How’s Your Reputation
Posted on July 31, 2008
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by John Jantsch
Everything on the web about you, your products and your company is true - unless you manage otherwise.
The onslaught of user generated media, blogs and discussion forums has changed the flow of information about people, products, and brands forever. Anyone with a computer or video camera can post information, reviews and comments about you and your brand on dozens of highly visited online destinations.
It’s no longer enough to create a web site and assume that prospects will get their information about your firm on your site. In today’s online social media world companies of all shapes and sizes must actively participate in something commonly called online reputation management.
Of course the best way to manage your online reputation from a business standpoint is to put out great products and services, provide great customer service and honor all your commitments. That’s certainly a great start, but you may still need to develop the practice of monitoring and responding to what’s being said online about your organization, both good and bad.
Reputation management, however, isn’t simply about responding to the negative, it’s equally important as a way to amplify the positive.
Here are some simple ways to get started creating a reputation management program.
News Alerts
Google allows you to set up customer searches on Google News for any phrase, such as your name. When you subscribe to this search, either via RSS or email, you will receive an alert any time your search phrase shows up in the news.
These sites, BoardReader.com and ForumFind.com, allow you to keep track of what’s being said on bulletin boards and forums.
If you really need to monitor what’s being said online closely use the search.twitter.com feature of a micro-blogging site called Twitter to follow what’s being said in real time from this growing community.
Participate in Social Media
One of the ways to combat any potential negative comments is to make sure you have lots of positive content showing up for searches on your name or company.
Practices such as adding a blog to create frequently updated content, creating well written LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, and writing and submitting articles to article directories can help assure that you have lots of content online that’s attributed to your name.
Hosting a blog and inviting all manner of comments from customers is another great way to keep an eye out for potential issues. If a customer has an issue and you help them get the answer by way of your blog you may very well turn that issue into a real positive and stop them from posting negative comments elsewhere.
Social Search Engines
Claim and enhance your business listings on search engines such as Yelp.com, InsiderPages.com, CitySearch.com and JudysBook.com. These sites allow you to enhance your business listing and allow users to rate your services and write testimonials. The best thing you can do on these sites is create a great profile and then encourage your customers to post positive reviews. More and more these reviews are being picked-up by search engines like Google and shown in their local directories.
Build Your Reputation
Recently, a number of sites such as Naymz.com and Rapleaf.com launched with the sole purpose of allowing you to build an online reputation by inviting people to write reviews about you and your work. LinkedIn, the professional networking community also allows and encourages this practice
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting www.ducttapemarketing.com
Olympian PR bout under way in Washington
Posted on July 27, 2008
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Associated Press
26 July 08
By FOSTER KLUG
WASHINGTON (AP) — In an air-conditioned room in the Chinese Embassy, a vice minister from Beijing chastises Americans for their “very limited” understanding of violent anti-government protests in Tibet.
Hours later, hundreds of supporters of the banned-in-China Falun Gong spiritual movement kneel in the hot sun near the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers and activists rail against what they say are Chinese atrocities.
The Olympic Games begin in Beijing on Aug. 8, but already the competition to sway public opinion in the United States is heating up between anti-China activists and Chinese authorities. It is transforming the run-up to the global sports gathering into a public relations marathon in which China’s national pride is pitted against claims that Beijing abuses its citizens and unquestioningly supports nefarious governments.
Once slow to address criticism, China has responded aggressively to what it sees as unjust condemnation by Western media, rights groups and officials that could tarnish the Olympics. An increasingly media-savvy Chinese Embassy has held briefings meant to provide China’s point of view on contentious issues in the news. Ministers and academics have been flown in from China for news conferences and to meet with U.S. officials and lawmakers.
Meanwhile, China’s opponents have been relentless. Uighurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, activists for Darfur and Myanmar, and groups championing religious freedom and human rights are all delighted that the Olympics might shine a spotlight on a country they say has failed to follow through on pledges to improve human rights that were included with its bid to host the games.
