Online Reputation Management - Branding, Insurance, or Blind-Luck?
Author: Barry Hurd
In today’s world it is far too easy to be ignorant of your online reputation. It is even easier for it to instantly vaporize and let someone tear it into a barely recognizable brand that you will fess up to being involved with. Every blog, community site, customer review, or competitor has hundreds of different options to voice viewpoints and concerns against a company. If you haven’t done it already, start understanding how to use tools to monitor social media and take proactive steps to keep your business in working order.
Your second option is to ask the simple question:
Can this happen to me?
Yep it sure can.
As a case example, I pulled a local article from Washington CEO Magazine on the Top 100 Companies to work for in 2007. I pulled some of the names off the list and did a quick query in Google. Here are some of the headlines I found on the proper names of the “Top 100 companies:
Result 7 - Zillow - Google Headline “How Good are Zillow’s Estimates?”
“Zillow came within 5% of the price in a third of the transactions studied by The Journal. It was more than 25% off target on 11% of them. In 34 of the 1,000 transactions, Zillow was off by more than 50%.”
Our view: If you are a user or an investor of Zillow, you’ve more than likely been exposed to this article and several like it. How does it make someone feel that the Wall Street Journal (considered to be one of the most respectable news sources) is saying Zillow zestimates are 50% off?
Result 6 - Comcast - Google Headline “A Comcast Technician Sleeping on My Couch” A Comcast cable technician came to replace a cable modem and fell asleep while waiting for the customer service group. As of this article it was viewed: 1,219,303 times! (At 58 seconds long, that is A LOT of bad reviews for Comcast.) It had 714 comments.
Our View: Holy smokes Batman. 1,219,303 views! I don’t know any company that wouldn’t suffer a marginal impact to marketing, sales, and customer service numbers when a million different people have watched how lackluster Comcast support is.
Result 3 - Spokane Federal Credit Union Review - Citysearch Review - “I had an account with Spokane Federal for many years and I was never really that impressed, they pretty much just took care of what I needed and nothing more, overall I would say that they met, not exceeded my expectations”
Our View: Even though Spokane Federal Credit Union has plenty of coverage, it would be easy to bump off a lack-luster review saying they are nothing but mediocre.
Result 3 - Zango - PC Hell: Zango Removal Instructions - “Zango is a entertainment site with free access to videos, music, games, and other downloads. The site is free to all users, but is paid for by advertisements. Visitors are presented with an end user license agreement that they accept before downloading any content.”
Our View: Here is a Desktop Software company that has hordes of people using Zango gaming software, and every time someone Google’s their name you get “PC Hell - Zango Removal Instructions” thrown at you. If I bought a desktop system that had them pre-installed on it, you can bet that I would remove it in a heartbeat. I don’t need some casual gaming platform slowing down my PC while I need to number crunch my data or send an important e-mail.
It doesn’t make a difference of who you are (how big, or how little), this can happen to you.
It happens to Comcast and Zillow.
It also happens to the little guys.
If you look at this problem from a strictly numbers point of view, Comcast buys it’s own keyword of “comcast” from Google so that it can keep company branding and results at the top of Google. If I were to buy that keyword, it would cost roughly $1.25 per click, and there are 5500 estimated clicks per day on it (that is a daily budget of $6000 to $8000 per day on that keyword).
If Comcast is paying only $.25 per visitor for that keyword- imagine that those 1,219,303 video views cost Comcast a minimum of $250k in lost “clicks”, not counting how many customer service problems and public relations issues it causes.
Expanding Your Online Reputation Management Through Article Marketing
Author: Johnny Albertson
A positive reputation is a priceless asset to any business. The loyalty of a small group of customers is nice, but generally not enough to bolster sales and keep food on the table. As entrepreneurs we are always looking for new ways to reach a greater number of people.
There are a million ways to get your name out there, some more effective than others. Our modern society offers marketing opportunities through television, radio, telephone, the Internet, and a vast array of print sources such as brochures and magazines. Your budget will likely dictate which of these methods you choose to utilize.
There is one method, however, that any business owner should take advantage of. Regardless of the size or success of the company, article marketing is a fast and cost effective way to legitimately market your company.
