Posts Tagged ‘Online Reputation’

A possible strike is in waiting for British Airways as the second ballot results of its 13,000 cabin crew members is to be announced shortly. After the first strike called by the cabin crew members was luckily overruled by the High Court due to the busy Christmas season, seems this time a sure strike is in the offing from March 1.

With the BA cabin crew strike still looming on the UK travelers, things even got worse when the pilots union of Lufthansa started a strike today over worries of pay and job security. BA which lost over £400m is planning for a layoff for its present staff and a salary freeze this year in order to save £140m a year. It’s crunch time for BA with nothing less than an acid test ahead.

Things can’t get any worse for BA with the ongoing unrest among the cabin crew and the airline, at the same time comes the threatened walkout, seems like nothing is going well for BA. All this unrest is also damaging the reputation of the airline. Well, the extent of damage on BA is widely seen with the internal bickering proving out to be a PR disaster for the airline specially when BA is really struggling to survive. This is not the first time this inner conflicts is proving fatal for the airlines online reputation, in the past also few disgruntled employees of London Heathrow airport Terminal 5 aired their anger on Facebook,with rude comments about passengers.

Being a top airline company BA seems failing to make both the ends meet, the airline should give a thought on repairing its reputation and getting back the lost faith of its customers by putting into act the effective tools of reputation management. As the adage goes, A stitch in time saves nine!

The real question is how many people won’t be booking a flight with BA over the summer period with fear of the staff threatening about going on strike again. The staff have 2 choices, either get over it and realise in order for a business to survive then they need to streamline  or watch BA come to a disastrous end.  BA is a global company and needs to be able to compete on a global scale, it can’t if there is a lot of wastage, might be unfair but unfortunately a fact of life for open global market.

Related BA Posts

• BA – Glug Glug Glug
• BA – Is this strike all bad
• BA – What lies behind the strike
• BA – Legal action to save reputation

Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs is no stranger to social networking and is the highest followed person in India on Twitter. Tharoor in fact popularised Twitter in India to a great extent with his now controversial Tweets and was even named “Twitteroor” for his political gaffes as far as his political party’s stances were concerned.

The minister is intellectual, tech-savvy and popular with the masses and has 537,478 followers on Twitter when this post was written. The problem with Tharoor is that his Tweets are a source of both admiration and political uproar at the same time. Even as he endears himself to the youngsters, the geriatric members of his often sycophantic Congress party look at him as an up-start of sorts.

That Tharoor was in the initial stages a close rival to the UN Secretary-General post of Ban Ki Moon and that he has numerous books to his name all accord him a celebrity status. What I like about him the most is his constant attempts at making his countrymen laugh at themselves. Here he is back in the news for tweeting against his own government’s tightening of tourist visas to India. This is what he tweeted -

Dilemma of our age: tough visa restrictions in hope of btr (better) security or openness & (and) liberality to encourage tourism & goodwill? I prefer latter.

When asked about the economy class of Air India he famously tweeted -

“absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!”

The slang was lost on most people in India and when he added the holy cows all hell broke loose.

That he has huge plans for his country and is not afraid to speak his mind and even against his own government makes him stand apart. But then these days how the mighty fall ( Tiger Woods) and before you know it, courting controversy can finally catch up. The minister sure needs some expert reputation management for continuing his work well and to be in the good books of the old war horses in the Congress party.

Being a busy man he needs the services of an army of experts to help him with online reputation management and being a celebrity and a politician the need only magnifies manifold.

2010 is going to be an interesting year for SEO, Reputation Management and Online PR, there could not of been a better example of how the communication world is changing, with this years Christmas number 1. TV vs Facebook;  X Factor vs  Rage Against The Machine.  2010 will see a real shift towards groups of people on social sites really making a difference and having access to many tools to shout out even louder.  Tools like Facebook, Twitter to name a few are only part of it, with the introduction of Google’s sidewiki which allows people, customers, competition to write remarks about a website without any control.  There is no opt out of sidewiki, customers will love it, businesses who have a bad track record of customer service will hate it.

Many companies will need to allow for Reputation Management to be in their marketing budget for 2010, but this is not a negative, far from it.  In the last 5 years there has been a massive shift from traditional advertising to online advertising because, if done correctly the returns on investment can be far greater than traditional advertising.  Plus if you focus some of your efforts on organic SEO and RM you will see them as an investment rather than just a cost.  Compare that to a TV advert, once you’ve spent you budget the advert is gone, unless someone has recorded off the TV, but even then most people just fast forward through the adverts.

