(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...Check out the article in last Thursday’s Times, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, that addresses how to handle consumers who develop a personal vendetta against your company. Well, you could send lawyers but legal cease-and-desists generally just make the customer madder than hell and it isn’t hard to just start yet another attack site.
I hate to say it, sucking less always helps. Start with treating your customers better. Also, be sure to register lots of domain names and work on your online reputation aggressively before it becomes a problem.
Online, the best defense is a good offense and an ounce of online promotion is worth a pound of cure. Here are some great commented-by-me excerpts from the article, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, so you can get a gist:
As the power of the Internet grows, businesses small and large find themselves confounded by disenchanted employees, suppliers and competitors who seek fertile ground to air grievances online.
Armed with little more than a Web connection and a keyboard, these detractors can do everything from irritate, via a scathing review, to causing serious business problems by using message boards to reveal company secrets or spread rumors of unethical behavior. They may also start a gripe site or register a Web address in their target’s name.
There is not a lot you can do here so the best way to make sure you’re safe online is by making sure there is a whole lot of conversation about you, your brand, and your company well before anyone says anything, and they will, eventually.
It’s from Stat 101: the more data points there are the less any particular one point will effect the total. If you’re nowhere online, then one attack can demolish you. If, however, you’re ubiquitous, then any negative ad will probably not even cross your first few pages on Google anyway.
And, if it does, an appeasement policy does work: this person is not Hitler, this person just feels like he’s not being heard. I mean, I have done this sort of thing myself with Media Temple.
Their Director of Customer Support called me but his appeasement sucked because his gift wasn’t what I wanted, it is what he was authorized to give. Not enough. I just wanted to be appeased and so he never got the posts off of my blog and never will. I ended up leaving MT and will never recommend them ever again.
In fact, I am adamant that people stay away from Media Temple because I think Media Temple sucks (see what I just did there?)
Remedies vary by case and by state, but lawyers, Internet specialists and others counsel that the best course with may be to ignore irritating posts because trying to squelch a malcontent can have unintended consequences.
Beware of the unintended consequence, something we call blowback in DC. Reacting, responding, or arguing in a comment thread is basically engaging with a Tar Baby. There is no way you’re ever going to come out alive unless you come in very open, very sorry, and have a legitimate solution. Otherwise, if you’re ornery, you’ll have your ass handed to you.
“Your reaction often, if you’re a small business, is to get angry and to fire off a letter,” said Barry Werbin, an intellectual property lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein in New York. “Some big companies do it. More often than not, the person who posts the gripe site can’t wait to get that letter and post it.”
Sometimes, Mr. Werbin added, “it can worsen the damage because it just fuels the fire.”
This is super important — the best reason to hire a company like Abraham Harrison is because we know when not to react. As I always say, don’t respond, reply, react: message and counter-message!However, it is always smart to ask web hosts, web companies, the blogger, etc, very nicely to remove the content, especially after the issue has been resolved by you. Don’t get angry, don’t get even, get your “the customer is always right” hat on and start solving problems.
That the the owner of the gym in the article wouldn’t refund the $100 to the lady-in-question was just a seriously self-destructive rule. Katie Lambert is a moron. Now, she is known as a moron in the New York Times as well because this article makes her seam petty and cheap, surely prissy and pretty bad at customer service, that’s for sure.
Shit, if you own the company, “the rules” can always be ignored — rules are for dumb employees who have no authority so that spineless customers who don’t know their rights can tell their spouses that they tried and there was “nothing I could do.”
“New consumer opinion gets posted about every five seconds,” said Rob Crumpler, chief executive of Buzz Logic, which helps businesses identify influential bloggers.
Samantha DiGennaro, who runs her own strategic communications consulting firm in New York, says many companies either run scared from electronic media or fail to realize how quickly negative comments can jet around the Internet.
“People think, ‘It’s only on the Web. It’s not that important.’ But it’s almost more important than a newspaper or something in print,” she said. “Things live in perpetuity on the Web.”
Spoken words and even IM is “ephemeral,” meaning it is said and dissipates. When you post a blog entry or write a review, it goes on a permanent record. Since most companies have have websites that are essential “brochure-ware,” if there are enough negative reviews, these reviews can even place higher on Google than the company itself!
And, this “blog effect” even works for people who don’t have the Super Ninja SEO skills that I have just because Google favors deep sites, sites with lots of inbound and outbound links, sites with keyword-rich textual links, sites that are easy to “recognize” because they use predictable architecture, and also sites that are updated frequently. Google favors frequently-updated content above any other because Google is always afraid of missing something. Google wants to be first so Google will always index something fast and often if it is a site that is being constantly-updated — like a blog, a message board, or a review site! Ha!