How to Get Started
There are three main steps to the article marketing process:
1. Begin by writing a batch of articles surrounding topics that relate to your business.
2. Submit the articles to an article distribution service. (You can attempt to submit them to content sites individually if you have a boat load of time to spend on the project.)
3. Watch as your articles are distributed to hundreds of sites and subsequently published all over the Internet. The best part is that all of these articles will have links back to your website, significantly increasing site traffic and company exposure.
Lots of websites have an insatiable hunger for fresh content. This is why these article distribution services have become so popular. They have formed relationships with many of these content sites who have come to trust them to provide well-written and informative articles.
Branding Through Article Marketing
Article marketing is one of the best ways to get your brand name on the public eye’s radar screen. When you provide interesting and engaging articles that pique readers’ interests, you are assured that many of these people will check out your company website. The more often people see your brand name, the more it becomes ingrained into their memory.
For instance, if your company produces highly efficient halogen bulbs, you might write a number of articles addressing energy consumption and conservation. Every time a reader sees one of these articles, they also see your brand name. Then, the next time they find themselves face to face with a burnt out light bulb, they will immediately think of your company. It’s all about putting a face to your name.
The Article Marketing Difference
Article marketing offers something different than other marketing efforts, which is why it has proven to be so effective in gaining positive exposure for the businesses that use it. Instead of bombarding the consumer with fancy sales jargon, these articles simply give the reader good information.
It’s like making an investment in the customer before they invest in you. By offering them something right off the bat, they are more likely to trust that you are interested in something more than just sell! sell! sell! It shows that you want to share your expertise about the industry you represent.
As the saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. In my opinion, it’s always best to stick with the good publicity. Article marketing will help you do just that. Instead of turning people off through annoying advertisements, choose a different approach. Dispense a little wisdom up front and you are sure to turn potential customers into loyal customers.
Sticks and Stones And Names Can Hurt You, Identity Management
As if click-fraud, credit card fraud, and identity theft weren’t enough for us to worry about, there is a new threat to businesses and individuals today, and it is known as Internet Hostage Taking and Cyberspace Attacks and its perpetrators are nearly impossible to bring to justice.
These attacks consist of false complaints made against an individual or company on a complaint-related website. (Here is a partial list: ComplaintsBoard.com , RipOffReport.com, Furiocity.com. and many more. These are different from the authorized complaint boards approved by The Ministry for Family and Consumer Affairs.
These complaints often result in an inaccurate skewing of search results by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Then, when a company name is searched, the complaint web page often comes up above or just below the victims website on the first search result page. This can cause customers and prospective customers to be less inclined to do business with the victim company because they might believe the false information.
There are really two problems. First, the so-called complaint boards have no policy about who files complaints. Anyone can post anything against anyone and it is never checked out or verified. So, the person being complained about may not even know they have a complaint against them and therefore, have no chance to defend their reputation.
The second challenge is that websites like ComplaintsBoard.com and RipOffReport.com often have policies to not remove the complaints posted on their websites whether they are valid or not. RipOffReport.com even states the following on their website As is our policy, we never remove reports even when they are claimed to contain defamatory statements, and even if the original author requests it. To compound the problem, some complaint websites do not require registration by the person posting the complaint, so there is no way to track fraudulent criticism. The perpetrator can destroy anothers internet reputation with little concern for legal recourse against them. Scary, huh?
My name is Dr. Bunny Vreeland and really this happened to me. I am a board certified clinical hypnotherapist with a Ph. D. in Hypnotherapy. I have been seeing clients for 17 years and have never had a complaint; although, a few times, I did return a client’s money because I didn’t feel I was the right therapist for them.
Here is what happened In November 2006 I saw a female client for a stress related skin condition over the course of several months. During the five-hypnotherapy sessions the skin problem gradually went away. She insisted on coming back for a 6th session because she told me she had a special request she wanted to discuss with me. When she returned in March 2007, she asked me to hypnotize her so that she could forget something she planned to do, so that it wouldn’t show up on a lie detector test if she were required to take one! In other words, she was asking me to be an accomplice to a crime!
