When looking for an authoritative list of CEOs and brands, where better to start than Forbes? Every year they put together a series of lists that document the top performing CEOs, companies, richest Americans, world’s billionaires, etc. I decided to take a closer look at those top 10 highest earning CEOs to see what kinds of reputation management insights we could learn from these powerful individuals.

For this post I’m focusing entirely on their Google autocomplete suggestions broken down by “type” and “keyword.” Google autocomplete suggestions are driven by search behavior–the frequency of searches for a particular or related keyword, the content discovered by Google for that keyword, personalization based on the searcher’s behavior and location, and any recent news for the particular keyword.

The top 10 highest earnings CEOs in America in 2012 were:

In analyzing the Google autocomplete suggestions for our top 10 CEOs by the “type” of information searched on, I found the following breakdown:

The most shocking discovery is that a search for each of their names returned no obviously negative autocomplete suggestions though one CEO’s email address was being searched for by consumers who wanted to submit a customer service complaint. What I mean by no obviously negative suggestions is that at no point did anyone’s name appear beside the keywords of “scandal,” “fraud,” “scam,” “affair,” “arrest,” “lawsuit,” “doping,” “doping evidence,” etc. The latter two did however appear for a certain cyclist. You don’t get to the top without causing a stir at some point, but once you’re at the top, there is so much newsworthy content (in the case of our top earning CEOs, positive content) that it’s difficult for a single negative review or blogger to overtake the empire you’ve built–unless news of Oprah-worthy proportions breaks.

Notable observations of Google’s autocomplete suggestions by type:

• Searchers are obsessed with the biographical and financial information of CEOs. We want to know how they got to where they are and what they’re making/worth.
• The “brand” category looks like a larger percent than it truly is because of Ralph Lauren. He is the only CEO who named his company after himself, which means his autocomplete suggestions are weighted entirely to the brand versus the individual. While I haven’t dug into the individual search results of each CEO, yet, this appears to be a very smart move for online reputation management though it extends to much larger considerations for the brand itself. The only difficulty Ralph Lauren might have with his search results is getting users to find information relevant to him versus the company itself.
  
  Here’s a breakdown of the results:
  ralph lauren outlet
  ralph lauren rugby
  ralph lauren home
  ralph lauren bedding
  ralph lauren coupon code
  ralph lauren paint
  ralph lauren outlet lake george*
  ralph lauren boots

  We can see that all of the mentions are a division of the parent company or a location search such as the mention of “outlet” and “outlet Lake George,” which is a personalized suggestion based on my location in upstate New York. Likely, the Ralph Lauren store nearest you is being suggested as well.

• Being on the Forbes list generates autocomplete suggestions for the Forbes list. Once you’re on the list, buzz follows and in several instances, which were grouped as “profile” the CEO’s name appeared next to a search for “Forbes” simply due to the notoriety of the list and curiosity of where they might fall.
• Charity work only appeared for one person, which was a foundation named after the CEO himself–The Kinder Foundation. I personally found this shocking and would hope that all of the CEOs are actively involved in non-profit work though they may not have named their contributions/foundations after themselves, which explains why these aren’t appearing as highly searched keywords for the CEO’s name.
• Priceline CEO, Jeffery H. Boyd’s suggestions were (like Ralph Lauren) unnaturally weighting the contact information keywords. There were several searches for his contact info and email address. This appears to be fueled by consumer complaint sites who want to reach out to the CEO directly about a concern.
• Gilead Sciences’ CEO, John C. Martin is brilliant. Like Ralph Lauren and Jeffery H. Boyd, he held down the “notable works” type entirely on his own thanks to his book, “Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation.” I love this. It demonstrates that as a CEO you don’t have to just invest in the development of your company, you can keep producing your own unique research or perhaps a book or documentary that drives positive searches and credibility within your industry. I learned the most from Mr. Martin.
• Political contributions–we want to know where those top earning CEO’s dollars are going and it’s publicly available, so why not look it up? This no doubt informs many business decisions and news stories.

Let’s take a closer look at the bio category to see what searchers specifically wanted to find:

Notable observations of Google’s autocomplete suggestions for “bio” keywords:

• “Mr.” appeared often as a suggested modification of a CEO’s name. Apparently Google wants us to be proper when searching for the highest earning American CEOs.
• Education appears for a couple of the CEOs. I’ve always encouraged our clients with a strong tie to their educational background to reach out as an alumni and do their part for the future of America. That sounds quite lofty, but in being a role model for the school, you help promote future attendance, inspire new generations, and positively sculpt your search results.
• There was only one search for the CEO’s board memberships.
• “Wiki” appears to be as commonly searched as “bio” or “biography” so for the CEOs of the world who are scared of Wikipedia, it’s time to accept that this has embedded itself in our vernacular.

Now let’s breakdown the financial type keywords, which were the second largest bucket:

Notable observations of Google’s autocomplete suggestions for “financial” keywords:

• I’m not sure there was anything surprising here. We all want to know what the richest and most powerful people in the world make–their net worth and their salary. There are also many websites that provide this content for politicians, celebrities, and executives, which only fuels those autocomplete results further. Google can’t display what it can’t find!

The most shocking discovery from this exercise was that the only “negative” appeared to be a mention of the Priceline CEO’s email address. While a negative, I want to look deeper at his (and the rest of the top earning CEO’s) search results to determine whether the brand has turned this negative into a positive. Do they own the search results for this query? Are they aware enough to leverage this as a customer service win? I would think that as a CEO it’s a no brainer–your users are telling you what they want. Turn this into a Southwest-style opportunity and capitalize on your values and message as a company. The same could be said for all of the keywords mentioned.

We’ll look closer in future posts and I hope this helped spark some creative PR, leadership, or online reputation management ideas for you as well.

