'Net Features : reputation management

Where Web Customers Complain

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:50:00 GMT

There are two kinds of online reputation management (ORM) – proactive and reactive.

Proactive ORM is built in to the fabric of the enterprise; for example, by providing great products and exceptional customer service your customers are more likely to say good things about you and recommend the business to others. Reactive ORM however is much different – and much more dangerous.

Today’s Web relies heavily on consumer ratings and reviews. While it’s often hard to motivate the happy customers to become an advocate for your brand, it’s not difficult at all to give them reasons to become brand detractors – those that share their poor experiences. One slip up, and you may find yourself doing more reactive ORM than proactive – and there are plenty of digital destinations where consumers can voice their opinions and experience with your company.

So, where do customers complain? While blogs and social networks (Facebook, Twitter, et al) are often the first line of offense, there are many other individual destinations that are dedicated exclusively to giving customers a voice and an opportunity to complain. As the holiday season is fast approaching, keeping tabs on the following networks might just help you prevent a bigger problem as you tally up your seasonal sales.

BBB.org:

Estimated 4,461,162 Unique Visitors

RipoffReport.com:

Estimated 1,193,821 Unique Visitors

ComplaintsBoard.com:

Estimated 655K Unique Visitors

Scam.com:

Estimated 162K Unique Visitors

PissedConsumer.com:

Estimated 739K Unique Visitors

Complaints.com:

Estimated 50K Unique Visitors

My3Cents.com:

Estimated 80K Unique Visitors

MeasuredUp.com:

Estimated 79K Unique Visitors

PlanetFeedback.com:

Estimated 27K Unique Visitors

Angie's List Jumps on the Groupon Bandwagon

Mike Phillips — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:49:00 GMT

Angie's List, the paid service that promises non-biased business reviews for consumers, has seen the light in Groupon's tunnel and decided to serve up an offering of their own.

Dubbed The Big Deal, this service does not require the purchase of Angie's List's services, just an e-mail sign-up. Users will then receive e-mail notifications that include deals. Like Groupon, only when a certain number of users agree to purchase the discount does it become active and a credit card is charged.

Where Angie's List is attempting to set themselves apart is through its screening process of businesses offering the deals. Only A or B rated businesses are allowed to participate.

A common practice for Angie's List users is to purchase the servcie as a group - local chambers of commerce or associations, for example. In that sense it can be an excellent way for businesses to gain traction and repeat business through certain groups of consumers. Traffic is steadily growing on the site and Angie's List sees more than one million unique visitors per month, according to the latest data from Compete.com

To learn more about The Big Deal, call 1-888-944-5478 or e-mail memberservices@angieslist.com.

Is BP Reverse-Engineering Online Reputation Management?

Mike Phillips — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:15:00 GMT

Fewer stories will be remembered in 2010 as much as the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Its effects will be felt for decades, to be sure. What has yet to be seen is how BP will fare in the court of public opinion moving forward. Of course, people are upset. And when they are upset, they vent. One place people vent these days is on Twitter. While that's to be expected, BP's response (or lack thereof) is quite interesting.

Advertising Age reports that a fake Twitter feed, @BPGlobalPR, was set up last week not by BP but by an unidentified individual. This person started posting tongue-in-cheek updates acting as a PR spokesperson for BP. The results have been explosive -- more than 38,750 people now follow the feed (as of this writing) compared to just over 5,600 for the real BP account, @BP_America. There's even an associated hashtag, #bpcares. The tweets are clearly parodies, such as:

"Eating at a very expensive restaurant and spilled salad dressing on my pants. Not sure how to tackle this."

"Dropping everything to work on our "Oil Slickers" movie script. Hopefully Billy Crystal is available/willing to work with oil. #bpcares"

"The ocean looks just a bit slimmer today. Dressing it in black really did the trick! #bpcares"

"The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares"

What's fascinating is that BP is aware of the fake Twitter account but has decided to not take action against it ... for now. Toby Odone, a BP spokesperson told Ad Age, "People are entitled to their views on what we're doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up."

Is this simply because BP has, er ... bigger messes to clean up than a fake Twitter account, or is it a master stroke of PR?

In an age of transparency many companies have discovered that attempts to silence critics or seed positive feedback can have disastrous effects. BP appears to be taking transparency seriously. By letting people express their frustrations and concerns there is a smaller (and more focused) target on BP as a whole. And, this particular venue incorporates a healthy dose of humor. As we all know, laughter is the best medicine -- or so BP hopes. What's more, the Twitter account in question is selling T-shirts emblazoned with an oil-stained "BP cares" mark. According to the Twitter account, all proceeds are being donated to HealthyGulf.org. That's good for the environment and good for BP -- the brand is now associated with a grass-roots movement to protect the environment without performing a single keystroke. What should be very interesting to watch is how the public reacts when the oil leak is plugged and clean-up is in full swing. Will @BPGlobalPR then become a BP advocate?

Of course, there's another practical side to BP's turn-the-other-cheek attitude. Imagine if BP now decided to silence that Twitter account, which it surely could do. The outcry on Twitter could be deafening and certainly has the potential to cause even more damage. What's more, people could surely find other venues to vent. A quick search on Facebook finds a handful of BP-related pages, such as "Boycott BP" (123,433 fans), "Boycott BP Until They Clean Up the Gulf Oil Spill" (8,681 fans) and the all-inclusive "BP SUCKS!" (1,558 fans). Free speech isn't going away and there is no possible way that BP can silence all of their online critics -- no matter what.

What do you think? Is BP wily, or just wary?

By the way, in the time it took to write this post, @BPGlobalPR gained more than 2,000 new followers.

Domino's Pizza: Reverse Engineering Reputation Management

Mike Phillips — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:57:00 GMT

Reputation management is a term often thrown around the Web as a way to respond to criticism (warranted or not) before it gets out of hand and a brand is damaged. But Domino's Pizza is proving that reputation management can go a long way as an offensive manuever; before any damage has actually taken place.

Domino's new ad campaign skewers their own product; with the intent of selling a new, tastier brand of pizza. You might have already seen the spots or heard them on the radio. It can be quite alarming (or at least eyebrow-raising) to hear a company blast its own product. For example, one spot features the voice of a past Domino's customer saying, "Domino's pizza crust to me is like cardboard." The commercial then goes on to announce Domino's new formula, including new crust and sauces. As little as just a few years ago, such a tactic was unheard of. Not anymore. Not in an age of empowered consumers.

Domino's does not need a lesson in bad publicity in the Internet age. Just last year, employees did plenty of brand damage by posting YouTube videos documenting the mistreatment of food before serving it to customers. This time, however, Domino's is striking first. It's a bit of reverse engineering that might start a new wave of reputation management tactics as brand promotion, not damage control.

I don't recall an outcry from consumers about how bad Domino's was in the past. But that's not the point. I've come to believe that the consumer's voice is all-powerful in this day and age and so have many others. So, Domino's decided to use the power of the consumer voice to its advantage. Even if there was little negative being said about Domino's, the commercials make me think there was an entire movement of dissatisfied customers taking their displeasure to the Internet and beyond. In other words, I'm led to believe that my fellow consumers had a problem and Domino's fixed it. (I think.) Domino's: the pizza place that cares. Nice, huh?

Because we're dealing directly with consumers, it's crucial that Domino's "walks the walk." Their Twitter account is loaded with "@" replies - everything from saying "thanks" to a compliment, to responding to criticism or customer service issues, and even chatting with customers about a new movie. Their Facebook page offers coupons and provides another way for customers to communicate, even vent. Plenty of fans have left positive feedback about the new pizzas, and in some creative ways such as one that reads, "My dogs hate the new Domino's pizza. It tastes so good we eat it crust and all. No doggie treats left. Cudos, Domino." That's like a free commercial in itself. Of course, there is negative feedback too. But in the mold of true social media responibilty, Domino's replies with solutions to the problems, and in a timely fashion. Domino's has more than 400,000 fans on Facebook and close to 9,000 followers on Twitter. In fact, they gained 10 new followers during the time it took to write this post.

Domino's took a certian leap of faith here. Certainly, new customers and previous customers are being targeted with the promise of a new, better product. There will be loyal customers who are not happy about the change. But if nothing else, Domino's comes out of all this with a new respect from consumers - whether real or imagined. Reputation management is not all about reacting to negative publicity. In this case, it's about creating a reputation, and backing it up.

