Managing Your Reputation Online: Part II – Communities

July 27, 2007

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

Make your customers evangelists

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.