Archive for business insight

Online reputation management: do it yourself

Jan 13 | by Sam Deeks | ORM, business insight, how to
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You don’t need sophisticated or expensive packages to monitor and manage your online reputation

It’s not rocket science – you just need the tools that your prospects have got (i.e. Google); the ability to think like them, a dose of humility and a crash course in not being reactive.

Oh, and you need to know there’s a difference between monitoring and managing your reputation.

Online reputation monitoring

The simplest advice for monitoring your online reputation is to start with the FASTEST (and therefore potentially most damaging) channels out there:

1) Set up Google alerts for your name, your company name and products and brands.  Sit back and let Google bring the good – and bad – news to you whenever it hears you being mentioned online.

2) While you’re waiting for Google Alerts to bring you news, go to Twitter and search for your name, your company name and your brands.  It’s the most ‘real-time’ network / source of content there is.  If people are going to rant at the point of dissatisfaction, they’re going to do it via their mobile, and they’re probably going to do it on Twitter.

3) If that’s all clear, next do a search in Google.  Do a broad web search first.  See what comes up in the first couple of pages of Google.  Hopefully, a lot of it will be your web site pages and things you’ve done to market and promote yourself and your products.  If not, sack your web designer :-)

Remember: people use blog posts and forum posts to vent their anger or dissatisfaction. Learn to recognise how these posts and comments appear in the regular web results.

4) To focus entirely on blog content, do a dedicated Google blog search

5) Most of all, learn to think like a customer – an angry one and a prospective one.  When an unhappy customer wants to nail you for not listening,  they’re going to nail you by telling their trusted network how bad you are and follow up by publishing posts and comments online with words like rip-off’ ’scam’ and ‘fraud’ to the end.  They want their experience of you to be found by others researching your company – and now they have the tools to do it within minutes.  Be warned; this stuff can kill your business in a matter of days.

When a prospective customer wants to find out the truth about your company, ‘XYZ consultants’, they’re going to start by searching for ‘XYZ consultants’.  Then they’re going to add the words ’scam’, ‘feedback’, ‘rip-off’, ‘review’ at the end to see what comes up.

To manage your online reputation online successfully, you need to see these words as a code that customers and prospects use to bypass your own (naturally positive) propaganda.  So learn the code – and make sure YOU search the web regularly for these coded references to you and your company.

You wouldn’t believe how many companies’ reputations are in tatters online and yet they don’t even know about it.  It could explain that gradual drop-off in sales they’ve been seeing…

Online reputation management

Managing your online reputation priorities are as follows (listed in order of the amount of your energy you should expend on them):

1) Create the best products and services you can.  This is bleedin’ obvious, but the best way to create and protect a great on- and offline reputation is to do the basics really, really well.

2) When things go wrong, do everything you can to make your customer happy.  That means invite feedback, listen without being defensive, go out of your way to satisfy them

3) When you don’t do 1) and 2) properly, people will punish you online by Tweeting, blogging, forum posting and commenting anywhere and everywhere they can.  Count on it. When you finally find something angry / hostile / nasty (true or untrue) with your online monitoring (see the list above), the first thing you need to do is NOTHING.

4) While you’re doing NOTHING (i.e. not reacting, not getting into a fight to try to defend yourself), you should be getting really honest with yourself about what it is you might have done to create the situation.

5) Then you should be thinking about what you can do to put it right.  What you can do, and what you are willing to do.

6) Then consider approaching the disgruntled punter publicly (in whatever forum or blog his/her comment appears) and a) apologise for not having met their expectations b) apologise if you didn’t listen or respond to their original feedback or complaint.  Listen, I promise you, no matter how bad this makes you feel, you almost certainly didn’t listen the first time round.  If you can do this from a genuine place – i.e. that you really do care about helping this person to feel better about your company, you’ll be amazed what you can achieve.

7) If you’ve reacted dived in with both feet and made things worse, then call us to take the heat out of the situation on 01822 610841.

8 ) Start to create positive online content about you, your company and your brands to balance, and ultimately outweight the negative.  Beware: this only works when that content is genuine and credible.

