Luke Brown Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category

Say what you will about politicians, the one thing most have mastered is the perception of a positive public image. When you focus the bulk of your effort on pursuing your dream and your positive agenda, you’ll be miles ahead of the competition.

Still, everyone will develop enemies or rivals in business. If you spend time taking care of that minutiea, you’re wasting time. Let a professional handle the day-to-day detail of slander against you, whether real or imagined, deserved or not.

Your online image is more valuable than you think. ExecuNet.com, an executive job search site, released a survey which showed 83% of executive recruiters used the internet to gather additional information about job candidates. Here’s how to protect your online image from cyberspite:

Harness the Power of Google

Sign up for Google Alerts and you’ll be notified every time Google finds anything related to your name or business. Google’s search bots already crawl the internet looking for new information to index. You might as well put them to work for you.

Watch Where You Post

Use only websites where you can control who has access to, and can comment on, your personal information. CraigsList, for example, provides anonymous IDs to users to mask their identity and LinkedIn allows you to manage nearly every aspect of your account to limit access to only those people you have chosen.

Delete Cyberspite From the Record

Don’t waste valuable time and energy trying to remove lies and distortions yourself. For as little as $15 per month, Reputation Defender will monitor what’s said about you online and attempts to remove any content you find unacceptable.

Bury Slanderous Gossip

Sometimes it is exceptionally difficult to remove slanderous comments, especially newspaper articles, which seem to have a life of their own. If you can’t remove it, then bury it.

Naymz.com and ClaimID.com give you the power to consolidate positive internet content and have that information show up in the search results when someone searches your name. Both sites are free.

Balance your time against the payoff to remove negative comments. If you employ an intern, this makes an idea project for them. The bottom line is to spend time building your business, not doing the minor tasks which don’t produce revenue, no matter how important they may seem.

Lurking just a few clicks away is the latest danger: the online review. Anyone can search your company name, then read and track your business’s performance – including lousy service, shoddy products or any other business faux pas.

Your company’s reputation can now be attacked around the clock. Negative reviews – whether deserved or not – can drive away potential customers, suppliers and vendors, and reflect poorly on your company’s brand, a brand often built over years of 12-hour work days.

The upside is small-business owners and entrepreneurs now have digital weapons in the battle to protect their brand. It pays to be proactive by  asking satisfied customers to share their experiences and write positive reviews.

What if somebody has already slammed your company in cyberspace. Is it too late? By monitoring and managing your online reputation, you’ll give your company a fighting chance. That’s all a business person expects.

The Three Ways to Improve Your Online Business Reputation

1. Immediately Reach Out to Unhappy Reviewers. It is vital that negative comments are not the end of the conversation. By reaching out in an attempt at dialogue, complaining reviewers feel as if their voice has been heard.

They will often edit the review to improve it or even remove the post. A Chicago spa owner turned around bad reviews on Yelp.com by contacting the dissatisfied reviewers. He offered his apologies, explained his side of the situation and offered discounts and free massages.

As a result, one bad review was deleted and the spa’s overall Yelp rating improved. “I take it really seriously,” says the spa owner. To Yelp’s credit, they now allow business owners to respond publicly to customer comments, which gives Yelp visitors insight into how a business gives customer service to its unhappy customers.

Lisa Barone, co-founder of Outspoken Media Inc., a Spring Hill, Florida., Internet marketing company, says when a bad review surfaces, an apology goes a long way. “Most people just want to be heard,” she says. “They just want to know you’re listening and you care, and that you’re going to try and fix it.”

Negative testimonials, which Dr. Glenn Livingston refers to as “antimonials”, can sometimes be helpful. An online customer of Nationwide Candy, LLC of Albuquerque, N.M., received the wrong bubblegum product and complained immediately. The problem was the candy wholesaler, which had posted an incorrect image on its site. Ken Hanson, the general manager, immediately corrected the error.

2. Flood Search Engines With Content You Control. Use the long reach of digital media to full advantage. Putting lots of positive reviews and good news out through press releases and article marketing can move any bad publicity off the first page of search engine results.

Release press releases through websites like prnewswire.com or pr.com and build Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts since social-media sites show up high on search results, especially YouTube, which is owned by Google.

The concept is to inundate search engine results pages with as much positive and average content as possible. This makes any of the bad news or reviews seem like an aberration.

3. Appeal to Bloggers and Other Leaders to Review Your Company or Product. A basic appeal works best. Sounding desperate or anxious will get you ignored. Practice what you’ll write and how you’ll say it, even recording it for the best effect.

Having original thought leaders and industry leaders weigh in on your behalf is a powerful method to generate neutral or positive reviews which will offset any negative ones. Influential bloggers in your niche bring instant credibility to your  company.

This is why it pays to comment on their blogs and subscribe to their newsletters before you might need their help. If you already know some blogging peers, read or reach others who they influence by scanning their blogrolls. Give them a heads up to news about your product or service as the second step in building the relationship (asking how you can help them is the first step).

Some business owners say they’ve improved their reputations through controversial sponsored blog posts. Netfirms Inc., a Web-hosting company in Markham, Ontario, Canada, paid $10,000 to SocialSpark.com and to over 50 bloggers to write short reviews of its new Twitter service.

Other sites to consider are PayPerPost.com, SponsoredReviews.com and ReviewMe.com. Costs can range from $15 to $150 per posting. While some business owners consider sponsored posts similar to traditional ads, it’s essential to remember potential customers may not approve. Full disclosure that a blog post is a paid or sponsored review minimizes that possibility.

This blog never engages in sponsored postings.