Andy Beal: Straight Talk on Reputation Management

Andy Beal talked with us recently about reputation management and I can’t think of anyone better to tackle this topic. Andy is a reputation management consultant, co-author of THE book about online reputation management (ORM), Radically Transparent, editor of Marketing Pilgrim and owner of Trackur.com, a social media monitoring firm.  Wow! Andy’s talk was full of valuable information and advice. He did a fantastic job! Also, thanks again to Chris Moody for connecting us to Andy.

Breaking it down:

Constant monitoring and participation in online conversations is vital

Why?

• Forty-four percent of chief marketing officers admit that negative customer experiences have hurt their business and two thirds of executives say repairing a reputation is very challenging
• Over three quarters of recruiters Google job candidates and a large percentage of job candidates are NOT hired because of their online reputation. 
• Many companies will face some type of crisis that can reduce company value significantly. ORM is critical in managing these crises.
• Most importantly, 100% of us have an online reputation and we need to behave accordingly.

Cases:

Dominos Pizza – Employee You Tube video

The case of the employees who posted a disgusting video (their behavior was the disgusting part) on You Tube that reflected poorly on the product and service…

Dominos response was:

• Wrong in that the apology/response didn’t come quickly enough
• Right in that it matched the media of the original message(CEO response posted to You Tube)
• Right in that it came across as sincere and addressed what was going to be done

Advice in this type of situation:

• Sincerity – be sincere in apology; people need to believe you
• Transparency – explain how you got into situation, what you are going to do and where they can find out about it
• Consistency – prove trustworthiness with consistent messages that reflect your sincerity and transparency

 Dell turns it around

• Andy said that “Dell was a poster child for all you can do wrong AND all you can do right.”
• At one point, Dell refused to engage with customers and even shut down customer forums due to high percentage of negative conversations.
• Eighteen months later, Dell launched Idea Storm, and became active in other social media venues.
• This led to a launch of a new Linux line and at least $3 million in sales directly attributable to a coupon code release only on Twitter.

United Breaks Guitars

• A musician experienced many roadblocks trying to seek payment for a guitar broken by United.  He wrote several songs about this.  and
• Businesses tend to want to stall and fight payment, but that is generally a shortsighted point of view

Mistaken Identity

Mistaken identity can be a big problem – someone else has the same name and therefore online search is confusing and misleading.  Andy Beal has this problem: 

 After all of the above, we discussed reputation monitoring and managing review sites. A few of the highlights:

Reputation Monitoring

• Google Alerts is excellent way to track a name or keywords for free.
• Technoati.com also useful
• Andy’s company, Trackur.com is very cost effective for companies to monitor social media  at $18 – 200/month http://www.trackur.com/
• Radian6 is more expensive ($600 – 2,000/month)
• At the high end, Visible Technologies can slice and dice data in numerous ways – but can be at a cost of $10,000/month per brand

What should you monitor?

• You
• Your CEO
• Your company and specific brands
• Your competition
• Your business partners
• Key topics, trends,
• Relevant bloggers

Managing Review Sites

• First of all, upset customers WILL find sites where they can complain, but satisfied customers rarely take the time to say anything. 
• So, encourage positives – every time you get a positive email or comment, ask customer if they would mind going to review site and posting.
• Many review sites encourage brand owners to come in and respond.  Take advantage of that to offer sincere responses
  • Thank those who make positive comments
  • Apologize to those who make negative comments and offer to take care of problem, indicate that this is not indicative of company AND take it offline for further follow-up
  • Have a formal review process for customers in place already
  • Pick battles – does the comment require a response?  Many times, loyal customers will defend

Thank you so much Andy, you did a great job!

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