Paying offshore SEO or Reputation Management Companies to flood Google with superficial stuff about you is a false economy (an expensive one at that!) – it will be transparent to any half-wit looking to find out what a company is really like.

If you want to do it properly, call us on 01822 610841.

Cash for gold? You will always get ripped off

Dec 8 | by Sam Deeks | business insight
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Despite being legal, these cash-4-gold companies will always rip you off

Why? Because they can.  And because they prey on people who need money quick.  The BBCs ‘Breakfast News’ ran a feature this morning.  They had some old gold jewellery valued at £200 and then sent it to each of three different ‘cash 4 gold’ companies.  Each offered around £60 and increased their offers when the reporter refused.

The report showed a horrified and disgusted young woman whose demeanour gave the impression she felt that someone had done something wrong to her by offering so little money for her gold.

Er, like, what did you expect?

The same goes for the explosion of ‘pay day loan’ companies you see advertising everywhere there are desperate, credit-unworthy people needing cash they can’t save from week to week.

They’re not here for your good, folks.  They’re here to take as much money off you as they can without breaking the law.

First law of common-sense: people go into business to make themselves rich, not you.  The gap between how much they can pay themselves and how little they can give you is the measure of how civilised we are (or aren’t).

Using a Wiki for business: too much like hard work

Sep 30 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, how to
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Is your business Wiki hard work?  Could it be a solution without a problem?

We all know what Wikis are, right?  They’re web pages that everyone can edit with the result that no one person ‘owns’ what’s written.  It’s the embodiment of the self-managing, self-leveling, self-policing ‘wisdom of the crowd’.  A democratic body of knowledge owned by everyone.

We all know a Wiki, right?  Err…yes! Wikipedia.  It’s that big online encyclopedia that anyone can add to or change – you know that thing that’s always right up there at the top of all Google searches for practically anything.

The thing about Wikis is that they sound like such a good idea in theory.  The software’s free; you’re already using the computer anyway… all you have to do is find a problem to point a Wiki at.

This is what Common Craft had to say about Wikis in 2007:

It all makes sense.  Firstly there’s a clear problem: ‘how do we keep track of what we need and who’s bringing what?’

Secondly there’s a tangible pay-off to motivate people to engage with it: ‘if we do this we’ll end up with all the right gear and have a great camping trip’.

Someone called me this week to discuss the merits of using a Wiki to ‘liven up a business’s Intranet’ and – more tellingly – to download the intellectual property of its employees.  My advice would be that if you have a clear problem that a Wiki can solve with a tangible pay-off for those involved in creating and using it, then go for it.  If, on the other hand, it’s just a nice-sounding idea about creating a shared pool of knowledge or worse, the desire to squeeze people for their knowledge so they don’t take it away when they leave, then it may well turn out to be a mistake.

If you’re going to use a Wiki for business, make sure that it solves an obvious problem and that the people you want to use it get a payoff for the time and effort required to create and input the stuff that has to go into it.

There is another option.  Just the tools in place and just see what happens  – like Wikipedia itself.  In a most un-businesslike fashion, you’ll need to let go of any attachment to the outcome.

And if nothing happens, it’s worth bearing in mind that Wikipedia itself is the product of several hundreds of millions of internet users.

Posting a comment on a Blogger blog

Sep 29 | by Sam Deeks | blogging technique, business insight, feedback
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Why I can’t be bothered to post a comment on a Blogger blog

I went to add a comment on a Blogger blog.  I got a box to type my comment which I stupidly spent 5 minutes writing.

I filled out the ‘Captcha’ box to prove I wasn’t a spamming auto-bot. No problem there.

Then it asked me for one of two ways to sign in – either using my ‘Google ID’ or ‘Wordpress.com’ ID.  Hmmm.

Why ‘Hmmm’?  Well because I just don’t feel happy signing into Blogger (yes, even though it’s Google-owned) with the er, username and password that controls all my adwords, analytics etc. Why not? Because Blogger is chockablock with spam content and spammers for starters.  Not exactly confidence inspiring.

