Online reputation management top tip: Don’t REACT!!

March 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Top Tip for managing your online reputation: don’t react.

As useful definition of ‘reaction’ is the ability to do something quickly, and more importantly, without thinking. In the animal world, this looks like a gazelle running like hell just long enough and fast enough to avoid being a leopard’s dinner.

In the human world, it’s more often than not a recipe for disaster.  Of course, there are times you have to react physically without thinking for your own safety. Crossing a road, avoiding a fight… you know the kind of thing. We’ve all been there – but realistically, the times when our safety is really threatened are rare.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: business insight, online reputation management Tagged With: , , , ,

How good is my online reputation?

February 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

5 things you can do right now to assess your online reputation

1) Type your name (then your company name, then your brands or product names) in speechmarks into Google and search for it. What do you find? 

2) Set up Google Alerts for your name, brands and products. This will send you emails whenever you or someone else mentions you online.  Vital for picking up problems before they can become PR disasters.

3) Search Google for your email address. Whatever comes back in the search results, make sure it doesn’t compromise you, embarass you or leave you vulnerable to spam.

4) Search Google for any online IDs you use or have used. As above; make sure there are none out there in places that would damage your reputation or credibility.

5) Take a tour of your own online ‘real estate’. Step away from Google and take a drive through any sites you own or control as if you were a visitor.  This is hard to do  – but try to forget everything you know about your business, what you do and why you do it.  Be ruthless: ask yourself ‘what impression does this really create?’.  You need to remember that people will judge you on any website you put out as quickly and as harshly as they would if they stepped into your living room.  And the impression they get will be all-important – especially if your reputation comes under attack.

If you find nothing about you (or your products) when you do those Google searches, you’ve got a problem.  Why? Because you’re invisible and people won’t be able to make up their mind about you.  Worse, the first person to set out to say something negative about you will end up being the only thing out there to form the basis of other peoples’ impression of you.

If you find good references to you and your products, make sure to click through and find out where they’re located and what they say.  Make a note to connect wherever possible (via social media or email) and develop relationships with people who like and respect what you do.  What impression do these comments add up to create?

If you find negative comments about you, read them carefully and bookmark them.  Track backwards and find out as much history as you can.  Who is involved?  What is the issue? What are they saying? What’s being implied about you and your business? What seems to be their motivation? And how many people are saying it? Start taking notes. You’re going to need them if you want to do anything constructive about it.

These 5 steps will tell you a lot about your online reputation within minutes – and set up you up with basic monitoring so you’ll be the first (well, probably the second) to know if and when something starts to go wrong.

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Taking responsibility for your part in your reputation

February 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Taking responsibility for the mistakes you made is the fastest way to rebuild your reputation – on or offline

If you listened to some of the ‘experts’, you’d think that online reputation management is about filling the search engines with more of your own propaganda.  It isn’t. Its really about learning to listen what other people are saying to you – and about you.

When you first discover an online reputation crisis you can either fight it or you can acccept what it’s trying to tell you – and it always has something to tell you. Most people, however, react defensively when they discover someone posting negative comments about their products or services in a forum online.

As a business, if you find your reputation is coming under attack, then the first thing you need to do is to not react defensively. The second thing you need to do is to find out – and then admit to – whatever you did wrong. Culturally, of course, we’re not very good at doing that.  We tend towards flight or fight and these responses lies behind all online reputation problems.

In most of the reputation problems I’ve handled, the client has played some part in their problems. Often, businesses will have done something that’s unacceptable to their customers and then compounded the situation by refusing to listen or put it right. A private individual might have made one or two foolish mistakes and paid for it with negative attention from the press that sticks.

Some people advise not responding to serious online reputation attacks.  Contrary to that advice, we’re finding that helping our clients take responsibility for their mistakes publicly (and then make amends) is the single most effective way of helping them to rebuild their reputations.

There’s no software solution to help you do that and that’s why we’re here.

As we always say ‘Find it, Face it, Fix it’.

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ORM tip: careful what you do with your email address

February 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

What you do – and say – with your email address can play an important role in your online reputation

Do you know where you left your email address online?

If the answer to that is no, you better go and do a quick check.  Do an exact search for your own email address in Google (don’t forget to put ” “s either side of your email address).

What did you find?

Most of you will have found nothing. [Read more...]

Filed Under: online reputation management, ORM Tagged With: , ,

Sam Deeks: deliberate reputation attack Part 2

February 18, 2010 By 2 Comments

www.samdeeks.co.uk gets parked

So, the person who registered www.samdeeks.co.uk has now parked it on www.sedoparking.com.  This is a place where you can park a domain you’ve bought until you want to develop or sell it – and try to let it earn you money.

Update: I’m pleased to announce that we have resolved this issue with the result that this domain name will now be transferred back to my control.  Thank you to those involved.

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Sam Deeks: deliberate reputation attack Part 1?

February 13, 2010 By 2 Comments

Has www.samdeeks.co.uk been registered for revenge?

Sam Deeks says:

“A few weeks ago, an online marketing company handed over a load of customer accounts to a debt collection company.  On receiving letters from the collections company, a large number of those people went to Google and searched for marketing company name plus the word ‘scam’ at the end.

