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By on April 16, 2009

Why Reputation Management is Like Bird Flu

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A couple of weeks ago I was invited to chat with Andrew Warner about the topic of reputation management. We spent about an hour discussing the ins and outs of reputation management, including the difficulty of monitoring conversations that take place deep within a web forum thread.

Here’s how I explained my strategy for managing negativity in closed forums or message boards:

You need to focus in on monitoring just the ones that are influential. Because message boards are complex and deep in the web, chances are the others aren’t not going to bubble up outside of that web community.

The moment something does, it’s almost like when a virus jumps from an animal to a human. We don’t care as much all the while it’s confined to a bird or pig. It’s when it first occurs in a human that we act.

All the while that negative sentiment is bubbling in a small forum, we don’t care. The moment someone takes that and puts it on a blog or mentions it on Twitter or puts it on their MySpace page, that’s when it’s got a potential to hurt us. That’s when we take action.

There’s a brief video segment over at Andrew’s Mixergy blog, but it looks like the video’s somewhat choppy, so you’ll probably prefer to listen to the audio version anyway.


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8 comments on “Why Reputation Management is Like Bird Flu”

  1. Andrew Warner Says:

    April 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    That takes a lot of pressure off reputation management. It means we don’t have to look and worry about every word on the net.

    Thanks for doing this interview. It’s one of the most useful interviews on Mixergy. You’re right about the choppiness of the video. I’m going to have to find a solution for that.

  2. Andy Beal Says:

    April 16th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    @Andrew – don’t worry, I have a face for audio podcasts anyway. ;-) Thanks again for inviting me on.

  3. David Leonhardt Says:

    April 16th, 2009 at 10:21 pm

    Well, hmmm, let’s see. On the one hand, nobody can monitor every word on the Net, so worrying does somehow seem most effective. On the other hand, no need to worry until something actually breaks out…or is that perhaps also a mistake? To contain bird flu, we attacked the source – the birds – themselves. Same with mad-cow disease. The problem is that once the reputation issue leaves the depths of an isolated community, it might be too late to contain it. I am not sure there is a simple answer to this one.

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