Around the Outspoken Media office, we’ve been on a big corporate social responsibility kick. It’s one way we convey our values, so when I stumbled on a “fruit delivery” service from The FruitGuys, I had to know more. They provide a corporate delivery solution for local and organic produce. Fantastic! I’m a big environmentalist and the team has a love/hate relationship with carbs. This service could provide a healthy, environmentally friendly alternative to office snacking.

I signed up.

Happy Account Registration Day to you!

As soon as I set up an account with The FruitGuys, I immediately received an e-mail notifying me of the account creation and providing login credentials. This wasn’t your typical e-mail with a password manager; it was designed as a celebratory event marking our entry into the wonderful world of corporate fruit deliveries. They called it a “birthday,” and gave us their e-mail and phone number to contact them with any comments or questions:

Once I told the team about The FruitGuys service, there was no turning back. I placed our first order for a recurring weekly delivery.

Order confirmation

Like most e-commerce solutions, The FruitGuys sent a receipt to my inbox. This wasn’t your standard receipt, though. At the very top, before the purchase information and order summary, were their e-mail address and phone number. They really wanted us to know how we could reach them:

Confirmation of recurring payment

The day after I placed our order, I received another e-mail from The FruitGuys, which was to confirm that my order was meant to be a recurring shipment. Unlike the first two e-mails, this came directly from an account rep at The FruitGuys. Now I had the name, e-mail address, and phone number of a real person at the company in the event of a question or concern.

I confirmed, and they thanked me for our order. At this point in the follow-up process, it struck me that The FruitGuys had their own language: “Hi Fruit Fans,” “Fruitfully yours,” “Enjoy and be fruitful!” and “Happy FruitGuys account registration birthday.” This was communicated through automated e-mails, and by their team.

Quality assurance and guarantee

Three days later, and one day prior to our first fruit shipment, Matthew Macdonald, the East Coast Sales Rep for The FruitGuys contacted me directly with a voicemail and follow-up e-mail. Matthew quickly established a relationship with us, but even more important, he let us know that if we ever had any concerns with the quality of their fruit, they have a 100% quality guarantee, and are happy to replace the entire crate with no questions asked. Sounds like a value proposition to me! With one e-mail, I also knew the company’s mission was: “Delivering fresh fruit as a wellness benefit to companies on a weekly basis.”

He gave me his e-mail address, his phone number, and the main customer service line.

Weekly payment status

Each week, we receive a new shipment of fruit, and the day prior, I receive a fun invoice from The FruitGuys marked “PAID” because we’re set up with automatic billing. With each invoice, they include the contact information for their billing department as well as the main customer service contact information:

Facebook management

Before receiving our fruit, we were so excited that we Liked The FruitGuys on Facebook. They asked us to take a picture when we received our fruit.

When we got our fruit, we posed with it as they’d asked of us, but also because we were now swooning over the company and our delicious fruit:

We tagged The FruitGuys in our update, and not only did they like it, they commented and then shared it on their wall:

What’s the secret to reducing reputation problems, providing great customer service, strengthening your brand, and living according to your values and mission?

Follow-up.

That’s it. Find opportunities within your organization to increase follow-up and infuse your communication with each of the aforementioned goals.

At Outspoken Media, we’ve recently signed on with InfusionSoft to help us intelligently automate newsletter sign-ups and contact forms. We recognize that as a small shop, it’s difficult to manage the sheer number of inquiries we receive daily. We have to turn to technology to help us scale, but in the process, we don’t want to lose our voice or compromise our values. Below are several tools you can use to improve follow-up, and please take a minute to share your experiences in the comments below.

One day, the business owner decided to try to capture more sales through new marketing techniques he’d heard about from a friend of a friend. This person swore by his methods and the business owner had nothing to lose, so he figured, “what the heck, why not!”

The first step was to re-arrange his shelves. His products were usually grouped by category, but his friend had told him that instead of keeping all of one product category in a single location, he should move these products to other parts of the store. This would make his customers search for the different products and stay in his store longer.

The second step was to call a press conference each time he stocked a new product on his shelves. Press conferences are a great way to get noticed, so he decided to contact the local media each time he added a new product.

The third step was to hire part-time workers to visit the other local stores that sold similar products. During their visit, they would strike up a conversation with the patrons of that store and casually mention his store, so they knew about him.

The fourth step was to also hire part-time workers to talk to others about his business. He would give a dollar for each time they brought up his business and products in a conversation. He would also hire a big team of people to drive around town telling everyone they saw about his company. They were not to use any negative words, just positive mentions of his brand, products and even his name. Now, others would see that everyone talked about him in a positive way.

The fifth step was to stop using his current point of sale tracking and fulfillment software. He’d been told that the manufacturer knew how much he was and wasn’t selling because of this software and they might make it difficult for him to market their products if they noticed his new sales methods.

The final step was to put fliers up around universities and government buildings, because he knew smart, affluent people visited there. He wanted them to see his business and associate it with those organizations.

The business owner was eager to see his new sales approach in action and once it was setup, he knew this would lead to immediate success.

Can you guess what happened to the business owner?

• With the new, cumbersome product display, customers became frustrated and left the store before making a purchase.
• The local media stopped paying attention to him because they were constantly being flooded with news that wasn’t really news. And, the publications that picked him up were so low-quality that he didn’t capture many sales from them.
• Once the other local business owners caught on to what his part-time workers were doing in their stores, they told them to leave and banned them from coming back.
• With so many people being paid to talk about his business, the community lost trust in his brand.
• He switched to the new point of sale software and it was good, but now he didn’t have the data that he usually relied on to make informed business decisions.
• The fliers didn’t seem to work at all.

The new marketing methods were a disaster. He was losing sight of why he’d gone into business and was on the verge of closing his doors. All of the time and money he’d spent on this new plan had been a waste. He realized that what he should have invested in instead of a quick fix was:

• differentiating his products or customer experience from his competitors.
• surveying his current customers and non-customers to discover what they really wanted and thought of his business.
• communicating the purpose of his business to the community.
• training for his employees to increase their knowledge of his products and customer service.
• researching the area to see how he should market himself to his local customers while being respectful of them and true to himself and his company’s brand.

