Reputation Infographic

As I get ready to start teaching my reputation management class at a local university, I came across this recent infographic from a Swiss online reputation management firm.

A few statistics stand out: 53% of Twitter users tweet recommendations for products and services; 79% of online consumers trust the opinions of people THEY DON'T KNOW.

And one opinion is right on the mark: "Most businesses simply talk at their clients on social media. The successful ones monitor what is being said and respond. This can change people's opinions instantly."

Google+ is - Well - a Plus

Boy do social web natives draw the knives quickly when it comes to Google and Facebook. Google+ hasn't even launched yet but the judgments have come in short order. Right off the bat I want to ask the question Could we be sacrificing reflection, analysis and context simply for speed? But that's for another post.

Right now I think we should be willing to forget 'Wave' and 'Buzz' and give a little credit to Google for - perhaps - starting to get at least part of this social network thing right.   

Not having been invited into the Google+ corona I am for the moment on the outside looking in. But here's a few unbiased and admittedly speculative observations about Google+ based on a tour of the demo.

Google+ 'Circles' will allow you to share specific information with selected groups of people. For organizations which slice and dice their stakeholders into categories in order to tailor communications, this could be a way of structuring a social network to spark conversation and cement relationships. Natalie Bourre, founder of Marketing 4 Health Inc., points out that pharmaceutical companies for example, under the severest restrictions for direct to consumer and direct to patient, might create 'circles' of patients within closed networks. And, I would add, these social circles can take advantage of the user generation, visual, linking and speed elements not usually associated with online patient communities.

As I understand it from this Mashable article, Google+ 'Sparks' is "a recommendation engine for finding interesting content . . . a collection of articles, videos, photos and other content grouped by interest."  Whenever I hear the concept "recommendation engine" I think of promoted tweets and Facebook ads and their ability to target people and interests.

And then there is the group and video chat functions which could take the Facebook wall to a new level allowing people to self-organize online imaged group personal conversation. Companies could use the functions for stakeholder or community meetings, and activists for planning and organizing group education, proselytizing and action.

One final comment . . . sure, it will take a hell of lot to unseat Facebook as the king of social networks. But that doesn't mean that a new social platform from the mighty Google can't make a useful, important (and yes profitable) contribution to the socialization of relationships, marketing and group dynamics.

Taking on the Truth Manglers

      (Image from THX Media Director)

At few times is truth in greater jeopardy than when activists decide to campaign against a company or government policy it perceives is guilty of some wrong or of being wrong-headed. In the interest of client confidentiality I can't give examples from my own experience. But believe me I have compelling personal evidence that some activist campaigners simply won't let a fact get in the way of a "good" campaign.

So what's a company or organization to do?

An article in Ethical Corporation about Asian Pulp and Paper's troubles with its Indonesian forest operations says "For a company in campaigners’ sights, there are essentially three options: fight back with facts, engage your opponents or hide."

Facts don't work because they cower in the presence of a gut-wrenching visual, preferably of a doe-eyed something or other. And hiding does nothing except leave the field to the truth manglers. Engagement is an option sometimes, but only if the activist campaigners are interested in solving problems rather than shouting and posturing.

There is a fourth option. In an article in The Atlantic about the Gawker media world, James Fallows comments "Maybe the answer to a flawed narrative is to change the narrative".

This works for companies as it does for journalism. Companies can "own" their own content on the social web, so there is no reason alternative - truthful -  narratives can't be told convincingly. No reason, that is, other than a willingness to tell a story in the way people "choose (stories) when they have a chance" . . . ones that are visually compelling and use frank, personal and ingenuous language.

If a company, for example, would produce and post a video with as much heart and simplicity as this one by Greenpeace, then the truth of some issues or "problems" might be less in jeopardy.

Reputation About the Small Things

Sometimes reputation is not about the big campaigns, the grand philanthropic gestures or CEO thought leadership, but about small, generous acts and other things done really well.

The picture is of Anse Chastanet, a resort in St. Lucia owned by a Canadian. As you can tell, the resort is gorgeous, isolated, quiet, and beautifully situated on the side of a mountain. My wife and I spent a week there a couple of weeks ago.

But this isn't about the resort so much as it is about the executive chef, Ivan Silk who is not only a top notch chef but a remarkably gracious and attentive host.

Let me explain. I have a gluten intolerance (Celiac's Disease) which means I can't eat wheat, rye or barley. Managing meals is tougher than it seems when you travel. Usually I struggle at each meal to explain to waiters the limitations of the intolerance and hope they get it right when passing my order to the kitchen.

Before going to Anse Chastanet my wife sent a short note asking to meet with someone from the kitchen staff at some point early in our stay. I wanted to identify myself in the hope that I would be recognized at meals as requiring some minimal accommodation.

What I got was the kind of attention I presume is the norm for celebrities. Immediately on our arrival, Ivan Silk met with me to express his willingness to do whatever was necessary to ensure I ate well. At each meal, he came to my table and reviewed everything on the menu, offering to make a special sauce to accompany any dish I wanted but couldn't have because of its ingredients.

Under Ivan's guidance, the kitchen staff baked gluten-free bread, made available to me at every meal. For dessert, he prepared a special flourless almond cake or Pavlova. And the day we departed, Ivan came to say goodbye and presented me with a full almond cake "in case you get hungry on the flight home".

The lesson for organizational reputation should be self-evident: Ivan's manners and attentiveness have accrued an enormous amount of equity for Anse Chastanet's reputation account. 

SEO Done Right

The controversy surrounding a New York Times expose of alleged 'black hat' SEO practices by a large U.S retailer raises the question of what it means to do ethical SEO. [If the retailer has released a statement about its point of view, a Google search doesn't find it easily:)]

The answer is not all that tough to figure out especially since Google provides relatively clear direction to webmasters on its search policies:

Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Seems unequivocal to me.

My company's newly appointed global head of digital communications -- Andrew Bleeker -- put it this way in an email to our social web team: "At Hill and Knowlton, we believe in a transparent approach to search engine optimization that still achieves the results we need . . . but still adhering to the spirit of how these search engines operate."

That's probably all it takes to ensure that you don't suffer the kind of reputational hit the retailer has received.