They have gathered at rallies in Capitol Hill parks and at congressional hearings, where powerful lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and celebrities like actor Richard Gere have faulted Chinese rights abuses. At the Falun Gong rally, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a warning to Beijing that has become a popular refrain by China critics in Washington: “The world will be watching.”
For all the celebrity and congressional attention, however, it is unclear how much of a difference the efforts will make.
Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank, says what will matter more is how China handles any protests at home during the Olympics, when reporters will be searching for signs of dissent. Some sort of protest, he says, “seems inevitable, and this will give China a black eye internationally if it overreacts, as it almost always does.”
In Washington, the Chinese Embassy is working hard to counter criticism ahead of the games.
Spokesman Wang Baodong said it is the embassy’s duty “to try to reach out to various circles of this country, to let them know the whole picture and to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the situation in China.” Wang said that if Americans base their judgment of China only on the criticism of vocal opponents, “they will be misled, because it does not reflect the whole picture.” He added, “The mainstream opinion of the international community is wishing good for the Beijing Olympic Games.”
A large rallying point for protesters in the United States has been China’s tight grip on Tibet, which China has governed since communist troops invaded in the 1950s. China says 22 people died in March anti-government violence; foreign Tibet supporters say many times that number were killed during demonstrations and a subsequent government crackdown.
China also has been criticized for not using its economic leverage to apply more pressure on the Sudanese government to stop violence in Darfur, where more than 300,000 people are said to have died over the past five years.
While some lawmakers are quick to blast China over these and other issues, the Bush administration has been careful not to anger Beijing ahead of the Olympics, wary about running the risk of hindering a host of international efforts the U.S. needs China’s help to solve.
Still, a swirl of activity continues in Washington. On Wednesday, at a House hearing focusing on China “on the eve of the Olympics,” Beijing was criticized for suppressing dissidents and activists. Then, on Thursday, lawmakers on the House foreign affairs panel passed a resolution that calls on China to immediately stop abusing minority rights and to end its support for Myanmar and Sudan so that the games will “take place in an atmosphere that honors the Olympic traditions of freedom and openness.”
Cossa says that, with the protests and the scrutiny it is facing as the Olympics approach, “one wonders if there is not a certain amount of ‘buyer’s remorse’ in China right now.”
Why So Many PR Practitioners Do PR Badly
Posted on July 19, 2008
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Came across this article on www.raintoday.com. The contributing editor, Bruce W. Marcus, chatises PR professionals for being, well, unprofessional and out of touch with developments in journalism. Oh dear! Nevertheless, it is a good read and a good reminder for all PR people out there (myself included).
Why So Many PR Practitioners Do PR Badly
By Bruce W. Marcus, Contributing Editor
If you ever get to thinking that public relations is so easy that anybody can do it, then spend a day on the receiving end – the editor’s desk. If public relations is so easy to do, how come so many practitioners do it badly?
From major corporations, and both small and large public relations firms, comes a stream of so-called releases and other material that’s so inept, and so primitive, that you must ultimately realize that those that do it right must have a vast array of skills, talents, and imaginative energy.
It must be difficult, because how could it be simple when so many people do it wrong? And of course, the client pays the high price of doing it wrong.
Mailing Lists
My newsletter, The Marcus Letter, for example, is a very carefully designed publication. It’s target audience – professional services – is spelled out, its subject matter is abundantly defined, its thrust is far from secret.
And yet, each day’s mail brings releases about products or services that have nothing to do with anything in The Marcus Letter.
There’s liquor and perfume company pitches, a Fedex package containing a video tape and a press kit for a computer football game (at least $20 worth, sent to a publication that couldn’t possibly use it), personnel releases to a publication that doesn’t include personnel news, pitch letters for stories that are so irrelevant to what we do that I can’t believe that anybody over 12-years-old is doing it, and a press release from a fast food company announcing the appointment of the head of a “new guest satisfaction initiative in the role of Director of Customer Delight.”