This story was inspired by a post published yesterday on Mixergy, which summarized “how to rank on page 1 of Google (even if you’ve never heard of black hat SEO).”

As a user I love being able to meet people I wouldn’t have otherwise been connected to and how easily it is to be part of larger conversations. As a business owner, I love having this direct line to the people we’re trying to help and serve. Of course, there are also days when I don’t love the Internet and when the Internet makes me cry.

I’ve written before about some of the dark sides that go into blogging and community management. Because it’s not all rainbows and unicorns out there. There are trolls, and angries, and people with nothing but a grudge and whole lot of free time. And when one of these otherwise nice folks comes for your brand or your head, it can ruin your day. Worse than that, it can lead to an emotional reaction and an online reputation management problem that you’ll have to diffuse later.

You can’t let that happen. And the way to not let it happen is to learn the proper way of responding to negativity about yourself or your brand on the Internet.

Control the situation, control your brand. It’s really that simple.

Consider this your course on how not to get defensive about negative things written about you on the Internet. You can buy me a latte later.

Step 0: Locate Your Big Girl (or Boy) Pants

What sucks about negativity on the Internet is that it can will happen to you. It doesn’t matter how ethical you run your business or nice of a person you are. At some point, someone is going to have a problem with you and they’re going to let you know about it, probably in a not-nice way. Acceptance of this will be your very best friend.

It also makes you an adult.

The simple truth is you don’t have the luxury of being sensitive or having an emotional response when you rely on the Internet to promote your business. Displaying either of these characteristics will, very simply, hurt your business and prevent you from getting where you could. Instead of pouting or being passive aggressive, put on your big person pants and learn how to use it. Sorry, you don’t get another option.

Step 1: Scream. Or Punch Something.

Just because you can’t have an emotional reaction online, doesn’t mean you can’t have one from where you’re sitting. You’re human. You probably even have feelings. When someone takes time out of their day to attack you, it’s going to sting. When this happens, go to a semi-private place and do whatever you have to do release that initial OMG-I’ll-Stab-You adrenaline. Cry. Punch something. Snuggle your dog. Whatever you have to do. But get it out. Once you do, you may return to your computer to deal with the problem at hand.

Step 2: Get the Facts

Now that you’ve had a chance to settle yourself down, break apart the negative comment and start looking at what was really said without the emotion.

• What is the complaint about: Do they refer to a specific incident? Did it happen to them or someone else? Are they repeating something they heard?
• What specifics are cited: Products? People? Places? Times? Events?
• Who is the person making the complaint: Are they in your community? Do they have a (positive) presence elsewhere? What’s important to them? Where do they hang out online?
• What are they really mad about: Bad experience? A bad company response to that experience? Something else?
• Have they complained about this elsewhere? Has anyone else? Is this a new issue or an existing one?

Take as much information as you can from the posting, because even if the tone of the comment was out of line, if you break things down you’ll usually find some truth or lesson hidden within. And that’s what you want to do – get to the root of the problem, and then deal with it.

Step 3: Get Supporting Data

Before you hop right in and respond to your negative friend, get any other supporting information you may need. The worst thing you can do is piss this person off even more by not knowing what you’re talking about when you go to address them.

• Is there any record of what they’re referring to?
• Are you familiar with the product or service they had an issue with?
• Do you understand, as best as you can, why they feel the way they do?

Unfortunately, the answer to all of these questions may be “no”, but collect as much data as you can. If there are others on your team who may know more, ask for their input.

Step 4: Engage the Naysayer…or don’t

Not every negative comment written about you or your brand is going to warrant a response. If someone comments that your service is awful and then five more people comment, calmly, telling the person why they’re wrong, your work is done. Feel free to go get a massage. If in your research you find that this person has a long history of being kind of a douche to brands and that responding only eggs him on more, then let it sit.

However, in many cases, you’re going to want to respond to diffuse the situation. If you are going to respond, you’ll want to:

• Remain calm: If your hands are still shaking or you’re still crying big emo tears over what was said about you, you’re not ready to respond to the situation. Go talk a walk or pass the responsibility off to someone who can handle it. The minute you show anger, defensiveness or emotion in your response, you lose and are immediately discredited.
• Don’t be snarky: Tone is a funny thing online. Some people can read it, some can’t, and some don’t realize that “funny in your head” doesn’t always translate to “funny on the Web”. Do yourself a factor by leaving the snark and humor out of your response and just talk straight. It may not be as amusing but it will save you from shoving your foot further in your mouth. Trust me on this one. I have a Nike logo permanently imprinted on my esophagus.
• Put the facts first: Use all the research you compiled to lay out the facts behind the person’s complaint. Don’t do so in an aggressive or patronizing way, just explain the situation, citing as many specifics and sources as you can. A smack of a reality may calm the person down and, if it doesn’t, it at least shows everyone else watching what happened and that you’re handling it.
• Apologize for anything that’s your fault, nothing else: If the person has a legitimate complaint about something you or your company handled improperly – apologize for it and be sincere. But if you didn’t do anything wrong and there’s nothing to apologize for, don’t just issue the apology for the sake of it. The other party is going to see right through and they’ll call you out on it. Don’t make an ugly situation even uglier. Plus, it’ll make you feel crappy.
• Present a forward-moving action step and take things offline: With the facts laid out and apologies issued, present a forward-moving action step. You’re aware that this happened, now what are you going to do? Let them know that you’re going to follow up with a phone call or an email to take things offline and remedy the situation. Doing this allows you to speak to the person directly (where they’re almost certainly going to be a lot more rational) and it allows you to solve the problem without being watched. Even if you’re just dealing with an angry blog commenter, taking the situation to email can help salvage the sanctity of your comments section.

