Marketing Pilgrim

Do you know what tactics your PR team is using in social media?

UK furniture giant Habitat clearly doesn’t and it just cost them a huge reputation blackeye in the Twitter community.

Digital Tip spotted Habitat’s official Twitter account apparently spamming Twitter by placing popular “trending topic” hashtags alongside its own (poorly crafted) tweets.

They even tweeted hashtags used by those protesting the Iranian election, so you can imagine the backlash they’d receive, right?

Well, apparently Habitat was blissfully unaware of the whole scandal. In an open apology letter to the Twitter community, “Claire” from Habitat’s Head Office alluded to the fact the hashtag use had not been approved:

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat.

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BusinessWeek’s Rachael King specializes in helping small businesses understand technology. Her latest article looks at the online reputation management industry and includes lots of great advice–including some from yours truly.

A number of free tools also can help you scout the Web, social networks, and online forums for mentions of your company, brand, or products (chart). Google Alerts, for instance, will send an e-mail each time your name shows up in Google () searches. "One of the most important steps is to do an audit of what people are saying about your business," says Andy Beal, a reputation management consultant at Marketing Pilgrim in Raleigh, N.C. He suggests doing a monthly Google search to see what shows up in the top 20 results, which might call up a customer’s comment or review on sites such as Yelp, CitySearch, or TripAdvisor.

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As with most things, the news about social media is not news to those who have been around for a while. The reality is that the largest proportion of social media users are relatively new to the party. While this makes social media veterans groan and cry into their energy drinks it’s just the facts. While most veterans of Twitter and other social media outlets get the idea of “social media identity theft” most mortals don’t equate identity theft with anything other than their finances.

The New York Times ran an article about this problem of maintaining your online identity and what it can entail. When it hits the mainstream press then we know that there is a real issue (not because it is breaking the news but more so because it has finally caught up to the news). The Times says

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Chris Gatewood is one of those rare breads–he gets social media and happens to be an attorney. That normally becomes like oil and water when you throw in the topic of online reputation management, as many attorneys favor the cease and desist approach.

Not Chris, and in this brief video interview, he chats with RWW’s Jolie O’Dell about reputation management. Grab your morning coffee and enjoy!

When it comes to any kind of reputation management study, I’m normally deadly serious. This is my field of expertise after all.

Today, I’ve decided to have a little bit of fun with Weber ShandWick/KRC Research’s survey of 151 executives in Fortune 1000 companies. Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for the report, but while reading the summary of findings, I couldn’t help but notice an interesting trend.

Observation 1: 66% of executives believe that the reputation of current CEOs is largely negative.

Observation 2: Of those that suggest CEO reputations are negative, 48% of them still aspire to one day accept the role of CEO.

Observation 3: The majority of these executives believe that CEO reputations will likely improve by the year 2013.

So, let’s piece that all together. Today’s CEOs have a lousy reputation. Their underlings want their job. They’ll likely get their chance in the next 3-4 years. When they take over, CEO reputations will be much better!

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Despite the lack of publicly displayed information, I’ve always liked Facebook profiles for Google reputation management. I mean, just take a look at the number of times "Andy Beal" is mentioned on my limited public profile:

Coupled with your name in the Title tag, Facebook is pretty useful for occupying one of Google’s ten blue links–especially if you don’t already have a lot of positive content in the search results.

Well, Facebook is getting ready to allow users the ability to pick a username for their profile URL–as opposed to a randomly assigned series of numbers.

Now, how much of a benefit this will be to you, will depend on your goals. For branding, it’s certainly a good idea to try and snag facebook.com/yourname–especially if you don’t already have yourname.com. For Google reputation management purposes? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Why? Because, while Facebook says your current profile URL will achieve this benefit:

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Have you had the big talk with your kids? You know, the one where you explain the risks and how one night of craziness can result in them throwing their life away?

Good. How about with your employees?

No, I’m not talking about the importance of abstinence/protection, I’m talking about the importance of ruining your company’s reputation via social media!

New data suggests you should sit down with them right this minute!

Yep, you read that chart correctly. A whopping 74% of your employees agree that their social media antics could damage your company’s reputation. With that in mind, you absolutely need to have the talk with your employees and let them know what they can and cannot do in social media.

If you need some reading material, might I suggest the rather good Radically Transparent.

(Hat-tip @MikeMoran)

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) is threatening to quit Twitter over (not so true) rumors the micro-blogging service had signed a TV deal. His exact Tweet:

Now, I have to admit, this is either brilliant or naive.

Brilliant, if Kutcher is punking the media with such a claim. After all, the guy is known for messing with people’s heads. It’s quite possible that the guy–who can’t live without the spotlight–is simply acting upset, in order to get even more attention than he received from his Oprah appearance. Heck, CNN fell for it.

On the flip side, if Kutcher is sincere with his tweet, then it shows a staggering amount of naivety–and should be a wake-up call for all of us.

He follows-up his first Tweet with:

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NBC17 asked me to share some tips for a couple of TV segments they aired today. The first looks at how your personal online reputation can have an effect on your career goals. The second discusses what to in the event of an impostor “brand jacking” your name on a social network.

Both segments were posted online, so I thought I’d share them with you.

There aren’t many examples where you see the adage “all publicity is good publicity” actually hold true, but I suspect that the KFC/Oprah coupon debacle could end up being one.

For those of you not familiar with the incident, let me bring you up to speed.

KFC’s sales are suffering, so the company is hoping its new line of Kentucky Grilled Chicken can help lift its bottom line. To help spread the word, it joined forces with the promotional juggernaut called Oprah, who announced on her show downloadable coupons–good for a free 2-piece meal.

The only problem is that KFC didn’t anticipate–which blows my mind–that a free giveaway from Oprah would send tens of thousands of people to the fast food chain’s stores. Reports soon came in that stores were refusing to honor the coupons–for a whole host of reasons.

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“People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.”

Ten years ago the above statement made it to #11 on The Cluetrain Manifesto’s list of 95 theses. Read the thesis again and then consider the “networked markets” that existed in 1999. There was no Facebook, no MySpace, no Digg, no Yelp, no TripAdvisor, and certainly no Twitter. Instead, customers were connecting with, and supporting, each other using newsgroups, forums, email newsletters, and–barely–blogs.

Messrs. Levine, Locke, Searls, and Weinberger knew nothing of the socially networked world we now all live in, yet their groundbreaking–and bestselling–book was as prophetic as anything written by Nostradamus. They effectively predicted the demise of the one-way dialog that marketers had spewed forth for decades–telling consumers why they should buy their products and how they should make them feel–and foretold a new era of conversational marketing. An era, where a business could only hope that its customers would be willing to invite it to join the conversation about its brand.

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There were two driving factors behind my launch of Trackur:

1. Existing online reputation monitoring tools were too expensive.
2. Most social media monitoring tools couldn’t be set-up without first studying for a PHD–or getting a 60 minute tutorial from someone with a PHD.

Over the past year or so, we’ve worked hard to add valuable new features to Trackur, but we’ve still maintained our core goals: keep it affordable and keep it simple.

To highlight just how fast and easy it is to set-up Trackur’s sophisticated social media monitoring, we’re announcing the 60-Second Reputation Monitoring Challenge.

We’re so confident that you can get Trackur up and running within 60-seconds, that we’re willing to guarantee it!

Want more details? Head over to the Trackur site or watch the video below: