Social Media DIY Workshop » Reputation Management

The GoDaddy Elephant Fiasco

Charlene Kingston — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:14:24 +0000

Sometimes, the personal actions of a single employee causes a stir on social media that impacts your entire business. In March 2011, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons captured a lot of attention for video of him shooting an elephant that went viral online. Here’s what your business can learn from this event about reputation management.

Before You Start: You use social media for business. Or, you are considering using social media for business.
Learning level: 1 | Social Media Basics
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Everyone Is Talking About GoDaddy

Yesterday (March 2011), a personal friend of mind posted on Facebook that he was leaving GoDaddy web hosting because of a video he just found video that shows their CEO, Bob Parsons, shooting an elephant. This morning, I see that Twitter is full of people talking about this video. People are saying they are leaving GoDaddy over this event. Other web hosting services are offering specials to draw in people leaving GoDaddy. People are publicly asking GoDaddy Girl Jillian Michaels if she is going to stay with GoDaddy. Check the recent tweets for yourself here.

In other words, Bob’s vacation video is suddenly hurting his business.

Vacation Video Gone Bad

I didn’t click on the link to watch the video. I don’t want to put those images into my head and heart. But I would not watch any hunting video for exactly the same reason.

There’s an opportunity here to take a step back, and look at this situation from a distance. No matter what you think about GoDaddy, Bob Parson, or shooting elephants, there are a few important things your business can learn from this elephant-sized fiasco.

You Can’t Please Everyone

No matter what you think about what you do in you business, there will be people who don’t agree with you. In fact, there will be people who strongly disagree with you. This means that you have to follow your own conscious in your business. Make sure you are clear about your own core values, and then make sure you act accordingly. That way, if you find yourself facing people who are unhappy with you, you have the strength to know that you have been true to yourself.

The truth is, you can’t be all things to all people. Your business can’t meet the needs of every potential customer out there. Pick the customer base you can serve and do it well.

Be Prepared For An Exodus

People vote with their feet (and dollars). When people don’t agree with you, and they feel strongly about it, they will leave and your business will feel the sting. This means that some part of your business is subject to the shifting loyalties of your customers. They may use your products and services today, but may walk away from you tomorrow.

The best thing you can do is work to engage your customers so they become loyal fans instead of just casual customers. Fans are more likely to forgive you instead of walking away. One good way to accomplish this is by building a strong community on social media. Focus on providing an excellent customer experience with consistency. That means apologizing when you don’t deliver it right.

Social Media Turns Up The Volume

Before social media, the same video would have moved slowly through the business community, and fewer people would have heard about this event. The impact would have been smaller. The more people who hear about this video, the louder the protest voices get. The louder it gets, the more your competitors see an opportunity to work the situation to their advantage.

When your business builds a social media reputation management plan, you brainstorm all of the possible bad things that can happen and create a strategy to remedy each situation. You have the advantage of doing this while you have a cool head and steady nerves. When a disaster happens, you have a smart plan ready to implement.

We’ve got a whole category of articles around listening to your customers on social media, and for responding to bad comments when you find them. If you haven’t prepared your business for a social media emergency, why not use GoDaddy’s situation to put your business in a stronger position for the future?

Your turn: Have you seen a business impacted by bad news and negative attention? Is your business ready for such an event? Share your insights here.

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Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

Charlene Kingston — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:00:38 +0000

Many small business people don’t realize how many people are talking about businesses online every day. Social media monitoring tools let you find the hidden conversations about your business. You don’t have to purchase services with monthly subscription fees. You can create a customized solution using a small group of free tools.

Before You Start: You have a business and you wan to uncover the hidden conversations about your business online.
Learning level: 2 | Getting Started
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Social Media Monitoring

Social media is about conversations, and conversation require you to talk and listen. If you are using social media, you can listen to the direct conversations people have with your business when they talk with you on the various social media sites. But did you know that you can tune into hidden conversations people are having about your business online? It’s possible that people are talking about your business even if you are not using social media yet! And if you use social media, it’s possible that people are talking about your business with different social media tools.

If you are using social media for your business, you may have a blog on your website where people make comments. You also expect people to talk about your business with you if you are using Facebook and Twitter. If you are not using Facebook and Twitter, it is possible that people are talking about your business using these tools anyway. Here are a few additional places where people may be talking about your business that you don’t expect:

Blogs and Blog Comments. Anyone who has a blog may write a post about their experience with your business, or may mention your business within a blog post. Someone may mention your business in a blog post comment, even if the blog post doesn’t mention your business.
Local Review Sites. Your customers may be writing reviews about their experience with your business on local business review sites (Yelp, Citysearch, Angie’s List, etc.)
Industry Review Sites. Some industries, like restaurants, have specific review sites where your customers can provide their feedback about your business.
Question and Answer Forums. Many websites allow people to post questions and get answers from strangers. Some of these questions and answers may include mentions of your business.
Check-in Services (location-based services). If customers visit your business location, some of them may be using their mobile device, typically a smart phone, to check in and make comments about your business (Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, etc.).
Map Reviews. Several online map services (Google Maps, Mapquest, etc.) allow the public to post reviews about businesses that appear on their map.

Free Monitoring Tools

There are subscription-based monitoring tools that charge you a fee to deliver a list of these hidden conversations. However, with just a little effort, you can pull together a small group of free monitoring tools that provide you with the same information. Here are a few free tools that you can use to start monitoring for conversations about your business online.

Google Search. You can save your search and have the new discoveries emailed to you through Google Alerts or send to your RSS reader.
Google Blog Search. This Google tool focuses exclusively on blogs and blog comments.
Twitter Search. This Twitter tools lets you receive new discoveries through RSS.
Twitter. The built-in Twitter search tool lets you save a search so you can run it later manually.
Boardreader. Searches through question and answer forums.
Technorati. Searches through blogs and blog comments.
Social Mention. Searches through a wide range of online resources.
TweetBeep. Sends you an email every time your business gets mentioned on Twitter.
Addict-o-Matic. Allows you to customize where it searches and displays the results in an at-a-glance single page format.

Experiment with some of these tools. You can put together a free solution that provides your business with valuable information with little effort.

Your turn: What is your business doing for social media monitoring? What conversations have you found that surprised you? Share you experience here.

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What Should I Monitor On Social Media?

Charlene Kingston — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:00:18 +0000

Most businesses only monitor social media for customer reviews. By expanding the topics you listen for on social media, you can give your business new ideas, understand how to promote your business favorably against your competitors, and give your business time to adjust to competitive changes in the marketplace.

Before You Start: You have a business. You understanding the importance of a reputation management strategy. You want to make sure that you are listening to the most helpful things in your reputation management strategy.
Learning Level: 3 | Building Skills
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Topics To Monitor On Social Media

When most businesses start their reputation management strategy, they focus on listening to customer reviews and comments. That’s a great place to start, and important for making sure that your customers are happy with your products and services. However, there is much more than you can listen to that can help you grow your business.

Here are ideas for topics you can monitor on social media. By combining all of these topics into your reputation management strategy, you can listen for information vital to the success of your business.

Damage Control. Listen to what your customers or potential customers are saying about your business with a focus on what you didn’t get right with the customer. This gives you the opportunity to make things right with your customers, and to correct any misunderstanding about your business. This is the core of your monitoring plan.
New Business Ideas. Many times, your customers complain because your business didn’t meet their expectations. That doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong. It only means that the customer expected something that you didn’t deliver. This is a great way to get inside the heads of people to see what kinds of new products and services you could add. For example, a customer review of your BBQ restaurant complains that you don’t have a vegetarian menu. You don’t expect groups of vegetarians would choose to visit your restaurant, but a group may include vegetarian. With a little creativity, your chef can devise a few recipes using ingredients on hand to make a wonderful vegetarian experience of your restaurant.
Competitive Analysis. Your monitoring plans should include listening to conversations around your competitors and peers and what their customers have to say. You may find patterns of complaints about your competitors that you can use to promote your own business. Make sure your products and services don’t have the same issue, and then advertise your services as a solution to the problem. For example, if your competitor’s customers complain that they can’t reach a live person for support and you have a customer service team, advertising your live person support gives you a competitive advantage.
Advance Warning. While you are listening to your competitors, they may reveal information about their future plans. Knowing in advance about new products or services or locations can help you to be prepared when they launch these things. Find out early and minimize the impact to your business. For example, if your competitor is planning to add new features or services and you learn about them in advance, you have time to evaluate if you want to add similar services, or you may decide to take advantage of this timing to release different new products and services that you know your customers will like even more than what your competitor is about to release.