In most situations it will take just one response from you to diffuse things and get them headed toward a calmer, more productive path. It’s amazing how letting people know that you see them immediately changes the tone of a conversation.

Step 5: Document It

With that situation handled, take some to document it so that you can learn from what happened.

• What was the complaint?
• Is it something you can fix?
• Who was the person who filed it?
• How was it handled? What worked? What didn’t work?

Creating documentation for these types of incidents can help you discover patterns – both in terms of what works and where issues arise in your community. It will also help you identify problem members that you can pass on to the rest of your team in case they encounter them in the future.

Step 6: Let It Go

You’ve learned from it, you’re smarter for it, now let it go. Hanging on to the negativity can only hurt you and your company. In this age of constant-connectedness, you need to be out there. You need to be talking to people. And you can’t do it while still holding on to past grudges and hostility. Know the reason for why you’re engaging online, and keep with it. What you’re doing is important, even if one person decided they didn’t like you that day.

Step 7: Look for Ways To Leverage It

I know. Now you think I’m a bad person, but sometimes there’s a way to use negative press, flame wars and attacks to benefit you in the future. Should you do this immediately and while you’re still in the middle of the problem? No. But when things settle down, don’t discount it.

So someone yelled at you – can you use it as case study on how to handle sensitive situations? Did someone larger than you notice the ruckus? Can it be used to start a relationship with that person and get you a potential guest post? Did the online complaint make you change something in your business? Can you pitch that to the local media and even get the complainer some positive attention for helping generate trend? You may be surprised.

We’re all using the Web to do and deal business. That means we need to be careful about our responses, even when things getting a little emotional. Hopefully the
tips above will help you avoid that emotional ORM disaster and, hey, maybe even help you leverage that bad press.

Over the weekend, our little town of Troy, NY got hit by Hurricane Irene. By the time she was in our backyard the category 3 had calmed to a tropical storm. We sustained strong winds, but nothing too serious. Or so we thought.

The real problem was the rain. Lots and lots of rain. It kept coming, but by the end of Sunday it started to slow. That relief was short lived. Soon after the reports began to roll in about a mudslide wiping out businesses, dams in danger of breaking, boats being smashed to bits and water filling our streets. As a community, we’d forgotten about the most dangerous side effect in a river district — surface runoff.

You see, Troy, NY is nestled in this beautiful river valley:

There’s Outspoken Media! Oh wait, it’s surrounded by rivers. :(

With just 4.69 inches of rain, this happened to the Hudson’s water levels with the worst of it peaking right now:

Disaster struck a community that wasn’t expecting it, but we had a secret weapon that kept us all prepared in the midst of everything.

Mayor Tutunjian.

If you’re a fan of Outspoken Media, how amazing the Troy Mayor’s Office is shouldn’t be a new discovery, we’ve already discussed how the Mayor uses social media better than 99% of us. We got to see this in full force yesterday, through the night and into today. It was incredible to watch Mayor Tutunjian so quickly disseminate vital information through his Twitter account and respond the community’s concerns. More important, when news of a voluntary (and potential mandatory) evacuation broke, it didn’t come from the local news, it broke on Facebook and was promoted through Twitter! Eventually news picked up on the story, but much later.

The biggest problem was that the community didn’t trust or understand WHY news of this caliber would break on Facebook. They were questioning the validity of the news and wanted proof. Surely government officials wouldn’t use silly social media sites to spread serious news. Who posted that evacuation notice to the City of Troy’s Facebook page?

Someone smart. Someone informed. Someone who is using every tool at their disposal to quickly and efficiently touch the people that matter.

Social media isn’t a passing fad. It has become a part of how we communicate and live. If the Mayor’s ROI is in gaining the trust of his constituents, I would like to think (anecdotally) that after his response to the flooding of our city his approval ratings just soared. Regardless of whether you understand WHO was posting to Facebook or Twitter, news broke faster through those mediums than anything else. Within minutes connected individuals were knocking on doors and telling their neighbors to move their cars to higher ground. The Mayor effectively mobilized a city by touching a few through social media faster than he could have by any other means. That’s amazing and we should be taking notes.

So, what can we learn from Hurricane Irene and Mayor Tutunjian about emergency preparedness for reputation management, social media or SEO disasters?

• Gather your advisors and trust them – Build a network of consultants, agencies and/or teams you trust to give you the facts and act in your best interest. Sometimes that means not going after the biggest fish, but staying true to yourself.
• Plan for the worst, hope for the best – You should have a plan in place *before* disaster strikes. Learn from the misfortune of others, because acts of god and awful things can/do happen. You cannot plan for everything, but try to picture the absolute worst case scenario. What would you do? Once you’ve envisioned it and thought through your options the unknown will feel far less intimidating.
• Implement an early warning system – If you aren’t already using an online reputation monitoring solution like Radian 6, Visible Technologies, Trackur or even just Google Alerts, you should be. If you don’t have a way to gather news about your business, products or service, you’re acting blind. You might a disaster brewing, but you wouldn’t know it until it was too late. Don’t let this happen. Find a solution that is cost-effective and easily managed. Learn how to use it and start monitoring those mentions.
• Mobilize early – When you discover something disconcerting, put your plan into action. You should have scenarios built out and based on your discovery, you or a member of your team will know what to do. This may be as simple as further monitoring or as complex as implementing a coordinated PR/ORM/Marketing offense. Get everyone that needs to be involved in those decisions together early. If it’s nothing, you’ll have some practice under your belt for when the proverbial sh*t does hit the fan.
• Communicate frequently – If disaster really has struck, make sure you’re communicating with your advisors for the most recent insight, your team who should be implementing your plan and your community who *needs* to know what is going on. If you’re in charge, you need to be transparent, timely and available for questions. There is no role more important, it will gain your communities’ respect regardless of whether you have all of the answers.
• Act. – I’ve already discussed the importance of shortening your OODA loop to gain a competitive advantage. The same is true when recovering from a disaster. The sooner you make a decision, the sooner you will be on a path to recovery. If you make a mistake, you’ll find out sooner if you act now, which gives you more time to recover. If you didn’t make a mistake, perfect, you’re on your way. This is vital. The number one way to fix a reputation management problem is to get back to business. We (people) have this incredible capacity to forgive when things return to the status quo. If you made a mistake, fix the problem, apologize and get back to work. The only reason we’re disappointed is because we were a fan to begin with.

