attacks on people travelling alone at night like in any city in the world.
The rise in attacks are also as India says – because Indians are seen as soft targets unlike in the UK and the US where as a people Indians are influential and rich.
Facts:
- Crime against Indians are on the rise regardless of reasons
- There is 46% drop in the number of students opting for Australia for studies.
What can be done to prevent Australia’s reputation from taking a further beating in India? What are the leaders doing for damage limitation?
The Indian Government has now after the latest incident of a student’s death from stabbing issued a travel advisory for its students studying in Australia. Australian authorities continue to state that they are a safe country and none of these crimes are racially motivated.
The fear is building up in India and mums interviewed are saying they are not gong to send their kids to Australia. Both governments are cautious and trying their best to not let things escalate further.
- Even as Australia made an arrest yesterday yet another Indian got beaten up on a beach!
Australian government knows that Indian students are important but there is a feeling in India that maybe the public there are suspicious and even unhappy to share their country’s wealth with Indians. “What the Aussie government should do is educate people about Indians and make people understand that as a people Indians are not takers but givers”, say articles being published in India.
The Indian government should remind people that most Indians living in Australia have never been targeted on a racial basis and friendly ties with Australia is at its best stage. Assure people to not over react and maybe wait for arrests and convictions before calling all the attacks racial.
The problem with this situation is FEAR and what fear can do is, breed distrust and for now Australia’s “safe haven” tag and reputation is fast taking a beating in India and maybe a few arrests and convictions can reassure Indians wanting to live, study and work down under.
Australia needs to go on reputation management overdrive, no country would want to be called racial and this could very well undermine all the good ties being built-up by the two cricket-crazy countries.
Posted in Damage Limitation, National Reputation, Reputation Management | Tags: Australia, crime, Indian students, racial attacks | 7 Comments »
Google’s Customer Service Issues
Last week, I was considering whether to move the company’s email services from our own server to Google professional applications; was, until I considered whether I would trust Google’s customer service to support me effectively. Instead I am moving to Rackspace that offers 24 hour phone support. I bring this up as a preface to a review of Google’s problems with customer service for the Nexus One handset.
Two weeks after launch and online forums are filled with complaints about technical issues with the Nexus One such as spotty 3G connectivity and the lack of support from Google. (see Google’s own customer support forums) The Nexus One like the iPhone is already attracting “fanboy” status with owners decrying vehemently any critics, but with sales of 20,000 (supposedly) and the forums containing 1000s of questions, it does look like there are some problems.
There are two tactical issues for Google to address:
and one wider strategic question:
There seem to be two divergent views on the impact of the challenges on Google:
Although Google has been a consumer brand for a long time, they don’t strictly speaking have consumers as their paying customers. It has had a business to business model based around advertising, like many media companies. As such it has had modest customer service issues to manage and has developed sophisticated tools to support those businesses via Adwords accounts. Now with the Nexus One they are selling directly to consumers but they do not seem to have developed the same sophisticated tools to identify or support those handset users.
Consumers are tough cookies when it comes to demanding support for their idiocy and expect a voice at the end of the line, something Google does not do and something Google seems to have an antipathy for. So, if Google does not want to customer service, maybe they should not do retail at all. For the first time they can directly damage their relationship with vocal consumers who will begin to see Google as a whole in a different light. It is somewhat similar issue to Virgin: if your trains don’t run on time, what does it say about your bank or your airline?
Google does have a great opportunity by going direct as a retailer, but it will need to use its formidable brainpower to develop a customer service algorithm every bit as sophisticated as its search engine if it is to make a success of it!