Tag: brand reputation
The last post discussed why online brand reputation management is important. This post will explain how you can monitor the web for mentions of your brand.
This excellent 21 step by step guide was taken from ronnestam.com and his post on 21 Steps on How to Monitor Your Brand Online and Keep Track of the Conversation
Follow these 21 steps to take gain some sort of control of where your brand might be mentioned online:
- First thing. Head over to Google Alerts and enter the keywords you want to monitor. This is the easy one.
- Then do the same over at Socialmention Alerts. An easy one too. However, these first two ones are a little bit slow so continue reading.
- Register an account on Netvibes.com and once your done keep that Internet browser window open.
- Open one more window (press CTRL+N or CMD+N on a Mac)
- In the new window, go to socialmention.com and perform a search on the keywords (for example the name of your brand) you want to track.
- Once you have gotten your result. Look for the orange RSS icon in the top right corner.
Click the RSS Feed icon.
- Now select the link in your web browser and copy (press CTRL+C or CMD+C on a mac).
- Switch back to the window where you have your new Netvibes.com page.
- In the top, press new Tab and name it with the keyword you searched for.
- In the top left, click the green button ‘Ad Content’ and choose Ad a Feed in the drop down menu.
- Place your marker in the field that says ‘Enter a feed address or website URL for auto detection’ and paste (CTRL+V or CMD+V on a mac).
- Press the button Add Feed besides your pasted link.
- Now press the little green button that says ‘add’ and you search result will be displayed in the bottom field below the Tab that you just named.
- Switch windows and perform the same search in Socialmention but this time click the tab Microblogs above the search field
- Redo the entire process and you have added your next search.
- Once you are done you should have searches in each and every area from the web.
- Now Switch window back to the one with Social Mention and go to Icerocket.com
- On Icerocket you will find the RSS results to the left.
- Now perform the same process except for creating new tabs in Netvibes.
- Once done, go to Twingly.com and perform the same searches on both Blogs and Microblogs.
- Last thing to do. Go to the preferences of your internet browser and change your startpage to netvibes.com
Carrying out these steps will ensure you are aware of what is being said about you, where and by whom.
Happy monitoring!
March 15, 2010
Reputation management used to be about scanning newspapers and magazines. However, the world is changing fast. It’s quite likely that your customers spend more time online than they do watching TV. Surfing the Internet, whether for business or pleasure is now the most common pastime in the Western world. People socialise online, shop online, do business online; everything. So its important that you track what people are saying about you online.
You might think that your business maybe too small and no one talks about you, or maybe you think that you already monitor your website, blog and Twitter and that’s good enough. Well that’s where you are wrong! People are constantly talking online – sometimes they’re talking to you, othertimes about you. You need to make sure you’re monitoring the whole of the world wide web for your keywords (namely your business name). Only then can you respond to people when they mention you. If someone makes a negative comment about your company in a forum shouldhave processes in place that would alerted you to it. Then you’ll be able to instantly respond to it, fix the situation and show them how good your customer service actually is.
So where are people making comments about your business?
- Blogs
- Twitter
- Social Networks (such as Facebook, Mebo and MySpace)
- Social Media Sites (such as the reviews within Amazon)
- Wikipedia
- Blog Comments
- Message Boards
- Forums
- Consumer Websites
- Article sites
- Video Sites (such as YouTube, Moveo)
- Photo Sites (such as Flickr, Google Picasa)
Monitoring your online brand reputation will allow you to gain further understanding of what people think of you and your products and services. You can view trends and find out what is and what isn’t popular, and be made aware of any potential issues.
Our next post on Monday will outline what tools you can use to monitor your online reputation – make sure you don’t miss it. You can be alerted to all our post updates by entering your email in the box to the right.
March 11, 2010
With the majority of people (approx 80%) searching the internet before they purchase a product or before they get in touch with a company they want to work with, it’s vital that all small business have an online presence that conveys a feeling of trust and creditability.
Everyone has had the experience of clicking onto a website, only to get the feeling that it hasn’t been updated since the mid 1990’s! What do you do when you get to a site like that? Click the back button and go to the next search result that Google gave you, that’s what! Have a think about your small business website – what do you think people feel when they first arrive? Do they immediately trust your company? Trust that you can deliver a good product or service? Do they feel it’s worth the investment of their time to spend ten minutes browsing through your site? Or do they get a worried feeling and decide to leave without even reading what you’ve got written on your homepage?
However, ensuring your website has a feeling of credibility isn’t just about good design. Granted, that does make up a lot of it. In the same way that we all judge books by their cover (even though we know we shouldn’t), we all judge websites on that initial split second view.
I’ve been reading a report by BJ Fogg from Stanford University. He carried out a huge research study into exactly what makes a website trustworthy. You can view the report here, or browse through a presentation on the subject on SlideShare.
