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Let me preface this post by saying I am a huge fan of Seth Godin’s. I admire the way he thinks and his vision. But I do have concerns about his latest venture.
I was just reading about Brands in Public, a service launching soon which focuses on helping gather information about your company or brand and aggregating it in one place. As a brand subscribed to the service, you can (for $400/monthly), respond to any feedback or comments about your brand, as it is listed on the page.
While I certainly agree for the need for online reputation management, my strong feeling is that this is a service each of us must do for ourselves. In Seth’s post, he does mention that it is something you can do on your own, presuming you have sufficient resources to do so.
My concerns about this stem from two main issues. First, I have issues with the idea that Brands in Public will become the middlepeople between companies and their customers. Essentially, because of the reach and traction I expect this service to have, they are becoming the arbiters or monitors of what is being said. They have put themselves into a judge/jury type position in terms of content, and I believe that if enough paying clients complain, certain information will be reduced in its importance or removed entirely. In a sense, by aggregating the information, they can also change the information.
I agree that this type of service would be useful. I understand that there needs to be a revenue model. I just have concerns about any service which is supposedly for the public good, but can allow a reshaping of public sentiment based on who is paying for the page.
In a way, this process is removing or at least reducing the community driven aspect of online brand management.
My second issue with this service is that if you don’t invest with them, they are gathering all the data about your company, and you, essentially have no control over it. Again, because of their reach and influence, they are likely to become the authoritative voice on issues- even if their information is wrong or incorrect.
I don’t expect that I’ll have to worry, and you, as a small business owner, may not either- but the fact is, should any inaccurate negative information appear about you or your company on Brands in Public, you or I are unlikely to have the resources to combat it adequately. At minimum, this means the continued perpetuation of misinformation. At maximum, it could mean lasting damage to our businesses or reputation.
I don’t think that Brands in Public is a good idea as it stands. A better way to approach it may be to use the resources and knowledge of Brands in Public and work with businesses to build their own self managed brand pages. This way, Brands in Public can help businesses accomplish a key objective (which Seth himself notes is a good idea) without putting themselves in as middlepeople of a company’s online brand management.
What do you think?
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So I’m just wrapping up another reputation management contract with another client accused of improper business practices. Without giving away too much detail (and because it’s not necessary, either!), the issue with online reputation management is that most people have none.
So, when negative posts are made about them, or they are highly criticized online, these negative posts make it to the top of the search engines, very quickly- because they represent new, fresh content about the person in question.
If you Google your name and your company name, you should, at minimum, control (or manage) the first 10 spaces in Google for these terms. It’s commonly thought that most people don’t search past the first page of Google for information- though if you want to be extremely prudent, try and gain the top 20 positions for your main terms.
And, if you use variations of your name or company name (for example, I am sometimes listed as Dr. Rachna Jain, Dr. Rachna D. Jain, and Rachna Jain), you should invest the resources to gain control of all these terms, because you never know who will be searching and how they will find you. In reviewing my own positioning on these terms, I see that it’s time to do some work on these again.
You can gain rankings for your name and keywords using a combination of blogging, social media content sharing, and in-bound link building. Once you’ve gained these positions, you should examine them once per quarter (at least) and do any maintenance work required.
The benefits of owning these top terms are several: first, you can manage more easily what rises to the top in the search engines. Second, you can portray yourself and your company exactly the way you want to be perceived. Finally, you can make it very easy for your potential clients and customers to find you, especially if you have a common name or one that is commonly misspelled.
When you manage your search engine listings appropriately, you can shape your prospect’s experience of you before they even come to your website or blog. You can impress them with your credibility and visibility as they clickthrough to learn more- which makes it much more likely they will pay attention and take action once they arrive on your site.
The key to online reputation management is taking an active role and shaping information about your company. Do this sooner rather than later, or you may find, as my clients do, that you wish you had controlled the conversation better at the beginning, instead of trying to put out fires at the end.
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