And nor do I want to sign in with my ‘wordpress.com’ ID because it automatically links the reader to all my Wordpress.com accounts (whether connected to blogs or not).  That’s a step to far for my liking.

What happened to being able to comment as a private individual so long as I left my IP address (in case of being a nasty terrorist or inciting racial hatred or the like) and made sure I wasn’t a machine by filling in the ‘captcha’ correctly?

Well, sorry Blogger but I’m not going to bother commenting on Blogger blogs if those are the only options available.  I’m not willing to add to that subtle but somewhat sinister ‘interconnection’ of personal information you’re trying to build up.

UK Summer weather forecast: Gloom. It’s official

Jul 26 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, media
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Global Gloom Warming: Summer is now like Winter only slightly warmer and with more leaves.

weatherYes, I’ve got the kids down with me for ‘Summer holidays’.  Yes, we’re looking at the weather forecast trying to work out what we can do.

UK parents, we all know that feeling, don’t we?  And, no, it’s not very accepting but, hey, I just need to let it out, ok?

Nothing but rain, rain and more rain. The tent, it seems, is destined to remain in the attic.  The tent that’s made exactly one outing since it was bought three years ago. I say ‘outing’ because it made it to midnight on a rain-lashed campsite in Cornwall before we abandoned the attempt and drove home.

Seasonal depression aside, have you ever noticed how the more you look at weather forecasts, the more unsatisfactory they turn out to be – both in terms of the lousy weather they predict but also the user experience?  BBC seems to have done away with its plain, easy to read chunky sun / rain / white cloud graphics and replaced them with a stupid animated sequence.  This appears to be an attempt to mimic the equally unsatisfying Met Office animated forecast: both seem to forget that you miss the forecast while fiddling with the playback controls.

Which (sigh) given the state of the weather every summer, is probably a blessing.  But I do think there’s a real online opportunity here.  Holiday companies, take note.  Create a decent forecast experience and a constant stream of depressed UK holidaymakers will be yours for the taking.

I just wrecked your business plan, Facebook

Jul 23 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, media, what do you think?
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Does Adblocker wreck Facebook and Google’s business models?

I installed Adblocker a while back and was astonished to find that it simply disappeared all Google ads and all Facebook ads – just like that. No fuss, no complicated set up.

As I sat there staring at the denuded landscape that is Facebook without those nasty, tacky, spammy ads I was struck by the fragility of Facebook and Google’s business model.

To get what I mean, picture yourself sweating in front of the investors in Dragons’ Den.

“…with hundreds of millions of subscribers, the ad revenue will net us $blah blah blah millions a year” you say.

“What happens if I switch this Adblocker thing on?” asks Theo Paphitis with that ‘you bet I’m going to try to break it’ look in his eye.

Shit, you think to yourself. ‘Maybe people won’t find out about Adblocker or maybe they’ll prefer ads…” you bravely venture, beads of sweat trickling down your back.

“I’ll tell you where I am-” interrupts Duncan testily, heralding your exit fyom the den.

What kind of business model is it if one click of a mouse can unravel it?

Good Hotel Guide, bad marketing move

Jul 19 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, feedback
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In slating TripAdvisor, The Good Hotel Guide creates a really poor first impression

Picture 2Someone forwarded me a newsletter from The Good Hotel Guide (which I hadn’t heard of before).  The first thing I notice is that it’s ‘Issue 2′.  Aha.  Newcomers to the world of online marketing and newsletters.

The lead story is a piece entitled ‘The perils of bad advice’ in which The Good Hotel Guide rubbishes TripAdvisor’s credibility after it was able to publish a bogus review under a false name and with a false email address.

Serious issue (and one I’ve raised here before – are you listening TripAdvisor?).  However, at the point of reading this we don’t know the truth of the claim or the details of the circumstances.  By contrast, what we do know is that the tone taken by TGHG in this review is.. well, smug – like they’re trying to make themselves look good simply by knocking the competition.

It’s not a great strategy – especially since when I go to their website all I find is a dull ‘editor’s picks’ blog with absolutely none of the functionality or ease-of-use that TripAdvisor has.  Looking for a great hotel in Devon?  You’ll only find what TGHG has chosen to list – and no idea why, other than their claim that it’s totally impartial ringing in your ears.