Needless to say, I refused. At that point, she started screaming and yelling that if I didn’t help her, she would destroy me. I asked her to leave and she finally did, threatening me over and over that, You will be sorry. You haven’t seen the last of me.
She called me every day for weeks, screaming, threatening and yelling. I have caller ID and kept the recorded messages, which I later turned over to the police. After a few weeks of her calls, all of a sudden there was nothing. No calls at all. Then, after a few more weeks of silence, she called me to tell me she and her husband were moving out of town and she forgave me. I gave a sigh of relief and wished her well, said good-bye and hung up.
I was initially unaware of the havoc she would eventually wreak. It wasn’t until May 15 (my birthday) when I Googled my website, that I found over a thousand complaints that she had filed!
This is how it was done she created a number of false internet identities, even being so bold as to use names taken from the numerous positive testimonials on my own website. Using false e-mail addresses and telephone numbers she began to register complaints on websites like RipOffReport.com and ComplaintsBoard.com, making it appear that many people had suddenly begun to complain about my practice.
On a couple of the complaints, she even posted a false conversation between her and me with her playing both roles and enacting me as an uncaring and very nasty person. She accused me of a litany of unbelievable charges including practicing medicine without a license. (I don’t practice medicine. Hypnotherapists never practice medicine.)
She even went so far as to register complaints with the Better Business Bureau where I have had AAA standing for years. Upon examination, the BBB found the complaints were registered using false information. The unfortunate result of this venomous soliloquy was that the false internet complaints rose to the very top of the search results pages, even above my website. What a shock!
When I later mentioned this experience to a realtor friend of mine, he asked if it was the very same person and told me he had the same situation with her! We went to the police and were told that there was nothing they could do. We talked with a total of five attorneys about this and they all said the same thing we would have to prove the complaints came from her. I have a friend who is a private investigator who went to work on this case, which is still pending.
While the complaint websites and legal entities can offer little assistance in this regard there is help available from a handful of companies specializing in assisting companies to clear their good names. A internet marketing company specializing in helping companies improve their tarnished internet reputations.
Wikipedia defines spamdexing as any of various methods to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, usually in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. Google and other search engines are aware of the problem and are working to fix it, however for most companies the solution is to find an internet marketing specialist with knowledge of the techniques necessary to counter such practices.
While companies don’t make the complaints go away, they do make them seem to go away. We help companies counter such threats as spamdexing, comment spam, and malicious tagging.
The vast majority of people only view the first or second page of search results. We have developed a technique that gently nudges complaints much further down in the search result pages, where most people never look, causing the complaints to effectively disappear.
It has been over a year since this happened and her complaints remain on the web although they have been pushed down. I hope nothing like this ever happens to you or anyone you care about.
Fetch your online identity management back via rip-off report removal
Internet and its various services have come a long way but there are negative sides of positive things also and rip-off reports are one of them. In fact, they have become quite a nuisance for the search engines as well as the websites posted on it as they are harming the reputation of the business. However, if you are suffering from such false reporting, then you can always hire experts experts who deal with rip-off report removal exclusively for you and your websites.
These rip-off reports use the ranking power of websites posted on various search engines to rank companies on the websites. Hence, the business suffers and can actually harm the deals while incurring financial loss. Fortunately it is possible to push the rip-off report rankings through rip off report removal services from the top rankings that are hurting companies. Well, there are many ways and solutions available through which one can easily get rid off rip-offs without any problem. However, to get services of rip-off report removal, all you have to do is to hire an expert who can guide you properly otherwise if a person is not experienced enough then the website or a company can get troubled. Thus, it is necessary to have someone who can look after your website and product very well and without hurting your brand.
The most popular ways to get rid off such false reports are to get a profile on every social site that exists. In fact, there was a post about this that talked about social media squatting and many other things. Therefore, you have to make sure that you are in control of your brand everywhere. The expert will help you in social media site for your product or services and also ensure to get the brand management along with the reputation management thing done for your website. Even, if one lacks behind in getting the product branded or popularized again. In fact, you can place your website on Google, MSN, Yahoo or any other branded search engines to protect your self and get it optimized through rip-off report removal services.