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Reputation Management and Monitoring for Everyone

MaureenA — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:03:00 GMT

Social media has turned traditional word-of-mouth on its head. Your customers can broadcast their thoughts of your company, products and their experience with you faster and easier than ever before – and reach a much larger group of people. Traditionally, you could assume that one person would likely tell a handful of people about their positive experience, or 10 people if they had an unpleasant experience. But that has grown exponentially with people broadcasting thoughts to hundreds of Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

So what are your customers saying and where? There are many online resources available that can track what's being said and where. Some resources cover all social media platforms such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., while others are specific to the social media platform such as only blogs or Twitter. You can choose from management, monitoring or both. Management tools help manage conversations, social networks and other information - adding specific qualities to certain information. Monitoring tools provide you with the conversations and where they are occurring. Below are a handful of online reputation resources ranging from monitoring to managing, depending on your business goals.

WhoLinksToMe: Released in March, this tool analyzes inbound links to your website. The philosophy of this company is that links have replaced traditional word-of-mouth, making online management key to any business’ marketing plan. This is a free Web-based tool that evaluates links in real time. According to the original announcement, the company plans to offer more robust offerings for businesses.

BlogPulse: Produced by Nielsen (one of the most credible data companies), BlogPulse tracks blogs, linking to blogs, trends and conversations. It can tell you the most cited blogs, trends, links, phrases and more. You can add your blog for free to its blog search engine for content syndication and analysis.

TweetBeep: A free tool that also offers premium accounts with additional features, TweetBeep tracks conversations about you occurring on Twitter. You notify keywords or URLs that you want TweetBeep to track and you are notified anytime someone uses those words in tweets. You can set how often you want to be notified of TweetBeeps – making your response to those talking about you faster. For example, last week, Website Magazine received a TweetBeep about a reader who wasn't able to read an article on the website because they thought they needed to buy a pro-level subscription. Website Magazine saw the tweet, and responded quickly to let the reader know she only had to log in to read the articles. Quick response can turn frustration into satisfaction.

StepRep: StepRep is another free tool that monitors what people are saying about you, and helps manage your reputation as well as build it. StepRep can tell you everything from people are talking about you on Twitter to posting photos about you and even videos. In regards to managing, StepRep allows users to syndicate content through its website or add a widget to your site. In addition, StepRep has its own social network site where users can interact with customers.

Trackur: Built by prominent Web professional Andy Beal, Trackur monitors news sites, social media sites, blogs, images, videos and other websites based on your keywords. Trackur results are populated on a dashboard allowing users to add and refine keywords, view trends, and add sentimental tagging. The sentimental tagging allows you to tag items based on positive, negative or neutral sentiment. Trackur has different pricing plans to appeal to individuals and large companies. Pricing starts at $18 per month to $197 per month for the enterprise level.

Human Powered Reputation Management?
CARMA International: This organization looks at online measurement a different way. Instead of software and programs, it uses humans to determine how people are talking about you online. Recently, CARMA updated its methodology as well as introduced three additional features: Social Media Access, Tone, and Customization. Social Media Access allows users to combine social media coverage results with traditional media including blogs, tweets, forums and more. Users can choose to have this coverage display in an interface with the traditional media results or separately. Tone provides users with a rating on the tone of articles which was evaluated by CARMA’s team. And Customization provides users with additional data and charts.

You can take management into your own hands by using WordPress and the WP-O-Matic plugin. In September 2008, Peter Prestipino, editor-in-chief, wrote about his experience setting up the WP-O-Matic plugin to manage and implement campaigns within 30 minutes.

For those looking to read more about online reputations, check out a list of books on the topic.

Do you use an online reputation tool not listed here? Tell us about it below.

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Reading Up on Online Reputation Management

MaureenA — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Managing online reputation is vital to any business, so you may be interested in reading more in-depth on the topic. Below are four books on online reputation and how businesses can leverage the Web to create positive buzz and ultimately customers

“Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online” by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss. This book looks to help businesses to understand how to work with social media so their building their brands and generating positive discussions. It also provides tips on what to do when your reputation has been hurt.

“The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff” by Clara Shih. Shih helps businesses understand how to turn networking on Facebook into customers and sales. She discusses the challenges that businesses face in regards to hiring the right employees to legal issues.

“Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. The authors of this book help business professionals figure out how to use social media, understand the various platforms and how those users are unique to those platforms. The book also assists businesses with leverage the platforms for positive growth.

"Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking” by Andy Sernovitz. Sernovitz highlights real-life marketing examples and how companies did it all for free. He explains the different platforms and how businesses can make those platforms work for them.

Do you have a book you'd like to recommend?

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Find Who Links To You - WhoLinksToMe.com

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:35:00 GMT

Finding sites that appreciate (or dislike) your content enough to link to it is not as easy as you think; in fact, it's so important that some SEO's might want to consider adding the practice for clients. Some already have with the rise of reputation management providers like StepRep or Trackur.