What about that basic tenet of good publicity – know your target publication? Each year, hundreds – maybe thousands – of dollars in wasted mailing.
Press Releases
In virtually a lifetime of doing this, one of the major tenets of public relations that I’ve learned is that a press release must cast your story in the same syntax as the major daily papers. You’re competing for space against the papers’ own reporters, and you’d better write your release in newspaper style.
How, then, account for this, which arrived with the standard notation:
For immediate release…
Enjoying a great bottle of wine has never been easier. XYZ company (to protect the innocent, if innocence indeed there may be) is pleased to introduce Cellar, a unique wine-tasting program that brings the world’s private cellar to your front door every month.
Makes you really want to stop the presses and tear out the front page, doesn’t it?
The Changing World of PR
What further complicates the situation is that journalism has changed, but a great many practitioners (not all, thank goodness) are still stuck in the past. They certainly seem not to have noticed that the old five W’s (Who, What, When, Where, and Why) have disappeared, as have the old pyramid structures (the most important paragraphs first, then on down).
The exhortations to the old line journalists never to use the letter I (if you must refer to yourself, you’re supposed to have used we) have fallen back into the woodwork. Where once the New York Times set the style for journalistic style, today that style is set by blogs and the internet. In fact, even the Times has conformed to the new style.
Now, the great universities teach courses in public relations, and I assume their graduates know better. But that may be a poor assumption, since so many journalism courses are taught by old, retired journalists.
Who then is doing this? Is practicing public relations so easy that anybody can do it? And where are the department heads and chiefs – the ones who used to say to the likes of me, “No, that’s not how you do it. This is how you do it”?
No wonder so many editors hold so many public relations people in such low regard (but, fortunately, hold so many more in high regards. They know when good is good and bad is bad.)
I think that it’s so easy to get into public relations that there are too few knowledgeable and aware people teaching too many newcomers.
What we see now, in this rapidly changing communications world, is best characterized by the observation of that great philosopher Yogi Berra, who said, “Ain’t nobody here knows how to play this game?”
Raising the Quality of PR
And what about the clients – the ones who are paying for expensive mailing pieces to editors who can’t use them and press releases that no respectable publication will use? How much are they wasting each year? And what happens to respect for the value of public relations when all that wasted money produces so little useful result?
Maybe what’s needed is a travelling exhibit – sponsored by Public Relations Society of America or somebody – of outrageous public relations practices that embarrass all the good practitioners. A kind of a Grand Guignol of public relations horrors. Every editor in the business could send them new stuff every day.
Barring that, every PR person should be made to read both blogs and the New York Times regularly.
Then there’s the time I was chatting with my old boss and mentor, Ruder & Finn’s Bill Ruder about the changing nature of public relations. He said, “In the final analysis, public relations is an art form, and no matter what changes, if you’ve still got the art, you’re still in business.” As ever, Bill was right.
And I note, too, that the success of leading public relations practitioners, like Richard Weiner (another of my mentors) and Richard Levick and Larry Smith not only have the art, but understand change.
If Edward Bernays, the self-styled father of public relations, could see these anachronistic practices, he’d turn over in his grave. But only if he could get a couple of columns on the front page of The New York Times for the stunt. He knew his craft.
Bruce W. Marcus is a contributing editor for RainToday.com. Bruce is an author and consultant based in Connecticut, and co-author of Client At The Core: Marketing and Managing Today’s Professional Services Firms. He is editor of The Marcus Letter on Professional Services Marketing and The Marcus Perspective. You can e-mail Bruce at marcus@marcusletter.com.
R is for React and Respond
Posted on July 14, 2008
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For many of us business owners, we would long to have our businesses featured in the media. Many think that the way to getting media attention is through a new product launch, an interesting event or even a publicity stunt. The truth of the matter is, we need to look at PR as a long term, never ending process.