Troy, NY will bounce back from Hurricane Irene. Eventually, these waters will subside and we’ll be sipping Guinness at Ryan’s Wake remembering when:

How will you survive your future online reputation, social media or SEO disasters?

UPDATE – For those wondering, Outspoken Media’s office doesn’t appear to be in any danger of flooding and all is well. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bridges into the city closed and water is still rising, so we’re working from home today. Business as usual, just don’t have access to the more office-y things.

Also, Lisa had a vacation scheduled for today, but camping doesn’t mix well with hurricanes. Instead she’s our reporter in the field. Here’s some of the aftermath around the Capital District:

Either way, it’s dangerous.

I didn’t really want to talk about Weinergate. It’s not only gross, but it pains me to think about how someone in public office can be so blind to the scope of social media and the Internet. But, looking at my own social media feeds I realized that former U.S. Representative Weiner is not alone. Many of us are blind. Too many of us, and as we’ve learned, being too, um, forthcoming online can often cost your job if you’re not careful.

Avoiding Mistakes

Weinergate started when Rep. Weiner decided to use Facebook and Twitter to solicit online relationships with women concealed from the knowledge of his wife. This is a stellar plan to begin with, but to top it all off, Weiner sent explicit texts and pictures to his online ladyfriends using a government-funded cell phone. Doh.

And then the unthinkable happened: he accidentally tweeted. I know, you’re shocked, right? That never happens. Meaning to send a picture of his junk to an online mistress via Direct Message on Twitter, he accidentally tweeted it to his public timeline. Although promptly deleted, it was still something that quite a few people noticed, and of course saved.

What can you learn from his congressional Weinergate?

Lesson #1: The Internet is Forever

To combat a potential online reputation management issue, we all must accept that the Internet is no longer a “second life”. People act like it’s is a shield, making them brazen and unusually open. But in reality, what you do on the Internet is more likely to stick with you in the future for a lot longer than it would in “real life.” Why? Because the Internet is real life…only under a magnifying glass.

Imagine what Anthony Weiner’s Google search results will look like in the next few years. Unless he’s smart enough to hire an online reputation management company, they will still be riddled with articles about this unfortunate incident. Then compare this outcome to that of Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal, which happened before the rise of social media.

It makes me wonder, would Clinton have been acquitted of impeachment if all of his business had been online?

How to Prevent Mistakes

1. Only publish private messages from private accounts.
   This was Weiner’s first and most crucial mistake in avoiding this reputation nightmare. Had he had the foresight to keep public and private social media accounts, he could have avoided the entire thing. If you’re going to commit adultery (which we don’t condone, but for argument’s sake), never do it from a public account that could potentially hurt your business’ reputation or your own.

 

2. Re-read all tweets or status messages posted on public accounts twice before sending them.
   We’ve all seen far too many people manning company accounts who attempt to be clever by posting some politically incorrect joke to gain attention and create conversation. That’s an OK tactic, but only if you’re willing to stick by it. If you’re doing something controversial you might want to look twice at what you’re posting before you do it because backing down is not an option. It makes people angry.

 

3. Don’t participate in shady behavior that would embarrass your mother.
   Alright, I’m under no delusion that this post will stop any shady behavior, but please think about the traces you’re making when you’re doing whatever it is that you must do online. Not sure what traces you’re leaving? Keep reading.

 

Pointing the Finger

After people noticed they saw something they shouldn’t have on Weiner’s Twitter account, it spread like wildfire. Rep. Weiner tried to deny he had anything to do with the picture at all. He even went on to say that someone hacked into his account and posted a random picture of a penis to simply make fun of his name.

Upon further investigation it was found that the tweet was sent from a TweetDeck account that was consistent to most of the other tweets on Weiner’s account. While this didn’t prove anything, it put increased pressure on Rep. Weiner to come clean. And his story started falling apart…

Lesson #2: The Internet Leaves Traces

Computers are far more complex than most people realize, capable of tracing details down to every character you type. It’s no wonder that online reputation consultants are such a needed and growing division of PR. But what traces are you leaving?

1. Your IP address is logged.
   Keep in mind that it’s very easy for someone to look up the IP address of the computer from which you’re sending information. While most preliminary IP lookup Web sites won’t give people details, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If necessary, authorities have the capability of looking at this information.

 

2. If you give a mouse a cookie…
   Ah, cookies. The delicious advertising evil that flaunts things we want to buy in front of us while we’re trying to work. I hope that isn’t just me. The use of these is so extreme with third party cookies tracking your movements from site to site. But, they’re hidden too, so there are traces most people don’t even think about. Let’s just say I wouldn’t buy anything embarrassing or illegal at work.

 

3. Deleting doesn’t work.
   This goes beyond the fact that anyone can screen-shot anything you do on a public social media site or even blog for that matter. I’ve seen many deleted tweets resurface via this method. You can delete a tweet or blog post/comment from your account, but once it goes public someone will always have a copy. And if you’re using Facebook, privacy be damned, they keep records of all account activity, even what has been deleted. They own that information and will use it as they see fit.

 

Lying to Cover Your A**

As speculation that Rep. Weiner was lying about his illicit behavior increased, women involved in his online rendezvouses started coming out of the woodworks.