By expanding your reputation management strategy to include monitoring these additional topics, you can give your business a real advantage in the marketplace.

Your turn: What do you monitor on social media? How have you used this information to your business advantage? Share your stories here.

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How To Respond To A Bad Review

Charlene Kingston — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:00:16 +0000

Your business received a less-than-sparkling review on a local review site. What you do next is really important. Here are suggestions for how to handle a negative review.

Before You Start: Your business received a less-than-sparkling review on a local review site.
Learning Level: 3 | Building Skills
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Your Reputation Management Plan

If you developed a reputation management strategy when you got on social media, you already have a plan for dealing with negative review. However, many businesses don’t think about creating a reputation management plan until after they receive a negative review.

If your business doesn’t have a reputation management plan, now is the time to start one. Use the suggestions below to figure out your response to this situation. Invest a little extra time to decide how to handle other situations in the future and write up a formal policy and procedure statement. You’ll be glad to have this plan the next time you find a negative review.

Reputation Management Suggestions

If you don’t have a reputation management plan, here are some guidelines to help you navigate your response.

Wait until you have a cool head. While a quick response is a good idea, a hot response is always a bad response. If you are upset about the review, leave it alone until you are ready to deal with it rationally instead of emotionally.
You don’t have to respond at all. Many business people read their reviews but choose never to respond to the reviewer in public or in private. It’s a personal decision that your business must make. There is no right or wrong answer here, only what fits best with your business culture.
Figure out the facts of the situation. Hopefully, if a member of your staff made a mistake or had an accident, you already know about the situation. If you don’t know about the situation in the review, research the event with your staff. This is not a witch hunt or a time to figure out who to blame. It’s just about the facts. Your staff will be more open with you if they trust that you are really researching the situation.
Do you owe the customer an apology or amends? Sometimes the wrong thing happens and customers receive a different experience than you like to give. Admit you were wrong and offer to make it right.
Walk a mile in the customer’s shoes. See your business the way they see it and talk about their experience. This is not the time to ask the customer to walk in your shoes or to justify why things went wrong. It’s not the customer’s problem if your staff is short because of illnesses or an expected delivery didn’t arrive.
Don’t threaten the reviewer or review site. A customer has a right to express an opinion of your business. The local review site is legally protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. You should consult an attorney to be aware of the legalities of the situation before you threaten lawsuits.

Your turn: Has your business received a negative review? What is your strategy for dealing with negative reviews?

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The Value Of Negative Reviews

Charlene Kingston — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:00:10 +0000

Dealing with negative reviews is part of doing business in the social media age. Every business should expect to receive negative reviews occasionally. Negative reviews often contain a gem of truth that can help you improve your business and possibly expand your offerings.

Before You Start: Your customers have posted reviews about your business on any of the local review sites.
Learning Level: 3 | Building Skills
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Reviews Are Valuable Feedback

The big shift that social media brings to the business world is dialog. Now you can have real two-way conversations with your customers and community. In the past, businesses would broadcast their message through marketing channels to the public and wait for results. With social media, your customers talk with you. Sometimes you start the conversation, and sometimes they start the conversation.

One way that your customers talk to you is through reviews they write about your business on local review sites. In a review, you learn how successfully you created an excellent customer experience. A review provides you with valuable feedback.

