This session focuses on reputation. What do people find when they search for you by name? Is it negative? If so, what do you do? What can you do? This session explores some of the tactics available.
Noah Elkin from Steak presents the rules for Online Search and managing your reputation at a high level.
Rule # 1 – Be proactive
Setup social media campaigns and communication avenues.
Rule #2 – Be relevant
capture and analyze relevant data. Help your audiences by supplying them with the right information at the right time.
Rule #3 – Be tactical
Leverage blended search to get your story across in alternative formats. YouTube, blogs, forums and social networks help tap intro traditional. Use paid media to gain immediate differentiation
Maximize reach and distribution of our message by tailoring language and tags.
Rule #4 – Be Authentic and honest
Put all opportunities to a “real human personality” test. Comcast cares now has a face in front of a faceless corporate entity. communicate clearly about what you are doing. Avoid marketing-speak and legalese.
Rule #5 – Be accountable and humble
Take responsibility for mistakes – review the JetBlue scandal or Mattel recalling toys. Keep your organization customer-centric. Help employees understand the impact of their interactions on the brand. Remember most interactions turn up on blog posts.
Rule #6 – Be responsive and engaging
Sift through conversations to distill common themes. Make an effort to stimulate dialogue and interaction. Build goodwill by rewarding customers for their attention and participation.
Rule #7 – be responsible
Move beyond crisis management and advance to brand extension and engagement marketing instead of just brand protection. Foster coproarate and “accidental” advocates.
Chris Bennett of 97th Floor begins a presentation on Reputation Management.
Most important aspect is immediacy and be proactive. Respond immediately even if it is at a stage where you may have to provide details at a future time.
Understand your foes. If someone is ranting about you, they mention your name over and over again and this is hard to defeat. Why do they rank will in the search engines for your name? Quality of links? Number of internal links and number of inbound links? How often is it getting cached. Once you understand the page factors, you can develop a formula to rank in front of the competitor.
Generate buzz with relevant social media sites. Create reviews and social media profiles. Link to the profiles and make sure they are active. If they are lightweight or of little authority, then they won’t have the “juice” needed to provide any help. Go ahead and grab any social media real estate associated with your brand. This prevents “poaching” your name and profiles.
Leslie Carruthers of The Search Guru talks about the Ethics of Online Reputation Management.
The next part of the presentation focuses on how to manage negative postings or listings. The tactics and legal ramifications of Online Reputation Management (ORM) can be categorized in the following topics:
- Censorship
- Misinformation
- Vendetta
- Consumer Rights
- Time Sensitivity
- Long term reputation
- $$
Develop a long term strategy with a pre-developed plan. Know who you are going to be in the face of potential trouble. Know your team. Know who is going to manage the reputation of your brand, also know if you can’t do it, then realize it and select a point person ahead of time.
If there is misinformation about your brand on the web, be clear and concise and direct. Ask for removal without being personal. If the complaint is personal, it could start a backlash and negative viral campaign. Don’t send something that would be sent around to share with others or it will feed the fire of ranking higher as a negative review. It’s not about being right or wrong sometimes, since it is often a point of view. Currently, the FTC has not pursued any legal claims against reviews. For example, Cease & Desist orders are legal, but ineffective because websites are protected by First Amendment, Communications Decency Act and SLAPP. The best approaches are transparency and directness.
Review the white paper The Search Guru provided on their website at https://www.thesearchguru.com/reputation
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com