If you’re going to slag off the competition, then be at least willing to take a fresh, objective look at your own offering before you do.  The bad news, GHG, is that TripAdvisor’s functionality is exactly what I – and most travellers – want.  Yours, by comparison, isn’t.

If I’ve got both your attention(s) here’s what I recommend: TripAdvisor – your need to make it a priority to use the technology better to improve the integrity of the reviews or your reputation will suffer.  Good Hotel Guide – until you can match or improve what the TripAdvisor has already demonstrated it can offer the online consumer, don’t try to impress that market by rubbishing the competition.

Hope that’s helpful ;-)

Spam: the quickest way to create a bad impression

Jul 10 | by Sam Deeks | Big Marketing Mistakes, business insight
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Got a ’special offers’ spam email from a Plymouth hotel yesterday.

As it happens, I wasn’t interested in their offers but more importantly I don’t like being sent marketing emails that I haven’t specifically opted to receive.

How did this hotel chain get my email address? What made them assume it was ok to spam me? The fact that I’d given my business card to one of their people at a networking event.

A common assumption that many small business owners make is that exchanging business cards constitutes an ‘opt in’ to each others’ mailing lists. It doesn’t.

If small businesses can be forgiven that misunderstanding (after all, the law regarding spam is a bit cloudy) what’s unforgivable is when they make the process of opting-out difficult or uncomfortable.  Failing to put an ‘unsubscribe’ link in marketing emails means people have no choice but to contact the business directly to ask to be removed from a list they never wanted to be on in the first place.  Not great.

If that isn’t bad enough, there is a final way to really make sure they piss off a prospect completely.  How?  By taking offense when the prospect asks to be unsubscribed.

A few weeks ago I asked someone to remove me from their list.  Their reply? “I’m disappointed you don’t remember giving me permission…”  I didn’t.  Notice how they imply that their spam was my fault?  That line was enough to make sure I never recommend them to anyone else.

Despite it being toothless when it comes to enforcement, the law on spam is fairly simple and I summarise it here (in case you need to be reminded).

If you can’t get your head around that then remember, with spam you’re just three moves away from reputation self-destruct.

1) Send me something I didn’t ask for.  2) Force me to go out of my way to stop receiving it and 3) Get annoyed when I asked you to stop.

‘The weakest link in any organisation is its people’. Charming

Jun 11 | by Sam Deeks | business insight
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463864622_c4f34b540fDoes the organisation you work in treat people as its weakest link?

These words were spoken by Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner this morning on the Today Show on Radio 4.  He was talking about the risk of misuse of information in relation to mobile phone details.  But his words sounds strikingly inhuman.

What he meant was, in fact, this: ‘We’ve created an environment in which your mobile phone personal data will very likely be exploited, misused or otherwise abused.  If it is, it will, however, be because people in organisations are inherently bad and untrustworthy, not because we made it possible in the first place’.

His words are typical of corporate irresponsibility.  They’re also typical of a way of thinking that structures our organisations (business and social) to ‘contain’ the worst employee, rather than ‘liberate’ the best.

Stand back and take a look at the organisation you work in; maybe the one you set up.  Is it built to contain the worst possible employee, or liberate the best?

Dodgy facebook ads

May 30 | by Sam Deeks | business insight, critical approach to online media
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dodgyWho’s going to win the Facebook Dodgy Ads Jackpot?

I got two dodgy lemons and a rotten tomato this morning.  Have I won anything?

Isn’t it sad that all three are for totally dodgy propositions.  Just Google their name with a “scam” or “rip-off” on the end to see what people are saying about them.

Sad, too, that facebook has to repeat them just to fill its slots.

And even sadder (for them) that facebook’s lack of regulation and control is turning its advertising real estate into a toilet.

Greed.  Lack of regulation and control.  Has a familiar ring to it at the moment, don’t you think?  Turns everything to shit, apparently.  Ask Google.  Ask any forum owner.

Or any politician, for that matter.

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