The Gems Inside Negative Reviews

While everyone likes to get positive reviews, a negative review can be the most helpful review you receive. Most customers who have a negative experience in your business don’t bother to tell you. They just walk out and never return. That’s why getting a negative review is so valuable. They let you see what a customer expected and what the customer experienced. With this information, you can figure out what happened and respond.

Did your staff fail to provide outstanding customer service? Of course, every person has a bad day or makes a mistake. But with a little research, you can figure out if your training covers this situation, or if your staff needs retraining, or if you have staff who are not committed to delivering your customer service expectations.
Did you customer expect something that you were not prepared to deliver? You have defined your business and anticipated most customer requests. Was this customer expecting something that you did not consider before? Use this information to see ways you can grow your business by expanding your vision to include new ideas and perspectives.

Negative reviews often contain a gem of truth, some valuable bit of insight into how customers see your business or expectations they would like for you to meet. If you can get past the sting of the negative review and really examine the information it contains, you can constantly be improving your customer experience which increases customer loyalty and brings new customers to you.

Your turn: Have you improved your business from insights you receive through a negative review? Share your story here.

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Citysearch For Business Owners

Charlene Kingston — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:00:12 +0000

Your customers may already be using Citysearch to comment on your business. As a business owner, your best strategy is to be proactive and to use Citysearch to reach out to interested customers and provide detailed business information.

Before You Start: You have a business with customers.
Learning Level: 2 | Getting Started
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Citysearch Local Review Site

Citysearch is one of the popular online review sites with over 75,000 local businesses listed. People use Citysearch to write and share reviews of businesses like yours. In fact, your business may already be reviewed on Citysearch even if you don’t know about it.

Review sites like Citysearch are an integral part of social media. Review sites give customers an opportunity to talk about the businesses they use. Customers have always shared their opinions about businesses, and with sites like Citysearch, they can share them with a larger audience in a more permanent way.

Citysearch Business Owner Tools

Your business may already appear on Citysearch because customers have written reviews. Citysearch allows you to claim your business listing and gives you access to many services to help you get the most benefit from your Citysearch presence.

Business information. You can add business details, make changes to existing business details, and provide supportive information for customers.
Statistics. Citysearch tracks the people who visit your Citysearch business page and provides you with statistics about your visitors.
Special offers. Citysearch allows you to publish information about special offers for your customers.
Links. Add links to your website, your Facebook page, and your Twitter account.

Citysearch has just added additional business owner services for a fee. With a paid account, you can advertise on the site, and get access to additional business page services.

Citysearch has mobile applications for nearly every type of smart phone. This means that your customers and potential customers can access your business profile online while mobile.

Your turn: Have you claimed your business profile on Citysearch? Share your experience with the community.

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Yelp For Business Owners

Charlene Kingston — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:00:12 +0000

Your customers may already be using Yelp to comment on your business. As a business owner, your best strategy is to be proactive, to use Yelp to reach out to interested customers and conduct some of your reputation management activities.

Before You Start: You have a business with customers.
Learning level: 2 | Getting Started
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

Local Review Site

Yelp is one of the most popular online review sites with over 31 million visitors in March 2010. People use Yelp to write and share reviews of businesses like yours. In fact, your business may already be reviewed on Yelp even if you don’t know about it.

Review sites like Yelp are an integral part of social media. Review sites give customers an opportunity to talk about the businesses they use. Customers have always shared their opinions about businesses, and with sites like Yelp, they can share them with a larger audience in a more permanent way.

Yelp Business Owner Tools

Yelp provides a wide range of services for business owners. These services can help you take advantage of Yelp’s business features and educate you about the Yelp review process and reviewer community.

The first step is to register your business on Yelp, a process they call unlocking your business. Your business may already appear on Yelp, added by a reviewer. As the business owner, you have additional features you can use to make Yelp part of your business marketing strategy.