However, if you are in a very competitive industry where competition plays dirty tricks on you then you can get your profile posted on websites with different combinations like .com/your-brand and .com/your brand with the dash and one without. Therefore, do not wait and help yourself without getting bothered much and concentrate on the secured future now. Well, it will be a good idea to brand your website on various social pages. However, if you are going after something as strong as rip off report you will need more than this and you will need to drive a lot of links to these social pages like Google. The other popular method adopted by experts is blogging. However, if you own sites build sub domains with your brand in the URL and the title and mention some of the awards you won to consumers. But the most effective way to get rip-off report removal work is through press release and article sites.
Author: Steve Waganer
Internet Reputation Management Complaints
Author: S.E. Fullen
I prefer a peaceful life. Do my errands in familiar places. Sometimes I like to try something new. Generally, all my needs are well met by the retailers I patronize offline and online. If there’s a glitch, I’m either patient and get what I need in the end, or just go to a different store that has the item. No big deal. I just want to pick up my stuff and go home.
That is not the world of the Global Mouthpiece that is the Internet.
The Web has so much potential for global commerce, bringing people together amicably, and an awesome resource for research and information. Unfortunately, this great tool is often identified instead by the worst faceless users in the world (some criminals), who spew mountains of hateful rhetoric for global publication every day. Ugly attacks and “Rantrums” against other people on the Web is way out of control, and is enabling public behavior that is openly uncivil, narcissistic, anti-social, and sometimes dangerous.
Really, there is a deep need for greater online regulation (never mind re-training in basic social skills), and a lot of retailers are quietly, politely, showing signs of getting proactively fed up.
One vocal online merchant says (and I totally paraphrase for his protection) that large and small retailers are increasingly and unnecessarily burdened with rude, undisciplined, and often abusive customers that cost way more than they should. Anger (sometimes enhanced by substance abuse?) can be stoked further by safe anonymity and what is often unregulated libel in Chat Rooms, Forums, Blogs, and online “Review” sites. Smaller business has been undeservedly damaged, or even ruined, by some of the more awful attacks from people who will destroy anything, and harm anyone, when they can’t have their way. Even the last word in a dispute is up for grabs.
Customer Review Sites: Like most things in life, they are fair in concept. But in practice, they’ve become vengeance attack zones designed to ruin innocent people and small businesses, plastering personal issues all over the internet, sometimes under false names. Nobody can justify a nasty third rate public rantrum under the guise of legitimate “review”. The only online reviews I trust are about the product, not broadcast 10-volume versions of silly complaints escalated into a federal case because some woooooookid@witless.com’s special underpants were backordered. Chillingly stupid.
Complaint sites and “Consumer Rip-Off” Forums: Granted if a pattern of bad business practices can be detected, published complaints may be helpful. But in most instances, entries are no more than public temper tantrums, and embellished versions of everyday disputes, with few options for rebuttal from accused companies. While there are a small percentage of fraudsters that deserve to be exposed, most businesses do not deserve to be attacked.
General Forums and Chat Rooms: Again what a great way for people to get together and share ideas and opinions! On the other hand, there are a few bloggers out there who are generating some serious rage because anonymity seems to protect them from legal backlash. Hey, if you’ve published something really egregious that’s appearing all over the place, any decent tech/lawyer team can easily locate you. No sympathy!
Unfortunately small internet businesses do take a constant barrage of nastygrams and published tantrums from difficult people who enjoy attacking reputations and livelihoods of innocent people far more talented than they are. Why? Because lime green crew socks are backordered a couple of weeks. Sorry, but given the potential for irreversible harm on the global Web, mere words can’t begin to describe a person of that ilk. If such shenanigans happened in a physical store or mall, many would be rightly tossed out the door.
Sure, there are occasional issues between consumers and businesses, but almost all can be reasonably resolved with cooperation from consumers who are sane, literate, and possess a few basic interpersonal skills. There is a world of good companies large and small whose people just want to do an honest business without fielding a daily barrage of broadcast hystrionics from self centered jerks.
I am sure anybody who cares to read this through will erupt into a state of enraged, inflated indignation, with fingers itching to hammer a keyboard response that will blow my mind with brilliance and righteousness, but REALLY. Don’t we all have vacuuming or laundry to do … or something?