What did he do? He emailed his long-term online girlfriend, porn star Ginger Lee and asked her to lie for him and tell the press that they don’t know one another. He then combined it with his arrogance instructing her on PR tactics and telling her to use “y’all” to sound more innocent. He sure knows how to woo a woman.

Lesson #3: The Truth Prevails

Knee deep in lies and with the media hungry for fuel to feed the flame, copies of e-mails and Facebook conversations surfaced (probably for a nice chunk of change) between Rep. Weiner and his many online pursuits.

Take this lesson back to when you were a kid and your mom told you that the truth always comes out. Especially when all of the cheating, lying and coercing is taking place online and your emails are staring you in the face word for word. It’s much harder to have a he said- she said public debate this way.

1. Be accountable.
2. Be polite.
3. Don’t write anything you’d be embarrassed for the public to see.

The People Will Rally

Due to the cover-ups and busted lies, more investigations were prompted about Rep. Weiner’s activities. One such investigation was his potential online solicitation and involvement with a 17-year-old girl. *sigh*

Fellow politicians began rallying for his resignation, and while the President wasn’t one, Obama did offer his opinion that if it were him, he would resign. Game over. Once your colleagues and the general public rally against you it’s a lost cause.

Three days after Obama’s interview, Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress and issued a public apology.

Lesson #4: Some Things You Can’t Combat

Escalations were what really made the situation what it was, a bloodbath. If you remember lesson #3 that truth prevails, the more information that comes to light, more attention will be thrown at the situation you’re trying to bury. It’s best to come clean about something completely on your own terms so that the situation doesn’t get worse.

If it gets so big that the President, mainstream media and Internet rally against you, it’s an issue even professional ORM experts or crisis communication agencies may not want to touch. And then you’re really in trouble.

Hmm.

If you haven’t heard of it, Skweal is a feedback platform designed to grab user complaints before they go viral or grow to damage someone’s online reputation by keeping them offline. To leave a comment or complaint, businesses are to direct customers to visit Skweal on their smartphones where they can pick the business out from a list and post a private message. Someone on the Skweal team will then pass that customer message off to the right person at the business. To aid this process, Skweal would obviously like for businesses to register with the site, but even if they don’t, Skweal says they’ll do their best to track down an email/Twitter account/SMS. Founder Tyler Crowley also “joked” that if they can’t track down contact info for your business, they’ll just hand over the complaints to your competitor.

Ha! Funny, right? Yeah, Tyler, Seth Godin called. He wants his old social media blackmail strategy back.

But sketchiness aside, I couldn’t help but wonder if business owners really need Skweal. It seems to me they already have the exact same functionality.

Skweal = Your Web site.

Last year I was interviewed by a wedding magazine about how bridal shops could protect their online reputation. One of the tips I mentioned was giving your customers a place on your Web site to leave comments and complaints. That seems pretty logical to me. If you don’t want angry customers to head to Twitter, to their blog, to Yelp or to another public (and search-able) place to say bad things about you, then give them somewhere else to go. Create a form or an area on your Web site that serves as a dedicated place for people to leave customer feedback and then promote the heck out of it. Make sure customers know THIS is where you’d like them to go with complaints and where they’ll get the quickest response and/or resolution.

Will every angry and disgruntled customer head there first? No, probably not. But folks who really want to be heard and who want action will. And when they do head there, thank them. Because they didn’t just run to the nearest social media site. They came to you first. This gives you a fantastic opportunity to solve their issues, overwhelm them with killer customer service, and to change their experience. So don’t be an idiot and let the complaint sit there. Make it so they’re redirected to your phone or email and ACT on the complaints as soon as they come in.

Realize that you don’t need Skweal or any other site to act as the middleman between you and your customers. If social media has taught us anything, it’s that. What you do need to do is to give your customers an outlet to air their grievances. Because that’s all they really want to do. If you don’t want them to get loud on Twitter, give them somewhere else to go and promote it to all hell so that everyone knows, this is where your ears are and how they should get in touch with you.

Just my two cents.

No, no, no, no! Don’t delete that review or comment!

While it may seem counter-intuitive, there are quite a few reasons why business owners want to resist the urge to delete comments and reviews that are critical of them. Sometimes, negative reviews can actually help, not harm, your business. Here are a few reasons why it’s okay to let negative reviews lie on your page.

You want the conversation to happen at home

If someone left you a scathing review on your Facebook page, you may want to consider sending them a cheese basket or something to thank you. Because, it means they were kind enough to come to you first and that there’s still time to fix the relationship [Imagine if the people you dated did this!]. If you then go and delete that comment, you’re going to make an already-disgruntled customer simply more frustrated, essentially telling them you don’t care about their feedback. You’ll be sending them away even angrier than they arrived and they’re not going to keep that to themselves. They’re going to up the fire and leave an even nastier review about your business on Yelp or Google Places. Or they’re going to start a tweet war about how you censored them. Or they’re going to write a blog post with your company name in the Title tag. Any of these things would be way worse than one negative comment on a page that you control. To avoid it, let the comment sit on your Facebook page, addressing it calmly and sympathetically. It’s always better to keep the conversation at your own house than to let it spread elsewhere.

It’s a chance to change the conversation

If someone left a negative comment or review about your company, they’re giving you a chance to change the conversation and make it better. They didn’t silently vow to never do business with your company again and trash you to their friends. They’ve told you what happened, why they’re upset, and now they’re looking to you to make it better. Instead of just deleting the comment, listen to what they’re telling you. Understand what their problem is and where the communication breakdown occurred. Say you’re sorry, vow to do better, and invite them back so that you can personally change their experience. By responding to a negative comment on your home turf, you get the chance to turn a negative into a positive.