Business information. You can add business details, make changes to existing business details, and provide supportive information for customers.
Photographs. You can add photographs of your business, your products, and your staff.
Statistics. Yelp tracks the people who visit your Yelp business page and provides you with statistics about your visitors.
Special offers. Yelp allows you to publish information about special offers and upcoming events at your business.
Messages. Send public and private messages to people who review your business.
Reviews on your website. Yelp allows you to add your reviews to your business website.

In addition, Yelp provides a wealth of information for how to handle reviews, especially negative reviews. There are lists of common questions with answers, and examples of great and not-so-great responses to positive and negative reviews.

Here’s a video that explains how to take advantage of the Yelp business owner services.

How To Use Yelp For Business Owners on Howcast

Yelp has mobile applications for nearly every type of smart phone. This means that your customers and potential customers can access your business profile online while mobile. Yelp has a check-in service that allows you customers to say they have arrived at your business.

Your turn: Have you claimed your business on Yelp? Share your experience with the community.

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Local Review Sites

Charlene Kingston — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:00:34 +0000

Local review sites are an integral part of social media. Review sites give customers an opportunity to talk about the businesses they use. They also give business owners the opportunity to see how well you are meeting customer expectations.

Before You Start: You have a business with customers.
Learning Level: 1 | Social Media Basics
Article Last Updated: Sunday, December 4, 2011

What Are Local Review Sites?

Local review sites allow customers to write and share reviews about the businesses in their community. If your business has customers, your business may already have a review on one of the many local review sites even if you don’t know about them.

Customers always have opinions about their experiences with businesses. Before social media, customers shared their opinions primarily through word-of-mouth to their friends and neighbors. But with social media tools, anyone with a computer can become a business reviewer. All it takes is an internet connection and a free account at one of the review sites.

The most common local review sites are Yelp, Citysearch, Insider Pages, Yahoo! Local, and Google Maps. There are many specialty review sites for specific industries, also.

Business Owner Tools

Any customer can write a review of your business online at any of the local review sites. Many times, the first customer to write a review of your business adds your business basic details. These details may be inaccurate or incomplete. Most local review sites allow the business owner to edit and enhance their business listing. The amount of detail you can provide varies between sites, and some sites may require you to pay for business owner services.

As a business owner, you can’t afford to ignore the local review sites. Instead, you need to embrace them and make sure that your business details are complete and accurate. Potential customers use these sites to find out how to become your customer. You want to make it easy for new customers to understand your business and find you.

Encourage Business Reviews

As a business owner, you want to make it easy for customers to write reviews about your business. You want reviews of your business because it shows that customers care about their experience with you. If your business is blah or boring to your customers, you don’t get many reviews. You want people to walk away with strong feelings about their experience with your business, and you want to make it easy for people to share their opinions with others.

Your turn: Is your business receiving reviews on local review sites? Do you know the most popular review sites in your community? Do you check them frequently?

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@ThatKevinSmith Takes on Southwest Airlines

Charlene Kingston — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:08:16 +0000

Southwest Airlines learned a hard lesson in the public eye when it removed movie director Kevin Smith from a flight for taking up too much space (February 2010). It turned into a social media disaster. Here’s what your business can learn from this situation so you are prepared for any negative situation that strikes.

Before You Start: You use social media for business. Or you are considering using social media for business.
Learning level: 1 | Social Media Basics
Article Last Updated: Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Disaster In The Skies

Unless you were in a media blackout the last few days (February 2010), you’ve heard the basics about movie director Kevin Smith’s reaction to being removed from a Southwest Airlines flight for taking up too much space.

The man has 1.6 million Twitter followers. He speaks his mind, often involving profanity. He’s not the kind of guy you want to have talking trash about your company. And he did, on Twitter and on a podcast and his blog.

I don’t want to get into the facts of the situation. I don’t want to debate whether Southwest has the right to remove passengers for safety reasons, or whether Kevin’s weight qualifies him for removal. The truth of the situation is that they did remove him. He was mad. And he complained on social media about this anger.

