Managing Your Reputation Online: Part III – Controlling Your Name

A problem many companies run into with online reputation management are consumers that create their own websites to give bad reviews about their company, then begin to bid on their company name to show up in search engines under the sponsored results.

Some companies believe that there isn’t anything that can be done about this. After all, it’s a free country, right? Well, yes it is. However, freedom stops when it infringes on the freedoms of others. You have the freedom to protect how your name is used and prevent anybody from slandering you.

If somebody legitimately slanders you, then you have every right to ask that person to stop, and can even get a court order to enforce it or even file a lawsuit. Remember though that slander requires that false statements are being made. If a person is simply stating their opinion, then they are well within their rights.

However, if you trademark your company name it provides you with a little more protection and gives you a few more options. To start with, you can prevent anybody from bidding on your trademarked term in paid search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. If anybody tries, simply send them a cease and desist order. If it continues, then it’s time to call your lawyer.

The same holds true if anybody uses your name in a manner that isn’t covered under fair use laws. For example, comparative testing is an appropriate method of using a trademarked name. Truck commercials that compare horsepower, towing capacity, stopping distance, and so forth are considered comparative testing and therefore protected by fair use. Using a trademarked name for most other types of advertising would not be covered under fair use.

A trademark will not protect you from anybody starting a yourcompanynamesucks.com website. This has been challenged in court several times, and so far the law sides with the people who start the bad website. The best way to protect yourself from this kind of attack is to purchase the domain names yourself before an angry consumer is able to.
Be sure to purchase all variations (yourcompanysucks.com/net/org, yourcompany-sucks.com, etc.) Domain registrations are only a few dollars each these days, making it a worthwhile investment.

Watch for more tips on reputation management coming up next week!

Managing Your Reputation Online: Part II – Communities

In part one of this series, we covered review sites. Today, we’ll talk about managing your reputation among Internet communities such as discussion boards, blogs, and the like.
Businesses tend to get talked about in the public forum that is the Internet. The Internet, much like the real world, has developed many communities where individuals with similar interests can gather and swap stories and provide support for each other.

New communities are started every day, many when consumers rally around a common cause, be it for good or bad. Is your business creating communities? And if they are, is it for good or bad?

It’s bad when you’ve gotten yourself an angry customer that starts posting at places like Ripoff Report. It’s really bad when someone starts a “yourcompanysucks.com” website and people start heading to it in droves.

The “bad” communities (that is, bad for your company) are the ones you should be most worried about. These communities can very quickly destroy your reputation and even potentially be a major player in putting you under. And while you can’t put a complete stop to this kind of behavior, there are a couple of things that you can do to block a good chunk of it:

Defend Yourself

This is exactly what it sounds like. If people are going to go around trashing your good name in forums and other communities, then you ought to stick up for yourself when possible. Ripoff Report makes it easy, allowing you to post a rebuttal in your defense, giving readers a complete picture of the situation rather than the one sided (and often exaggerated) view of the angry customer.

To make sure you know when you’re being talked about, set up a Google Alert for your company name. This will tell you anytime new search engine results get indexed with your company name.

Now, the way to defend yourself is professionally. State the facts, and just the facts. Do not come out sounding defensive, nor should you attack the original poster in anyway. Both will make you appear more guilty, and result in a worsening of your reputation.

Here is an example of how NOT to respond to a customer complaint (note that the response is not directly from the company being complained about, but from an ex-employee):
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/260/RipOff0260796.htm#247501

Demeaning the complainant is the worst thing you can do. It shows a lack of any empathy for your customers, and future potential customers will judge you negatively for that.
Here’s an example of a good response:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/253/RipOff0253500.htm#240204

The facts, and just the facts, and what they are doing to correct the situation.

Make Your Customers Evangelists

What is an “evangelist”? It’s a customer of yours that is so happy with your company that they begin preaching your greatness to everybody they can. Most evangelists will even respond on your behalf to any negative posts on bulletin boards and consumer sites like Ripoff Report.

There are few things that look better to someone investigating your company than a past customer who is so passionate they are willing to defend your company to anyone who speaks ill of it.

Well-known entrepreneurial blogger Guy Kawasaki discuses how to get people to evangelize your product or service:

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/guys_golden_tou.html

The gist of his post? Make a great product that is worth evangelizing about.

Managing Your Reputation Online: Part I

When you hear the word “reputation,” you’re likely to think back to your high school days. The labels flew freely: geek, jock, nerd, freak, prep, and a few that are substantially less flattering. The good news is that you’re not in high school anymore. The bad news is you own or work for a company, and that company has a reputation – and a label – just like you did in high school. But what is your company’s label? Is it good, or is it one of the less flattering ones?

Are you trustworthy, great to deal with, fun, honest; or have you been slammed as a scam, rip off, or worthless?

eBay has been rated as one of the most trusted companies in the world, despite the fact that on eBay you are actually dealing with other individuals, not eBay directly. How did eBay get labeled as a highly trusted site when consumers don’t even deal with them directly? It’s called reputation management, and it’s something that eBay excels at.

Interestingly enough, eBay has provided some reputation management tools that are utilized by the community. The obvious one is the feedback system which allows trading partners to rate each other. On eBay, one’s feedback rating is a vital part of their eBay reputation. There are essentially two types of feedback that can be given on eBay: positive and negative. Receiving a positive feedback improves one’s reputation, while receiving a negative reduces it.

Reputation management can easily get to be a dirty business. Without even realizing it, eBay’s members manage their reputations by attempting to control the type of feedback they receive. This is most often done through the use of “feedback extortion”. That is, one of the trading partners (usually the seller) will withhold giving feedback until they’ve received positive feedback from the other party.

Similar equivalents can be found with other businesses. Customer testimonials are helpful in building a positive reputation. However, some companies actively seek testimonials from consumers by offering them free items or services, offering discounts, or promising to resolve an undesirable situation quickly.

Businesses who work together will also often exchange positive testimonials, even if they don’t actually like each other. This is done to prevent the other company from doing or saying anything to damage the other’s reputation.

Retail websites have several feedback options available to them that are very similar to the system used by eBay for its members. By submitting your site to review sites and shopping comparison sites, your customers will have to the opportunity to rate their experience with you.

Most sites use a rating scale, rather than the more ambiguous positive/negative system used by eBay.

Here’s a list of some of the more popular review sites:

To improve your reputation on these review sites, you’ll need to get your customers to give you positive ratings at each site. Studies show that about 29% of your customers will be willing to submit a review of your site, so long as you ask them.

You have some control over your reputation in this matter. By waiting until a transaction is completed and waiting until your customer has received the item(s) they ordered, you can gauge the likelihood that they will leave you a positive review. A customer who returns an item, for example, might not be a good person to ask to review your site.

Customers in some industries are a bit more passionate about submitting reviews than others. Computer hardware, for example, seems to get a large number of customer reviews even without the company asking for them. What this means to you is that if you are in one of these industries, you won’t necessarily need to ask your customers for reviews. It does mean, however, that you had better take excellent care of them!

Jewelry customers on the other seem to not leave reviews very often. This probably has something to do with the regularity that a person shops for these items. Computer hardware outdates very quickly, resulting in customers who buy new hardware several times a year, whereas jewelry is a rare purchase.

Soliciting reviews from your customers is just one of many methods to manage your online reputation. In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss the many other factors involved with reputation management.