You get to show off your customer service

I imagine if you’re a small business that sells wedding dresses it seems pretty tempting to delete that angry comment from your Facebook wall. I mean, they already got their once-in-a-lifetime-dress, right? They won’t need another one for at least three years. Who cares if they’re upset with your company? Well, everyone else who stumbled upon that review/comment will care. By positively responding to a negative comment on your page, it shows everyone looking how much you care about your customers and the lengths you’ll go to right a bad situation. The person upset may never need your services again, but they have friends who will and you also want to leave a positive foot trail for potential customers who innocently land on your page while researching.

Gives you street cred

Admit it – when you see a business that ONLY has 100 percent glowing reviews, you start to wonder who they’re paying under the table. Because it’s just not natural. Even the greatest business with the best customer service is going to attract a negative review at some point. As long as you have plenty of positive reviews to counteract it, leaving a negative review on your page isn’t going to hurt you. It may even provide balance and make someone feel more comfortable purchasing from you. [Assuming you addressed the review like an adult and didn’t call them a dumbass to create an unnecessary crisis.]

You get feedback you can act on

Outspoken Media is no stranger to negative comments, but we always try and use those comments to enact change. It’s like hiring your own mini focus group without having to pay for it. Take the feedback people are giving you and look for ways to incorporate it into your business. Doing so will not only improve your business, but it’s going to make you a hero in the eyes of your customers who know feel like you’re really listening to them. That’s how great brands are born.

Those are some reasons that I would encourage business owners NOT to delete reviews or negative comments left on their site.  If you need help, you may be interested in reading up on how companies should respond to negative reviews, how to make flame wars work for you, how to manage online reviews, and how to create an ORM crisis in case that’s you’re thing.  How have you handled negative reviews in the past? Would you trust a business with nothing but positive reviews? Am I too skeptical for my own good? Tell me.

Meanwhile, Google doesn’t seem to have a problem with the whole game [search suppression]. As the world’s largest search engine, a spokesman there says creating new content to hide negative material is fair play.

You can listen to the full broadcast here: The Business Of Burying Internet Search Results

We’ve known for awhile now where Google stands on managing your reputation through search results. They condone it! Susan Moskwa said so in her post on the official Webmaster Central blog. Google sees online reputation management as a combination of:

1. Protecting your personal information
2. Removing offending information about you from the source
3. Proactively publishing your information

Google would prefer it if business owners actively managed their brands through online reputation management rather than demanding Google remove search results, which goes against the very essence of Google and probably isn’t going to happen. It would make Google’s life a heck of a lot simpler if brands would take ownership of their search results rather than leaving them up to the algorithm, spammers and opportunists (yeah, I’m looking at you unnamed consumer website).

How often does Google have to defend itself against individuals and businesses angry about their competition appearing for keywords much less libelous (and often accurate) reviews? From a litigious standpoint it’s financially in Google’s best interest to encourage brands to learn to effectively promote positive mentions for themselves. And, from an algorithmic standpoint it’s in Google’s best interest to rank brand-owned results for branded search queries as seen in their recent more search results update.

However, over on Search Engine Roundtable the following question was posed:

“…do you think Google is saying they are okay with you ‘manipulating’ the search results for ORM purposes? I doubt it. I guess it depends on how you define the word ‘manipulating.”

Does “proactively publish information” mean that Google condones manipulating search results? We have to look closer at the nuances of online reputation management:

Creating Profiles About Your Brand

When you use a service to register your username, you’re protecting your brand and probably giving your community another way to network with you. Assuming you abide by the guidelines of that community, there shouldn’t be a problem with grabbing your trademark or name. Unfortunately, there’s a slippery slope here.

Once you’ve registered your username, what are you doing with the accounts? You need to personalize the information, not duplicate verbatim what you’ve provided on a hundred other profiles. More important, you should be adding value to the community. In the eyes of Google, a hundred profiles that say the same thing about you and provide no additional value probably don’t need to appear for brand-specific search queries. If there is more relevant information about your brand in the form of recent job postings, news, reviews or press releases, those are going to have more relevant content, authority and freshness and justify a higher ranking.

Creating a Website or Blog for Your Brand

You really do need a website. I cannot count the number of reputation management problems that arise when a brand or individual comes to us with not just a poorly optimized website, but no site at all. In 2010 there’s no excuse for not having a site where visitors can find accurate information about you including the holy grail of ORM, reliable contact information or an attentive customer service department. The only time Google is going to take issue with your website or blog is if they can’t crawl it, understand what the site is about or you’re breaking their guidelines.

Creating LOTS of Websites for Your Brand

If Google likes websites, why not create a couple dozen about your brand?! That would be neat-o, but you’d also be dipping into some serious spammer territory depending on how you structure the site, write the content and promote it. This gets into the fundamental issue Google has with duplicate content. We know they have an issue because they’ve said so and given us a number of ways to reduce it. So, this is a definite area where Google might not condone manipulating the search results if these sites provide no new content or value to the user.

Publishing Positive Reviews About Your Brand

Google loves reviews. They include them in search results, on Places pages, on Products pages and more. The larger the quantity of reviews, the more statistically significant the results are and the more value that is being passed onto the user. I don’t really trust one stellar review or one really bad review, but I do trust thirty reviews that tell me whether a location is clean, friendly or affordable. This isn’t about Google, it’s just good business for brands to encourage online reviews from happy customers. So, where might Google have an issue? Just like with multiple websites and profiles, Google’s probably not going to want to promote the same review(s) posted across a dozen different websites.

Putting Good News in Front of Bad News

This is perhaps the most important component of online reputation management for brands with major disasters. Have you taken a look at Tiger’s search results lately? Putting good news in front of bad worked even for the most epic gossip fodder of the decade. Just like reviews, managing your brand through relevant news is just good business.

Where is Google going to have an issue? When you decide to start flooding the search results with press releases that no one will read or care about. These will stick around for a little while, but trust me, in two weeks they’re going to fall from the top SERPs and your budget and time will have been wasted.

