Musings Of A Marketer

Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online book was a guest writer at Mashable, with a summary of 10 factors to save your online reputation.

An interesting posting, worth reading. Very briefly, it goes like this:

1. Know your Achilles heel. Being aware of your weak points will help you be better prepared for attacks on you, if not save your brand completely and unaffectedly.

2. Assume that everything will make its way to the web. In our world of gtechnologies you can never be sure that anything you express aloud (by voice or in writing)will remain within yourself. So, you should always be careful about what you are saying or writing - always assume it will go public.

3. Create positive online impression. Good intuitive interface, with necessary content meeting expectations of your company, is a way to make a first impression on the audience online.

4. Choose your blog voice carefully. Note, that your corporate blog is not your personal blog. Let a team of employees manage it and fill it with content - their ideas, opinions and communications with the customers and perspectives. Corporate should be corporate (but do not make it completely impersonal).

5. Hang out at the right social network. Do not be driven by statistics to the most popular networks. Rather, find a network with more likely the audience that you target, the audience that talks, or is willing to talk, about you. The best way to target is creating your own network (will take time and efforts to promote, but in the end it will be your audience… and there are open source systems providing tools for creating networks from scratch).

6 . Send bloggers love letters, rather than PR pitches. Keep talking to the most influential bloggers on a constant basis. Agree with them, argue with them, comment on their posts. The more you talk to them, the more they are willing to talk to you. Next time they find fault with you, they might choose to talk to you first before publishing harsh criticism out loud.

7. Build your Google reputation now, not later. It will be much harder to improve your bad reputation than to creat one positive from the start. Once search engine spiders have indexed a negative article about you, it will be there, and who knows how fast you will be able to take it down and bring one positive up instead.

8. Monitor online reputation as often as email. Back to No.7 - do not let them have you caught on smth bad. As soon as smth appears on the web you have to be sure that you will respond promptly to reduce the impact.

9. Face the attackers. Ostriches are not a good example to follow - do not hide your head in the sand whenever you see an attack on your from a blogger. You might choose to wait a couple of days until the problem just goes away, resolves itself. But this is not necessarily going to happen. One of the attacking bloggers could be a Times journalist in the end, and you might become a hot news that very evening. Just face the problem, do something. Admit your fault if necessary, apologise, and take action to prevent further distress.

10. Three words to remember. SINCERITY, TRANSPARENCY, CONSISTENCY. I’ll just quote here:

Sincerity means wanting to hear from your customers and the desire to truly provide a positive experience with your company. Transparency involves tearing down the walls of corporate rhetoric and PR spin–the more you share with your customers the more you’ll win their trust. Consistency is a vital component for any reputation management efforts. Your customers will forgive your isolated failure, but if you’re not consistently living-up to your brand promise, they’ll find a company that does.

Great stuff from Andy Beal. If you liked it, you might wish to read his book - see the link up here in the beginning of the post.

There’s a cool ad from Carslberg. They are seemingly advertising a sports drink. The few words are in Danish, but it’s not about the wording. Enjoy…

Here is another reason to pay attention to the Russian Internet space.

Gazprom Media (part of the Gazprom) has acquired the Russian copy of YouTube - the video sharing site Rutube.ru. The site was started right after the older brother was bought by Google. The Russian site has not received the same amount of money, but the specialists all agree that it was still overestimated ($ 15 mln). This sum is probably nothing for Gazprom, but the deal means a lot not only to RuTube guys, but also to the industry. I don’t know the official statistics, but it seemed to me that the site had been dying out lately, even before YouTube launched their Russian interface. Now the competition will become even tougher on them, and Gazprom’s investements might give them a chance to fight.

I disagree with the analysts who expect RuTube to become just an Internet platform for their more traditional media channels (the holding is strongly represented in TV, radio and print media). The guys there are not stupid, even if they do not have that huge experience in the net. Moreover, none of the RuTube staff are leaving - everybody, including the tops are staying with the company. It looks more like RuTube won a good round of funding, so I believe, content-wise there are not going to be any significant strategic changes.

As for the industry impact, Russian Internet is heating up. We remember the last year’s big news when russian holding SUP bought Livejournal  - the social network most popular with the Russian audience. I also wrote just yesterday about another social networking site - Hi5 - launching their Russian interface, and I believe, more news will be coming from the country.

There is a post by Erich Joachimsthaler at Harvard Business Conversation Starter, which is not very new, but I have just been thinking over the same idea lately - where do you lose as a big company with as big a competition, and how do you win as a small company fighting to get into a niche to survive.

It turns out that it is possible for small ones not only to survive but rather win over the niches which are way more attractive than the markets where giants operate. How this is possible? Erich says the big ones would miss stuff because they are so overwhelmed with monitoring what they are doing at the moment, and researching for what competitors are doing. All the minor changes are being noted and acted on accordingly, but when it comes to a big thing that is a little out of the box, it becomes vague and unclear - no time to address to that. That’s where the small ones - those who concentrate on customer needs rather than competitors’ advantages - come and take charge.

I can’t tell how true this idea of the big airlines not paying enough attention to customers is, but you can see the result:

Four chic but cheap business-class start-ups, Eos, MAXjet, Silverjet and l’Avion have launched all-business-class flights on the incumbents’ most profitable routes from London to New York with huge success. They offer new services for business travelers that are so obvious and valuable: extremely late check-in, fast paths through the airport to avoid the masses, guaranteed luggage immediately upon arrival, private departure and arrival lounges, and all-business-class seating at very reasonable prices — even as walk-up fares. Two years into the launch it is clear that business travelers are taking great liking to these new airlines, which are beginning to get a lot more attention.

Ever had a chance to beta test a coffee? Here’s Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company coming up with a cute idea. As a blogging you are invited to beta test a new flavoured coffee.