Kevin Smith has a huge circle of influence, so this situation grew quickly into a public relations situation for Southwest. The same thing can happen to your company on social media. An unhappy customer uses social media to vent their anger and frustration.

Are you prepared with a response strategy?

Prepare Your Reputation Management Response Now

Now is the time to start thinking about how you would handle this situation, while your head is clear and your blood isn’t boiling. You want your first response to defuse the situation, not throw gasoline on the fire. In my opinion, that’s what Southwest Airlines did wrong. Their first response on both Twitter and their blog only made things worse.

What are some possible customer complaint scenarios for your business? Write up a list of them. And then think through a strategy for resolving them quickly. Make sure your strategy includes listening and a sincere effort to resolve the problem. You may not feel you are wrong. But when a customer is yelling, it’s not the right time to defend your position, your policy, or your actions. My dad taught me to never debate an angry man. He was right.

Not only should you have a strategy for responding to angry customers on social media, but you should have a written response ready to go. You can’t anticipate every scenario, but having a block of text that you can customize for each situation will help you to stay focused on the solution and not the problem.

The time you invest today to prepare for these tough situations can make a huge difference in how they play out when they really do happen.

Your turn: Have you seen a business impacted by a poor response to negative attention? Have you seen a customer service failure that received a lot of attention? Share your insights here.

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Twitter Search and Saved Searches

Charlene Kingston — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:00:02 +0000

You can use the Twitter search and saved search features to find tweets on specific subjects in the Twitter timeline. The search results show tweets from all users. Create special searches to find conversations about your business, brand, and products and save them for easy reuse.

Before You Start: You have a business Twitter account.
Learning Level: 3 | Building Skills
Article Last Updated: Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Twitter Search

Twitter search is one of the most powerful features of Twitter. In the top menu (next to the Twitter logo), you can type in search keywords and Twitter displays the most recent tweets that contain your keywords. Twitter limits how far back in time it searches, and that time frame frequently changes. At best, Twitter finds the tweets back tw0 weeks, but sometimes only searches a few days back.

The Twitter search allows you to use Boolean operators and other search operators to create a specific search. For example, you can:

Search for tweets that contain a specific phrase: “Denver airport”
Search for two (or more) words that appear in the tweet but don’t have to be together: Denver airport
Search for tweets with one word or another: Denver OR airport
Search for tweets that contain one word and don’t contain another word: Denver -airport
Search for tweets to one user: to:SocialMediaDIY

You can also string together these search operators to create a very specialized search. Experiment with these operators until you are comfortable with how they work.

Reputation Management Searches

To create a single search that locates your company name and all of your brands, products, and services, you would use the search operators to create your search. Be sure to include all spelling and abbreviation possibilities in your search string.

For example, if you wanted to track tweets that mention the soft drink Coca-Cola, you would have to include both Coca-Cola and Coke (search for: coca-cola OR coke) because people use both names interchangeably.
For example, to find all of the tweets that mention the event called Ignite Phoenix, you could have to search for: “Ignite Phoenix” OR “Ignite Phx” OR IgnitePhoenix OR IgnitePhx.
For example, if you wanted to track tweets to and by a competitor, vendor, or partner in a single tweetstream, search for: to:StaplesTweets OR from:StaplesTweets to see all communication.

Saved Searches

After you perfect your business search, you can save it so you don’t have to retype it each time. At the top of the results, you see the message: Results for [yoursearch]. Above and to the right, locate the green plus sign next to “Save this search.” Click this button and Twitter saves your search.

To use a saved search, display your Twitter home page. Click Searches and Twitter shows you list of saved searches in the drop-down list. Click the search you want to run, and Twitter displays the results.

You can’t edit a search. If you want to make changes to saved search, delete the existing search and save a new search.

To delete a saved search, use the search and view the results. At the top of the results on the right, locate the red X next to “Remove this saved search.” Click on this message, and Twitter removes the search from your list of saved searches.

Your turn: How are you using the Twitter search and saved searches to do reputation management? Share your tips and insights here.

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