Google is fine with online reputation management, just like they’re fine with search engine optimization. What they probably aren’t comfortable with is manipulation that breaks guidelines and adds no value to a user. Let’s ignore the fact that “ORM” is new and play by the same old “SEO” rules.

Ready?

Quick! Someone has launched an attack against your brand. The washer they purchased from you actually BLEW UP in their home and, as you can imagine, they’re pretty angry about it. I think the homeowner’s dog even got some shrapnel in the eye (don’t worry, he’s going to make a full recovery). What do you do?

Breathe

When you discover that someone has certifiably lost their cool in your general direction you’re going to start sweating, your hands will shake and you’ll be overwhelmed with the urge to vomit all over your computer. When this hits, go for a walk. Breathe. Do NOT immediately respond. You want to avoid running your mouth off online, making the problem bigger and making YOURSELF look like a moron. So just be quiet and breathe. Maybe go grab a hug if you feel really horrible about that poor dog.

Measure & Evaluate the Problem

Now that you’re feeling more level-headed, let’s figure out what we really have here. What is the scope of the problem?

• Do we have a few angry tweets from a specific user?
• A Twitter conversation involving multiple users?
• A blog post with zero comments?
• A blog post with 200 comments?
• An entire social media campaign centered on what a jerk your company is?

That will help you see the initial scope of the problem, but you also have to take into consideration how fast things are growing. Are things getting worse or are people calming down? How quickly is new negative content being produced? Does the evidence remain but passion/interest has died down? Where are you in the process?

Obviously, depending on the scope and speed of the fall out you’re going to want to handle the situation differently. If it’s just a few tweets from a single user and nothing else then it’s easy enough to reach out to them, apologize, and take the conversation offline. If it’s a blog post that’s gaining serious traction then you’re going to have to be more involved publicly in order to make things right. And, well, if there’s now an entire social media campaign growing around how you almost blew up someone’s dog, well, maybe you should take another trip around the block. And steal an extra hug.

Evaluate your Team

Once you know what you’re up against, take a look at your team. Is the problem something that you have the resources to handle in-house? Do you have someone who can respond to the tweets, play nice in the comments of an angry blog post, and help get everyone on the same page and working together? If you do, awesome! Bring this person into the fold about what’s going on (if they don’t already know), why this is important to the company, and the outcome that the company would like to see (hopefully more than just “MAKE IT END!”). Once this person has been briefed you can begin laying out a plan of action.

Or is the problem bigger than your team? Is it going to take more than saying “we screwed up and we’re sorry” to fix the damage that has been created for your brand in the search results and public opinion? If you don’t know the right way to handle things or how to control users find about you in the search results, then you may want to consider hiring an online reputation management company to at least help you create a plan, if not manage it completely.

Create Your Action Plan

Based on the team assembled and the problem at hand you’re going to want to lay out a plan for how you’re going to handle the problem. The plan you create will be completely customized to the situation at hand, but here are some things you’ll want to keep in mind when talking with your team, whether in-house or one you hired.

• What is the desired outcome? – for people to calm down, for follow up posts/tweets about the resolution, to get your side/truth out to other customers, to quiet one loon, etc?
• Where are the biggest fires located? – On Twitter, in blogs, in news articles, on Facebook, in niche community sites, etc?
• Who is the person making the attack – a customer, a former employee, a competitor, a competitor in disguise, etc.
• What is the damage to the brand? – turning away potential customers, social media users, the search results, authority drop, etc?
• Where does it make sense to respond? – what will be more powerful? On Twitter, on the angry blog post, on your own corporate blog (you do have one, right?), partner sites, a micro site, a larger media outlet, via some other outlet?
• Who is the brand currently on social media? – are you leveraging an established presence or speaking up for the first time? Do you have an existing fan army?
• What is the plan going forward – Will you create new content to displace existing content? Will you need to build a full social media plan? Will you create a pro-active ORM strategy once you’re out of this crisis?
• What is the biggest picture for your company? – how will this change business? What new policies will be put into place? Where do we go from here?

There’s a lot that can go into creating a plan of attack after an online reputation management issue. Here are some resources to help you learn more about your options if you are planning to go it alone:

• Outspoken Media’s Online Reputation Management Guide
• Outspoken’s blog content focused on reputation management
• Marketing Pilgrim’s Online Reputation Monitoring Beginners Guide
• Elixir System’s Online Reputation Management Guide

Put The Action Plan Into Motion

Your plan should come with a timeline for what will be implanted, by whom and when. This is your religion. Now get to it.

Learn the Rules, Play Smarter

Your plan of action should have allowed you to resolve the attack in some way that works for the brand. But now that you’ve cleared murky waters, you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to set yourself up better next time. That means doing three main things:

• Create a system to monitor mentions: If you haven’t already created a listening station for your company, you’re behind the curve. Using tools like Google Alerts, Twitter Search, BackType, Social Mention, BoardReader and Trackur can help you find, in real time, the conversations that are important to your brand and where you need to speak up.
• Invest in pro-active ORM: Pro-active ORM means creating content to rank before you need it. One blog post with your company’s name in the title is way less intimidating when you have a search results filled with positive mentions, mentions that you’ve worked to build. Build your Google 10 before you need it. Better yet, build your Google 30.
• Build your social media presence: Sometimes people launch brand attacks because they’re really pissed off at you. Other times they launch them on accident when they tweeted something because they didn’t know how to get in touch with you. Curb the latter half by making it easy for people to find you. Set up your satellite communities on the Web and make sure people know where they are. I don’t want to write a blog post about why I want to stab you. I want you to be hanging out near my house so that you can come in and quickly fix my problem.

While the social and ORM strategies we provide clients are considerably more detailed, I do think the breakdown above can help business owners successfully wade through many online reputation hiccups without having to seek outside help. Of course, if you do need some help, the light is always on for you.