This week I’ve been doing some work for a national brand that is suffering from a serious reputation crisis. Some customers think that they are misleading, and they have said their piece on high-ranking blogs and watchdog sites.
The company execs are shaking in their loafers, incredibly humbled at how much power a couple of TypePad bloggers and home-spun websites with crappy graphics have. The illusion that they could do anything they wanted while keeping total control over their brand evaporated pretty darn quick.
Last night, I came across an example of how not to handle a reputation problem online from Video Professor:
The video tutorial publisher recently sued a bunch of anonymous online commenters who said they got ripped off on a consumer watchdog forum. For instance, a disgruntled user named “Bob” writes:
“After clicking on two offers for a trial I realized that I didn’t want any part of this scam and tried to cancel. I thought this was the last I would hear from these people. They billed my credit card later for charges I never approved. I canceled with them and I’m still being billed. This is fraud and I want to see a class action lawsuit to put them out of business. They ought to put that guy in jail, not on TV. He is a crook.”
First lesson, beware whenever you see the asterisk qualifier next to the word “Free.”
Next, go check out the mixed-bag of Google search results for Video Professor. If you believe the numerous online reviews, Video Professor engaged in some rather unsavory bait-and-switch and billing practices. If you believe the company, then they are the victim of a massive, malicious and carefully-cloaked anonymous slander campaign. You be the judge.
The local paper found the company’s lawsuit questionable and wrote about it last week. Soon the story got picked up tech blogs. Then it got posted to Digg, got made popular there, and it got filtered onto all kinds of news aggregators and other social sites. People started linking to the articles en masse, making the reputation wounds all the deeper, more permanent and more visible.
Here’s What NOT to Do, When Managing Your Online Reputation:
- Don’t initially contact the offending site in writing to beg, bribe or threaten them into removing negative info. It’s too easy to post it all up on the Web for everyone to see. Try contacting them by telephone, if possible.
- Beware of making a Wikipedia listing if the grievances against your client are substantial. It’s very easy and common for people to add “criticism” subsection that anyone can contribute to, like in this article on Video Professor.
- Don’t lash back at the criticism and make yourself look like an “evil jerk.” If you do decide to respond, wait till you feel calm and do it with exceeding humility and tact.
- Resist the temptation towards the old-school tactic of threatening and filing lawsuits, as this often backfires. Many Diggers and bloggers embrace the culture of rage, and throughly enjoy dishing out vigilante justice on corporate villains and outing political and legal absurdities. It’s their favorite way to flex power and “Save the world” with a few clicks of a keyboard. Just ask the man who sued the dry cleaners for $54,000,000 for ruining his pants.
- Beware of posting fake reviews or shilling. Experienced Web surfers and social media vigilantes will be able to spot you a mile away. If you must flog or post glowing reviews about yourself, at least give yourself a primer with Andy’s excellent post on Fake Review Optimization (FRO).
- Don’t try to cheat if you can’t take the heat. You’re sure to get busted on sites like Yelp, Rip Off Report, or Reddit (if you’re a politician). Yeah, it’s hard to make a living, especially as an entrepreneur, and the temptation to cut corners or employ sketchy business models is always there. People got away with all kinds of schemes and scams in the 70′s, 80′s or even 90′s – when the flow of information was asymmetrical – but they don’t work in the social media era! Ask Scientology.
Some of the A-list bloggers have written “comprehensive” guides to online reputation management, but I found them to be rather basic. The best single article I’ve found is Planet Ocean’s excellent Online Reputation Management Guide.
I’ve seen a lot of good results from making subdomains (like Microsoft) with good content on them, and I’ve seen profile pages on high-ranking social media sites with juicy links pointing at them (or hell, even 200 comment spams from .gov and .edu blogs) at get miraculous rankings.
Perhaps the simplest and best advice on online reputation management comes from MC Hammer. In the social media era, buzz travels very fast and you can’t be “too legit” enough. If you consistently make people mad, you really need to stop and examine your business practices. Then, do whatever you can to quickly make amends and douse the flames (see Apple’s letter after the iPhone price dive). If you’ve done wrong (even inadvertently), swallow your pride and issue some apologies or refunds – it will probably be much cheaper than the damage negative buzz will do to your brand. Don’t stoke up the sparks and turn them into fires, like Video Professor did. Cuz’ the hammer can come down hard, and then it will really cost you.
Chorus
“Too legit… Too legit to quit (hey…hey…) Too legit…too
legit… Too legit to quit…(hey…) Too legit… Too legit to quit
(too legit…) too legit… too legit to quit..”"
