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BedTimes, Marketing Report, August 2008

Protecting your reputation
Defend your brand with online checks

By Barbara Nelles

Ideally, you do such a fabulous job delivering on your brand promise that rants by dissatisfied customers or disgruntled employees are rare. But even a single angry posting can affect your company’s image and stay alive online—forever.

If you aren’t already, it’s time you began monitoring what is said about you on the Web. For a price, there are brand-monitoring services, such as Collective Intellect, Netpinions and SentimentMetrics, that offer to collect and analyze the information for you. You can do basic monitoring yourself by following these simple steps, according to Computerworld online:

1. Use free online tools like Google Webmaster Central Blog, BlogPatrol and Technorati to monitor blogs.
2. Regularly Google your company name.
3. Set up a Google Alert to be notified when your company name appears on the Web.

In a keynote speech given to the New Communications Forum 2008, Richard Binhammer, a corporate communications executive at Dell, told how his company overcame “Dell Hell”—the negative online commentary about the company that was battering its brand and stock price. Dell began listening and responding to its customers, and stimulating positive commentary, which eventually turned its reputation around.

Avoid letting your brand get in a similar fix by building better relationships with customers (and employees) before your online reputation suffers. You can pre-empt negative online commentary by making it easier for customers to complain directly to you. Add customer service contact information to your Web site. And respond promptly to all problems.

When you spot a negative posting online, it may make sense to contact the complainer directly to try and resolve her problem or to answer or rebut the posting online. But choose your battles wisely. Is the complaint reasonable and posted at a popular opinion site, a well-read blog or otherwise highly ranked in search results? If not, some rants are better ignored.

Professional services to repair Web reputations are cropping up. Defend My Name rebuilds damaged company reputations by creating search engine-optimized Web portals and positive content for its clients.
But there is much you yourself can do to generate positive commentary about your brand and dominate the all-important first page of search results:

• Create a free company blog at Blogger, TypePad or WordPress.
• Contribute articles in your area of expertise (choosing a mattress, sleep, mattress technologies) to user-generated knowledge bases such as Squidoo and About.com.
• Pump up your media coverage, advises advocacy consultant 720 Strategies in its 720 Blog article “Repair Your Organization’s Reputation: Five Tips.” News stories and releases rank high in search results. Leverage the power of news releases by posting them at your Web site and elsewhere online.