Those people happened to find this site because of a post I wrote over a year ago.

Their comments had one thing in common: they all believed they had correctly cancelled their accounts and were outraged to find themselves under the collections cosh over a year later…..

Update: I’m pleased to announce that we have resolved this issue with the result that this domain name will now be transferred back to my control.  Thank you to those involved.

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“Online reputation? I’ve never really thought about it..”

February 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Too many people don’t even think about their online reputation until it’s in ruins

One thing that most – if not all – of my clients have in common is that they didn’t know what an online reputation was until it jumped up and bit them in the proverbial ass.  Another thing they have in common is that when they find something negative about themselves online, no matter what they might have done to deserve it, it hurts in a very human way. [Read more...]

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Online reputation: Why social media tells us so much

January 31, 2010 By 1 Comment

Social media creates a powerful impression of the person behind the ‘front’

This is a relatively famous person tweeting a couple of days ago. Some of you may be following her and you may recognise the profile or the tweets.  I’ve hidden her name and face because the purpose of this post isn’t to attack her reputation. However, despite going some way to disguise her identity, anyone with 20 seconds to spare can find out who this is.

That’s how social media is.

What impression do you get from those two tweets?

Maybe this person was trying to be humorous but forgot to put a self-effacing ‘lol’ or smiley at the end. Having followed her for a few weeks, however, I doubt it.

The point is that it doesn’t matter.  In social media, the damage is done the minute you hit the ‘tweet’ button.

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Online reputation: all your traces in one lump

January 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Why is online reputation so important? Because the web puts all the traces you leave together in one big pile for people to make a judgment about

Once apon a time, you went somewhere, did something in the real world. Whatever you did, you left traces.  Footprints, DNA, garbage, bits of paper, notes, recordings..  But whatever traces you left stayed where you left them.  The only way somebody else would find those traces would be if they took the same journey as you; if they literally ‘re-traced’ your steps.  That’s why Columbo was such fun. That’s why the TV ‘serial killer’ was all the rage in the days before Google.

Your reputation was the same.  Because it was either ‘word-of-mouth’ or ‘old-fashioned-media’ it could be different in different places.  In this village you might be thought of as a scoundrel.  In that City, a respectable member of the community.  Unless you got into the broadcast media, the traces of your behaviour tended to stay where you left them – visible only to the people directly affected by them.

But things are different now – very different.

Google brings the traces of everything you’ve ever done online together into one big, steaming lump.  And very soon, Google will be adding everything you’re doing right now – every Tweet and every Facebook update – to the pile in real time.

What does that mean, Lt. Columbo? I’m glad you asked that question, Sir, I really am.

What it means is that people nowadays assess your reputation from the bigger picture they get when they look at that pile, not from any single thing in it.

Your online reputation – how someone perceives you – is the sum total of the following 3 risk factors:

  1. The things you choose to say about yourself (your websites, blogs, profiles etc)
  2. The traces you leave of yourself (your participation in any online discussions, activities etc)
  3. The things that other people choose to say about you (customers, critics, friends, enemies)

The real problem for most people is that they only really give their online reputation any thought when something significant happens in the 3rd risk area i.e. someone starts maligning them or their business on a blog or a forum.  My clients are invariably reeling from the shock of finding themselves under attack when they contact me.

Of course there is plenty we can do at that point to repair the damage and build a stronger reputation to limit the damage of any future attacks – and there’s nothing like being in a bit of discomfort to focus the mind on the issue.

Of course, the secret is to think about your online reputation before you come under attack.

So, to sum up: take notice of the fact that from here on in,  Google WILL bring together everything you do and say online for people to form an instant – and lasting – impression of you.

And start behaving accordingly ;-)

Filed Under: critical approach to online media, online reputation management Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

TripAdvisor reputation: what’s in a slogan?

January 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Has TripAdvisor changed its slogan in response  to its own online reputation problems?

Look at the old TripAdvisor logo and slogan and compare it to the new one.  ‘Get the truth and then go’ has become ‘World’s most trusted travel advice’.

An interesting change from an online reputation point of view because TripAdvisor seems to attract a fair bit of controversy about the credibility of the reviews it presents on its site.  Some people think it doesn’t do enough to ensure the veracity of the reviews it hosts.  Others accuse it of being downright fraudulent, working to agendas unknown (and unproven).

Some of us understand the problems it must face in presenting effectively anonymous reviews when so much is at stake in terms of hoteliers’ livelihoods.  It’s  a minefield – one that I wouldn’t want to walk into.

I’ve written several reviews and they’ve all been posted without problem.  I’ve made booking decisions based on what I’ve read (in the reviews and between the lines) and I’ve found it generally useful.  I do think, though, that TripAdvisor could do more to improve consumer confidence in its reviews – not least by countering some of the critical comments out there that are easy enough to find if you’re looking.

Whatever you think about TripAdvisor, this name change catches the eye.  And the owl has got smaller too.  It’s as if someone’s saying ‘Ok, you’re right, we can’t guarantee these reviews are the truth – but heck, they’re still better than anything else out there’.

Filed Under: online reputation management Tagged With: , , ,
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