Readers of this blog may recall a couple of months ago we published an article — Think Online Reputation Doesn’t Matter — Ask United. This was a story about how social media can immediately challenge your reputation and cause endless amounts of work to contain the damage.

Dave Carroll, a Canadian musician, took a major unresolved grievance with United to heart. The grievance? United damaged his Taylor guitar. Dave wrote a song about his unsatisfactory experience, loaded it up on YouTube and went from relative obscurity to fame as Everyman with a Voice.

His YouTube video (which he did with his band — Sons of Maxwell) has been viewed almost 6 million times — and that was just the first video! People who never would have heard this story listened to Dave and the band sing their story. They listened and shared online… and along the way millions of negative impressions about United Airlines were created.

In case you missed that great video — here’s the link to United Breaks Guitars.

Not only did the story/song go viral, traditional media outlets tripped over each other to interview him and give the story “legs” offline as well. This story had so many legs it put a centipede to shame!

His saga struck a chord with all of us who have ever been on the short end of the stick trying to get satisfaction with the Airline Lost Baggage folks. It doesn’t hurt that the song and video are snappy, either.

Credit: Vancouver Sun

In an incredible stroke of bad luck, just a few days ago United again messed with the wrong guy and lost his luggage somewhere along the way on a trip he took from Calgary Canada to Denver. When he arrived at Denver — no luggage. United employees told him he had to wait around; US Customs told him he had to leave. He left. And, three days later his luggage showed up.

Here’s the fun part: He was on his way to a speak to a conference of customer service execs about – United Broke My Guitar! It really just doesn’t get any better.

Once again United is in the middle of another PR disaster as one media channel after another — online and offline — retell the story of Dave at United’s expense. And they all seem to relish pointing out that Dave was on his way to speak to customer service execs.

The moral of this story? Manage the Beforemath, not the Aftermath… online reputation management is a reality for businesses today.

Related Posts:

1. Think Online Reputations Don’t Matter? Ask United…
2. Why Online Reputation Management?
3. Online Reputation: Round 2 — Businesses Fight Back?

I’ve been focusing a lot lately on the potential damage businesses suffer when they don’t pay attention to their online reputation management Ps & Qs. Now, a new wrinkle in the evolution of this growing area of concern – Businesses Fighting Back.

Citizen Journalist may want to take a second before hitting “Send.” I’ll bet this one was sorry she did.

In a widely reported story, Horizon Realty sued a micro blogger using Twitter to make some rather unflattering comments about their property. In fact, they are reported to have sued Amanda Bonnen, a Chicago area resident, for this tweet: “You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it’s okay.”

The amount of the lawsuit: $50,000.

If you know anything at all about Twitter, you know that she was limited to 140 characters (this is called micro-blogging) AND that it is rather important to understand how many followers the person tweeting has. Followers being their theoretical “readers.” Horizon decided to take aggressive action to defend their reputation. Bad Move.

Why was this a Bad Move? Because Ms. Bonnen only had 12 followers on Twitter. I’m guessing at least a few were relatives. In short… no one was paying attention. Their lawsuit, however, created a furor and drew national attention. Now everyone is wondering whether they want to EVER stay in one of Horizon’s properties.

Here’s the lesson for every business that have been maligned in Social Media (fairly or not):

• Assess the potential damage before you act.
• Don’t bring out the Howitzers to kill an Ant.

You and your Howitzer may make the issue become Front Page News when the reality was it was headed for the Obits.

Methinks that Horizon got all excited about the hype around Twitter’s growth and influence and incorrectly assumed that ALL of these folks were dialed into Ms. Bonnen. Hardly.

In fact, Ms. Bonnen had the audience equivalent of a group of people in a coffee shop… at a small table. Until Horizon gave her a Bully Pulpit, giving her a massive audience, creating a PR nightmare along the way.

What this does show is that businesses need to have a basic understanding of what is going on in Social Media so that they can take appropriate and measured proactive or reactive actions.

Related Posts:

1. Why Online Reputation Management?
2. The Rhubarb about Yelp and Online Reputation Management
3. Think Online Reputations Don’t Matter? Ask United…

Citizen Journalists strike again. Or should I say Citizen Musicians? Once again the consumer is finding Web 2.0 Social Media sites of value — at least for venting their frustration.

Frustrated United Airlines passenger, Dave Carroll, used his native talents as a musician to strike back after repeatedly trying to get United to address claims for his beloved Taylor guitar which he alleges United baggage handlers damaged. What — baggage handlers damage… baggage?