Some large marketers may blog or respond anonymously. Ms. DiGennaro said appropriate responses were not one size fits all and must be tailored to the particular case. If something merits being addressed, she said, it can better be done in the name of the company rather than hiding behind anonymous postings.
Good lord, do not astroturf — it might seem like a great idea but it will give you nothing but pain!
Finally, Defensive Search Engine Optimization (Defensive SEO) works! It works! And here’s how, in a nutshell:
On the technical front, a search engine optimization expert can tweak a site so that it moves a positive posting higher in an Internet search, tending to bury the negative one. Shailen Lodhia, vice president for sales at Submit Express, an optimization firm in Burbank, Calif., estimated results could take three months to a year, and monthly retainers could exceed $3,000.
The best defense is a good offense. Useful practices include registering personalized e-mail addresses as well as gripe domain names — not with the intention of using them but to prevent others doing so. Registering common misspellings as well as derogatory domain names is a good precaution and so is covering extensions like .biz and .org. Costs are minimal, some lower than $50 a year.
And here is the money-shot of the entire article: you will not only be judge on the dumb or good things you do, but people know that you can really judge a company during a fit of rage, so you will also be judged by how you respond!
“Some people, for whatever reason, aren’t going to like or appreciate what you’re selling,” she said. “Accept this as normal, and you won’t stay awake at night letting a disgruntled client or a negative person who decided not to use your services bring you down with what will be transparently obvious to most people as sour grapes feedback.”
Angie Hicks, founder of Angie’s List, a member-generated ratings service where users report their positive or negative experiences with local contractors, said every company gets complaints at some time, but the way it responds can be more telling than the complaint itself.
“You can really see how that company is going to stand by their work based on how they handle problems that come up,” she said.
Don’t even try to attack, to counter-attack, to start making excuses, or by insulting or defaming your attacker. Remember what I told you about the tar-baby? Well, waging war with online conversation is an insurgency and requires asynchronous warfare techniques… I like to call them asynchronous marketing and asynchronous PR — forget about it, I already locked down the domain names!
Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Astroturfing, Authenticity, Black Hat Marketing, Black Hat PR, Blog Counter-Messaging, Blog Messaging, Blogger Effect, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Brand Advocacy, Brand Ambassador, Brand Promotion, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Branding, Branding Online, Citizen Generated Media, Citizen Journalism, Client Service, Cluetrain Manifesto, Conversation Audit, Conversation Marketing, Counter Messaging, Crisis Management, Customer Ratings, Customer Reviews, Customer Service, Customer Supprt, David Weinberger, Defensive SEO, Domain Name Registration, Domain Name Strategy, Domain Registration, Edelman, Flogging, Flogs, Google Gaming, Google PageRank, Google Search, Guerilla Marketing, Hate Speech, Honesty, Industry Reputation, Integrity, Internet Forensics, Internet Strategy, Managing Conversation, Marketing Conversation, Marketing Hubris, Marketing Industry, Marketing Language, Marketing Strategy, Markets are Conversations, Messaging Online, New Marketing, New Media, New Media Blogs, New Media Marketing, New Media Strategy, New PR, New Public Relations, Online Advocacy, Online Brand Promotion, Online Brand Protection, Online Brand Reputation, Online Branding, Online Communities, Online Community Outreach, Online Conversation, Online Crisis Management, Online Engagement, Online Evangelism, Online Influence, Online Marketing, Online Media, Online Messaging, Online Outreach, Online PR, Online Participation, Online Public Relations, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Reviewers, Online Reviews, Online Strategy, Online Virtual Communities, Open Kimono, PageRank, Passion Chamber, Personal Brand, Pitching Bloggers, Professional Blogging, Promotional Blog, Promotional SEO, Promotional Strategy, Propaganda Warfare, Protective SEO, Public Relations, Public Relations Bloggers, Public Relations Blogs, Public Relations Industry, Publicity Blog, Publicity Blogging, Relationship Marketing, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, SEM and SEO, SEO, SERM, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Engine Strategy, Search Engines, Search Reputation Management, Strategic Consulting, Viral Marketing, Viral Media, Viral Propagation, Web Strategy, Word-of-Mouth, Word-of-Mouth Marketing
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Great Posting!!!!
One of the best ways where I found the strategies to be very solid and as I begin to implement some of them…
It is better to be proactive about your online reputation than to be reactive. Unfortunately, many businesses and nonprofits wait until something bad happens before they invest in managing their online reputation. The fire brigade approach of damage control is the language many of them understand even when there are innumerable accounts of many offline businesses that continue to be damaged online.