The main requirements are that you have to be a blogging, testing and coffee enthusiast. Sign up by providing your blog url (which will be published on the net amongst others) and, if you are eligible, you will be sent a trial version of the new-flavoured coffee Jamaican Me Crazy.

Who and how decides on the eligibility is what I am not sure about, but I know for certain that blogging from Russia I may forget about being among of the happy ones

A very neat, cute and interesting launch - idea to my liking. Hope both Joffrey’s and the bloggers will enjoy…

Technorati : beta test, blogs, coffee, internet, marketing, web 2.0

Food Production Daily reports Mars launching a gift service throough Facebook. This wouldn’t be a big deal, knowing how many widgets have been coming out for Facebook. However, this new service takes a step further on, since it is not any longer a virtual giftshop - the chocolates are pretty real and can actually be eaten

What you need as a Facebook user, is choose a gift (for the moment this will have to be a Twix or Galaxy chocolate), and make a payment through PayPal. The recepient then will be delivered a Facebook message, requiring a mobile number to which a voucher code is sent. This code can then be exchanged for the gift at one of 12 500 participating shops through the UK.

The idea looks pretty raw to be, and only UK-based just yet, however, it is a pleasure to see the giants like Mars searching for ways to combine traditional marketing techniques with completely new methods of our digital age.

One might argue that a gift should be, well, gived… Rather than having the receiver search for the participating stores. True, but let’s hope this will be another step further. And… come on, as if you wouldn’t like to get or give a little something to a mate that you might not have a chance to meet every day but rather once in a month, or not even so. And this now becomes just a couple of clicks away.

I don’t know how confidential the information is, and neither do I know how strict the regulations are, but it would be great for Mars if they had a chance to link their cute widget to birthdays or anniversaries info on Facebook, and let the best customers have little somethings from Mars themselves…

Technorati : facebook, internet, marketing, mars, social network, web 2.0

View these two examples:

Working at a production line, you find out there is a fault with it resulting in a part of production going out with slight defects - unnoticed at the beginning but tending to come out crashing on you later on. You have an option: turn off the line and stop production - leading to you being sacked without a notice. Or else, you start the procedure: reporting to your line manager who reports to his line manager who reports to his line manager who reports to one decision maker. After a couple of weeks your report will be taken care of…maybe… This is Russian-style quality manager.

Imagine yourself a janitor… Relax, it’s just for a sec

You walk your routine along the production line wiping dust maybe… You notice there is a slight fault with the line (you may get it wrong but you don’t think so)… So, you don’t have any options - you just stop the line… People will come over in a sec to have a look and solve the problem… This is Japanese-style quality management.

Which do you opt for? I’d pick the latter. Don’t be scared to overeact. It is easy to miss a small fault which may result in dramatic failure. Once you make a fuss out of nothing - you will at least be sure that people have paid attention to what might have been a problem.

Technorati : marketing, quality management

Be it salespeople, jobhunters or whoever else, people have to first face a gatekeeper when trying to contact a person of interest at a company. How frequently do you succeed in actually passing through, especially if you are first-time caller?

I understand that people too busy taking calls, and having a gatekeeper is an inevitable solution in majority of cases. But what are the objectives of having one? Is it that you need them to do a thorough screening and decide on whether the caller is worth talking to, or do an initial screening to pass further on to the necessary person? I would opt for the latter.

One of our partners (prospective, of course) were very close to losing us - just because their secretary deemed our service absolutely stupid and irrelevant (she needed 5 seconds to make that decision). Thank to me being stubborn enough, and to Internet community sites, I could find a contact of a decision maker at that company. Naturally, he found the service very interesting and timely. I didn’t tell him the story of a gatekeeper at that time

Another role of a gatekeeper here in Russia is helping the manager avoid the partners. It’s so comfy - you make smb else answer the phone and say you are out of office.

What is the role of your gatekeeper?

To illustrate what I was posting about just yesterday, I have come across two articles in two different business magazines. The articles are about a very well-known Russian web service Odnoklassniki.ru (main idea - reuniting with classmates and friends from childhood and youth - analogue of classmates.com).

The idea of the project is great and it has been very successful, claiming millions of registered users. How many of them are fake is another story but anyway, the number of visits is very impressive - claiming the figures of around 50 million people over the last month.

However, what I have noticed is that people who are being interviewed seem to be quite careless about what is going on around. The striking point: the owner is very certain about the fact that his project and the rival site Vkontakte will be the leaders in the near future, with the competition lagging behind. Honestly, I hope (for his own good) that his choice of words and tone is not as confident when talking to the investors. Be confident but careful, and remember to look around for competition.

The same people managing Odnoklassniki project would in another article comment on Myspace expanding to Russia: these guys have nothing to do here, the market is shared by the two projects (I mentioned them above), and there’s no more room for Myspace. Come on, just have a look at Myspace’s concept to find that they are different. And have a look at their investors to find that they can find some space for themselves here in Russia. I would say, if you are a Myspace, a Facebook, a Badoo or anything of the kind, do not waste your time - the leaders here are very willing to give away their users.

Unfortunately, Myspace have been really slow so far. Their post about a single vacancy has been on for months, and God knows how long it will keep hanging there. I wonder what their HR policy is…

Reading the Russian business magazines here,  I have come to a strong feeling that anything new that is being undertaken by a company is received with skepticism by ALL other players in the industry.

I mean, guys, just have some consideration to do a small reading about what goes on with your rival, and have some guts to acknowledge that they are doing a good thing, if the are. Who knows how many businesses would shut down if they all were as scared to introduce new ideas, and just how many of today’s bankrupts would still prosper if their managers paid a little more attention to the new trends and flavours.