Taylor Guitar

Dave has two grievances: guitar damage and indifferent customer service. Apparently it was a valuable guitar — $3,500 — and critical to the way he makes his living as a musician. United should have paid attention.

After repeatedly attempting to get United to address his claims, Dave and his band — Sons of Maxwell — struck back. Dave and the Sons composed a song about the kerfuffle and recorded a video performing it, which they then posted on — you guessed it — YouTube. And it is pretty entertaining while getting his story out there: check Dave's YouTube Revenge. It’s really worth a view, they are entertaining AND talented.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, United Airlines now has a full-blown PR problem. It looks like at least 150,000 people have viewed the video as of 7/8/09 and it is really going viral now. Dave’s story is also getting coverage in respected media sources such as the LA Times Online. THAT, in turn, is stimulating tons of online comments from the masses, war stories about other perceived and actual United misdeeds, etc. (Btw, not all of the comments support Dave & Sons.)

Whether their claim is just or not is actually not as much the issue as United’s failure to handle the situation better and forestall this kind of retaliation and the aftermath they now face. The song on their video is catchy – these guys are GOOD and LIKABLE — this can’t be good news for United.

Online reputation management is a growing problem for businesses, particularly for consumer-facing, service-oriented businesses like United Airlines. Business as usual in terms of PR management won’t work here.

Last – I was interviewed recently on the topic of online reputation management by Linda Popky, President at L2M Associates, for her Marketing Thought Leadership show. This short interview ended with some resources that you might find helpful in your own reputation management efforts. Online Reputation Management: What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You! Thanks to Linda — it’s always fun to chat about something you’re passionate about and this sure gets me jazzed!

Related Posts:

1. Why Online Reputation Management?
2. The Rhubarb about Yelp and Online Reputation Management

Our last post covered the jam Yelp was in that required them to vociferously defend their own online reputation.

Recap:
Businesses that contacted Yelp with issues about negative reviews posted on the Yelp website, alleged that Yelp personnel counseled them that they could re-arrange their negative reviews to more favorable placement if they bought Yelp’s advertising package.

This was a serious allegation that required a public response from Yelp. Yelp’s success as a local review site is in large measure due to consumer TRUST that the reviews they read from other consumers are untainted.

Furthermore, although not as damning, businesses complained that they had no recourse to challenge/remove factually inaccurate reviews. (As an example: a review that claimed a specific meal was terrible, such as fish and chips, when the restaurant never even offered fish and chips.) While not an allegation of impropriety, it added to the growing discontent about the fairness and trust consumers and businesses alike could expect when dealing with Yelp.

Update:
Yelp executives have categorically denied the advertising in return for more favorable re-ordering of negative reviews charge and have mounted an aggressive PR campaign to answer the charges and defend their reputation. They followed that up by changing their policy of not allowing business owners to answer negative reviews on their site.

Why This Matters:
This is serious stuff. Yelp is in head-to-head competition with their nearest rival, CitySearch. The competition is fierce, including challenges over whose publicly available data shows the most visitors and use of their site (important to their advertisers). These companies are top competitors in a class of business made possible through Web 2.0 technology and User Generated Content (UGC) in Social Media.

By some accounts, Yelp had 25M unique visitors to their site in March 2009. March 2008 was 10M unique visitors. YELP clearly is experiencing phenomenal growth. Trust and Credibility are Critical Success Factors for continued success. They are challenging their senior competitor, CitySearch on many fronts (including user ease) yet Trust is essential.

For business owners, the entire category of consumer reviews is a true challenge to their reputation. Monitoring what is being said about key executives and the business is becoming an essential business practice. And the types of businesses that are now impacted is growing – restaurants, shopping, health, etc. Managing an online reputation is new, uncharted territory for almost all of them.

Other issues are emerging as this Rhubarb puts a spotlight on the Social Media category of User Generated Content Reviews. Stay tuned…

Related Posts:

1. The Rhubarb about Yelp and Online Reputation Management
2. Why Online Reputation Management?

For many small businesses, Yelp — a well-known online recommendation search engine — represents a path to success. After all, according to Yelp, over 20M people accessed their site in the past 30 days (as of February 2009).

Presumably, for the most part consumers are visiting Yelp for the reviews – or maybe it is just a way for them to discover the latest and tune in on the buzz.

