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.