How Reputation Management Works

So you’ve decided you want to focus your efforts on improving your position online and spent a wee fortune on SEO, what happens next?

The customer finds your site and now knows your company name, it is at this point that Reputation Management and Online PR play their roll, because if the customer has not bookmarked your website they will put your company name in instead.  It only then takes one negative comment on a forum to start effecting your sales and the reason for this, if that negative comment appears on the first page of the search results and starts to attract more negative comments it doesn’t take long for it to rise up the search results and ultimately be sitting directly below your own site.   Having a negative result directly below your own company website can attract up to 70% of your potential customers to click on it first rather than click on your site.  Pushing the negative forum down the SERP’s is where RM and SEO come into play.

If personalised search results are here to stay, then click through rates could be one of the determining factors for which site will show for your company name.  Maybe PPC campaigns will help with CTR and make certain sites perform better, but the jury is still out on this.

If 2010 for your business is about converting more of the right customers then reputation management has to be up there in the marketing budget.  There is no point spending 1000’s on advertising only to loose all those potential sales because of negative things being said about your business.  So here is our top tips for 2010.

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.

Most businesses want their websites to show up on the first page of search engines. How good is it if your website  appears on the first page of Google or Yahoo? You search for your company/product name and to your surprise you find one or more listings on top. You have been waiting for this, but then the sudden change in weather on search engines is astonishing. Have a closer look, do you see anything unusual? Well it could be those negative comments about your products doing the rounds and inviting so many visitors and obviously putting your website on top. If it is so, you are in big trouble.

One negative comment is enough to frighten away many likely customers. How genuine these reviews or complaints are is not the question, but it is about the impact. Your company’s reputation is at stake besides loss of revenue in millions.

Reputation management has become a crucial tool, but then very few companies go for this service to counter negative propaganda waged against their firms. Airlines, banks, hotels are the most vulnerable and are always at the receiving end, by disgruntled customers or envying competitors. By being ignorant of reputation management these firms end up sorting issues through litigation, which is twice as expensive and time consuming as compared to hiring reputation managers.

In such situations, our suggestion is to ‘nip it in the bud’- suppress the negative comments and bring up the positive ones. It is all about customizing a strategy to corner negative comments and design a campaign to keep positive reviews of your company above others.

Safeguarding your business from on-line damages and ensuring its smooth run is tantamount to running a business itself. New and small companies need to understand how vulnerable they are and how important reputation management services are for their business.

The hospitality industry is yet to master the tricks to deal with reviews on social media. The user-generated reviews are exploding and consumers are gaining greater power to broadcast on communities like  Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Yelp, or any group of the social networking forums. The pace of this change has certainly caught many hotels off guard. A recent survey conducted by the Market Metrix and Trip Advisor found that 85% of the hotels have no guidelines on how to handle the negative guest reviews.

The hotels have always worked hard to keep their guests happy, in part because of the fact of repeat business to maximise occupancy, they fail to realise that one unhappy customer can take a huge toll on their reputation. This could result in losing  five other likely guests. With the advent of the social media, the hotel management needs to keep track of a huge crowd viewing an online negative comment or review which may be untrue.

This puts us back to the square one and the question is how to deal with the negative comments.

The standard responses like repeatedly stating how you value their feedback, without properly addressing the specific comment does not do any good to change the negative review online. Instead you could even address it to  the concerned online forum or review site could be the answer.

The hotel management could perhaps follow the comments on TripAdvisor and can prove foul play in those cases which they think it is a fabricated story. Therefore, complaint recovery acts as one of the best ways to build customer loyalty and negate your negative reviews.

So, look out for your online reputation, negative or positive, private or public, its time to take a more active role in the online dialogues. Keep an eye on your business reputation before it gets too bad or out of your control. Never ignore the online reviews, because in a later period it might cost you dearly!

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.

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.

We often think of reputation management being about written negative content, but as this video shows, with a bit of magic and imagination you can create a very effective method to get back at a company if you feel hard done by.

United Airlines frustrated a customer, little did they know that as of today he has told 5,273,284 people.  I think that may cost United Airlines a wee bit more than just dealing with his complaints quickly and efficiently.

As more channels become available in the search results like comments, blogs, videos and photos it makes you appreciate how Google Alerts only covers a small amount of the content flying around the internet.