Whatever…

Here’s how Yelp works: reviews of local businesses, based on a 5 Star rating system, come from pretty much ANYONE who registers and has an opinion. Business categories include restaurants, shopping, doctors, beauty and spas, plumbers, accountants, attorneys and much more.

Well, maybe it’s just me, but I am really having a problem with the concept of uncontrolled consumer reviews overall. Asking 50 knuckleheads to help me decide about a restaurant, plumber or doctor just doesn’t seem like the way to go. And, who knows how many of those 50 aren’t related to the business owner anyhow?

So, are we now in the era where vox populi rules? I sure hope not… isn’t there a middle ground? As much as the restaurant critics and music reviewers were occasionally annoying (to me, anyhow) they at least had some expertise, standards, evaluation criteria and the like.
Not to mention some consideration that what they said could affect some soul’s livelihood.

Now everyone’s a critic – but really, would you care what many of them have to say? Apparently a lot do. Here’s some Yelp propaganda:

Yelp is so influential that businesses are justifiably concerned about how they come across on the site. Business owners can “claim” their business and create a profile with useful information, post special offers, make announcements and advertise.

Just a short visit to the site points out the dilemma for businesses – some of the reviews are pretty snarky and mean-spirited; the businesses are at the mercy of these largely uncontrolled reviewers. The other day I spoke with a company that has ample reason to believe their competitors are posting negative reviews — yet another unchecked problem.

THE RHUBARB: Yelp is now getting their own reviews from business owners – and they aren’t very flattering. They stand accused by a growing number of businesses that have negative reviews of attempting to extort them into buying advertising packages to “mitigate” their negative review problem. Yelp, of course, vehemently denies this.

What do I think? Well, it doesn’t make sense that Yelp would do that. After all, their entire business model is based on people coming to their site to get the “true scoop” from other consumers.

Trust is a Critical Success Factor for Yelp. Contaminating that trust is a bit like killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg. Yet we’ve all witnessed examples of business behavior recently that seems at odds with common sense… no?

There are other issues business owners’ have with Yelp such as their refusal to remove factually inaccurate negative reviews.

Do I use Yelp? Yep. I use it personally AND professionally.

I use it to discover new restaurants, businesses, events, etc. I do not use it for the reviews unless there are dozens or more that are all in one direction or the polar opposite.

If our clients have reputation problems or want to proactively improve their online reputation we consider Yelp’s free profile development and paid advertising as potential perception management tactics.

And, I use other recommendation search engines as well both personally and professionally. The Yelp Rhubarb is but one of many landmines. Stay tuned… online reputation management is a growing problem with no easy answers.

Related Posts:

1. Why Online Reputation Management?

We’ve been taking an increasing number of calls over the past few months on a rather interesting topic: reputation management. To be more precise: online reputation management.

As it turns out, nothing can kill your prospects for fast growth much quicker than a few unkind words posted by an alienated employee, “wronged” customer, devious competitor or malicious prankster. (Speaking of which, isn’t there a special place in Hell for those pranksters who do nothing but destroy?)

Why is that?

Because of the multiplicative effect, ease and anonymity of online communication. What’s more, if the comments are in high traffic interactive communities like the growing army of social media sites, they can spread like wildfire and be very hard to put out once the fire is raging.

Putting the fire out before it gets out of control is usually not what goes on, however. Most companies and executives don’t have any level of online reputation monitoring. They simply don’t know until random events make them aware of the problem – or some Good Samaritan.

So, now companies that were previously doing a full-court press for growth all of sudden have a new, very ugly problem that sucks up their precious time and energy. The funny thing is most of the cases I know about were also unjustified.

Even if everything is humming along in a positive vein there is worthwhile intelligence to mine out of the mentions your company, products/services and key executives get online. Intelligence you can use to strengthen your business.

Yet, one simple thing that a company can do will help you identify the problem and enable you to take corrective measures before it gets out of control: monitor your online reputation. Most businesses are not monitoring their reputation online – and that is a big mistake.

Put in place an online reputation monitoring system. Those systems can range from free Do-It-Yourself systems to sophisticated highly automated monitoring programs offered by a growing army of companies.

Do yourself a favor – go to Google Alerts now, set up an account (it’s free) and put some keyword phrases into their monitoring system. Use keyword phrases like your company name, products/services, and top executives. Set the frequency for delivery of the results and take time to read them.

That’s at least a start to getting your new online reputation protection program underway.

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