There are of course no shortage of SEO tools for Web professionals to faciliate the process of finding inbound links to a website. Their value in relation to their cost for many however is a completely different story. WhoLinksToMe.com, a new web-based link analysis tool did catch my attention this morning, and while it may not be the most robust way of identifying inbound links (and probably won't match the accuracy of running manual checks) it is an interesting solution that offers individuals and organizations with a chance to get more closely involved in the conversations that impact their reputation and brand and potentially improve their return on SEO investment.

Unlike other link analysis services, WhoLinksToMe.com covers a "broader online footprint" according to the company in near real time. Users can navigate through a web-based list of inbound links to their site and identify the most popular terms associated with the site and its brand. These anchor text reports could prove exceedingly useful in optimization of a current site and even individual pages in an ongoing SEO campaign.

"We are at a crossroads of what an online campaign should encompass. SEO, social media, reputation management, server architecture and web design are all emerging marketplaces. These technologies are inter-dependent, yet are often at odds with each other," says Ryan Russell, Founder and CEO of Star Nine Marketing, Inc. "When departmental walls are broken down and best practices are put into place, amazing wins in the marketplace occur."

The downside of the service is that you'll need to keep a verification link, file or meta tag on your site at all times.

__________

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Roll-Your-Own Reputation Monitoring System in 30 Minutes

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:07:00 GMT

This one's for the reputation conscious and those that relentlessly track specific keyword mentions in the blogosphere, forum-sphere or traditional media. What you'll see in the following paragraphs isn't nearly as comprehensive as full-blown reputation monitoring and management systems (of which there are plenty of costly options) but rather gives you an opportunity to monitor pretty much any source of content that is provided in RSS feeds using WordPress and a plugin called WP-O-Matic. I should emphasize here that this micro-project is not intended to generate traffic (although it might be a secondary benefit).

For the purposes of this demonstration I set up a domain on the topic of Coffee at SuperCoffees.com. It might be helpful to take a look to see the end result. Note that all of the content for this site has been brought in to Wordpress using the system outlined below. The only time I've spent was in selecting the feeds to be used.

To roll your own reputation monitoring system, you must first have a Wordpress weblog set up and install the WP-O-Matic plugin - which automatically creates posts from RSS/Atom feeds that you provide it and organizes them into campaigns. For the purpose of the demonstration, I imported a feed from Google news on "coffee" and a Twitter feed using search.twitter.com which returns every mention of "coffee" on the popular micro-blogging network. This process is often called auto-blogging and WP-O-Matic makes it a snap.

The plugin has a very easy to manage interface (complete with loads of Ajaxy goodness), features imaging caching, word rewriting and word re-linking - it is a very well thought out plugin and one you really need to see in action to believe. Perhaps the most helpful features is that WP-O-Matic allows you to import OPML files - so hundreds of individuals feeds can be added to campaigns instantly. When it comes to adding the actual feed content, WP-O-matic has both Unix cron and Wordpress cron jobs to make the fetching process simple - or you can just hit the "fetch" button and manually import the latest posts from the feeds you have collected.

Trackur: WM Site-Of-The-Day

Administrator — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:18:00 GMT

Online reputation management software Trackur launched today. The service will allow users to monitor social media, webblogs and news sites for predefined keywords or phrases (company name, product name, brand name, etc.). The service is designed for those that do not have the time, or skills, to set up their own reputation monitoring system, but could prove to be very helpful for serious bloggers and marketers looking to keep their fingers on the pulse of what's happening on the Web in relation to their brand or a topic of interest.

As you can imagine, the solution (as I see it) is appropriate more for those that have a greater number of Web mentions and need to keep an eye on what is being said about their brand or the brands and products of their competitors. Case in point, reviewing the thousands of citations for a big brand like Google each day (over 13K results for a search on that brand today) could be quite a time-intensive task. While Trackur lacks the ability to assign value to each source or sort based on community influence, it is a handy way to organize reputation monitoring tasks. Trackur does fortunately feature the ability to filter results and mark "favorites" which helps work your way through the potentially infinite number of results. For example, from the 13K "Google" results, I added "must include: advertising" and "does not include: adsense" and was able to get the number of results down to a manageable 200 hundred items or so. There is also an "advanced search" feature which enables users to search all sources, text only sources or video and image sources only.

There is currently a free, no obligation 14-day trial - while still a little buggy, it's definitely one of the must-tests for this week.