One simple way is to push your brand message through the current topic in the media. Today, we don’t need to only just react to news of the day that affects us we can also very easily respond to it by sending letters to the editors of the local newspapers with emails.
Here’s an example of someone who knows how to work the media to his advantage. Kenny Yap, responded to a comment by a Straits Times reader and at the same time managed to subtly remind everyone that his company, Qian Hu is (a) part of the world capital for ornamental fishes (b) wants to be part of the huge Gardens by the Bay project; (c) the company’s branding is “about bringing fun and happiness to the environment”.
Here’s a Tip for You:
Keep an eye on the current affairs, especially within the local news. If there is an issue that will affect your industry or your target consumer’s industry, don’t just react, respond to it! Write a letter to the Forum pages, editors or journalists. Who knows, one day your letter will be published, but if it doesn’t, so what? The next time journalist needs an expert opinion they might just come to you.
Should Religion Market Its Image?
Posted on July 14, 2008
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As reported in Straits Times, (22/07/08) “All 69 mosques have joined hands for an event that community leaders hope will come to signify what the Muslim community stands for.”
It was nice to know that after the trashing Islam took worldwide since the 911 incident the Muslim community in Singapore is slowly and steadily making a concerted PR effort to separate itself from radicalism and senseless violence.
Blessing To All Day, as it is called, will be an annual event that includes a blood donation drive and sharing of food to with the needy of different religious background…to signify what the Muslim community stands for”. It is a way of showing the community that they are indeed “walking the talk and show its positive attributes”. Well said! Yes, we all can take a leaf from their book here.
But must religion wait for a reputation crisis before it starts thinking of managing its perception? Never mind that Singapore is a peaceful country with laws that maintains religious harmony. Shouldn’t all religion put aside time, money and energy to build (or at least maintain) its positive image?
I say, Yes! And not just to people within its faith but to community at large. Here’s why:
1. The believers need less convincing that the people of the other faith. As much as religion makes an effort to imbibe the faith in its followers, it needs to tell the others what it is all about and what is it’s stand on issues affecting it’s image. This should not be confused with a zealous attempt at converting non-believers. Rather, it is about building a positive image like what “Blessing To All” Project is about.
2. People are just too distracted nowadays. If an organisation don’t tell its publics what it stand for, people wouldn’t bother finding out. You are really leaving it up to situations and prejudices of the masses to make their own conclusion.
3. The one big purpose of PR applies to all organisations, institutions and individuals: You need to build a reservoir of goodwill from which to draw from during bad times.
What’s your take?
Do you think religion should have a PR plan as part of their operation and actually market their image to people outside their faith? What are the pros and cons of doing this?
Do you really need a PR professional?
Posted on July 7, 2008
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Have you ever wondered why some companies are highly visible in the media but not others? What does these companies have that the others don’t?
They have a PR professional working for them, constantly working to get free media coverage, boosting visibility and credibility of their brand.
Here’s what a PR professional can do for your business:
- His main objective is to add value to your other promotional efforts. He knows how the different promotional strategies works together and uses to amplifying power of media to your advantage.
- He is able to develop newsworthy events and weave promotional stunts into your marketing campaign to capture the attention of the media.
- He develops and cultivates excellent media contacts and therefore knows where and who to pitch your stories to. He is in regular contact with media channels be it newspaper, radio, TV or magazines.
- He writes high impact press releases and designs press kits for the media that will grab the attention of journalists.
- He presents your company in the best light possible to the media to increase your brand power and further your marketing objectives. He can put you or your company as an expert in a particular field.
- He is able to place feature stories and news about your company and yourself in the right media channels that your target consumers actually reads or tune in to. This is because he knows what kind of stories the different media channels wants and will produce story angles specific to each media channel.
- He always works towards achieving a strong media presence for your product, services or even you thus increasing public awareness and interest in your brand. Who knows, you might just attract potential investors through all the media coverage.
Now, wouldn’t you want your company to sizzle?