However, if you’re short on time (which to be honest, most small business owners are), you can just read the main points below:
Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site
You can build web site credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material
Show that there’s a real organisation behind your site
Showing that your web site is for a legitimate organisation will boost the site’s credibility. The easiest way to do this is by listing a physical address. Other features can also help, such as posting a photo of your offices or listing a membership with the chamber of commerce
Highlight the expertise in your organisation and in the content and services you provide
Do you have experts on your team? Are your contributors or service providers authorities? Be sure to give their credentials. Are you affiliated with a respected organisation? Make that clear. Conversely, don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by association
Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site
The first part of this guideline is to show there are real people behind the site and in the organisation. Next, find a way to convey their trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios that tell about family or hobbies
Make it easy to contact you
A simple way to boost your site’s credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address, and email address
Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose)
We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Of course, not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com. The visual design should match the site’s purpose
Make your site easy to use – and useful
We’re squeezing two guidelines into one here. Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company’s ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with web technology
Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently)
People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated or reviewed
Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers)
If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don’t mind annoying users and losing credibility. As for writing style, try to be clear, direct, and sincere
Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem
Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. It’s also important to keep your site up and running.
If you want more information on creating a credible website, or if you want some help getting your website ranked well in the major search engines, come and talk to us. We’re a very friendly bunch and are passionate about helping small businesses succeed.
October 6, 2009
This week’s blog topic is all about O2 and the new iPhone 3G S (current model is iPhone 3G, new model 3G S).
Apple unveiled the new iPhone 3G S at yesterday’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Rumors of a new iPhone have been whirling around for months and months, so this came as no surprise. As detailed on the Apple website, the new features of the handset are:
- 2x Faster: The fastest iPhone ever. Load web pages, launch apps and more – faster
- Built in video camera: Shoot video, then edit it right on your phone
- Voice control: Use your voice to place a call or play music
- Compass: Let iPhone 3G S point you in the right direction
- Spotlight Search: Search across your iPhone from one place
- Messages: Send text, photos, videos and more
For those of us in the UK, the Carphone Warehouse and O2 will be supplying the phone to consumers from the 19th June 2009. However – anyone who already has an iPhone 3G (like myself) will face a huge charge if we want to upgrade.
There is limited information on the new iPhone 3G S on O2’s homepage; all current communication on the deployment of the new iPhone 3G S has come from their official O2 Twitter feed. From this, they announced that existing customers will have to buy themselves out of their existing contract, then purchase the new iPhone 3G S on a new contract. This is unlike the time of the previous iPhone 3G launch, where in order to make up for the disappointing performance of the first-generation iPhone, O2 allowed customers to break from their existing contract and upgrade for free.
For anyone who has a current iPhone 3G, the minimum their contract can have left is 6 months (for those who bought the iPhone 3G on the day of release, anyone else will have even longer). On a mid-sized contract of £35 a month, this equates to more than a £200 charge. Now many of you may think that this is pretty fair – why should people on an iPhone 3G contract get out of it, just because a new phone has been launched. And in a way you’re right – if I had a Nokia and Nokia released a new phone (which they do often), I would be laughed out of O2 if I demanded to be released from my contract just because I wanted the new version of my existing Nokia phone.
So why are O2 not repeating this offer of getting out of your contract for free – it’s because they know that they’ve got money coming in regardless. By forcing people with the current iPhone 3G to sit out their existing contract, they get a steady £35 (or whatever) a month from them. They can they can then provide new customers with the new iPhone 3G S, so their new stock of iPhone 3G S go on new customers, rather than existing ones. The iPhone is exclusive to O2 so we don’t have a choice. O2 know that even if they make current customers really, really angry – it’s tough. We can’t exactly take our business elsewhere.
But the problem here is that the majority of iPhone users are (or were) fiercely loyal to the iPhone – these are the people you saw on the news queuing up overnight to make sure they got their mitts on a new iPhone 3G on the day of release. And why did they do that?? Because O2 had allowed them to get out of their existing contract with the first-generation iPhone and just pay the money for the new phone alone. These people made the iPhone 3G (and in turn O2) a huge success. These are the people who blog about it, tweet about it and convince their friends that they can’t possibly live without one! But do you think these same people will be queuing round the block in the rain if they have to pay £200+ to get out of their contract, plus the £274.23 to buy the new phone?? We’re in a recession, and even the most avid of iPhone fans are unlikely to be willing to drop that amount of cash just for the prestige of having the latest iPhone (the new features really aren’t worth that much money, and anyone on with an iPhone 3G can get a software upgrade free anyway). And anyone who doesn’t already have an iPhone is unlikely to be mad enough about them to queue like that.
Another problem for O2 is that as well as the rumours of a new iPhone launch, there have also been rumours that other networks will soon be allowed to sell the iPhone. If this happens, O2 will soon find that all these unhappy iPhone 3G customer may well up sticks and leave to a provider that will be more competitive and who treat their customer with a bit more love and care. So by angering their existing iPhone 3G customers, O2 are taking a big risk.
So, watch the news on 19th June – will people be queuing outside (hopefully not in the rain – come on British summer!!) all night long to get their hands on the latest release? I doubt it – and if they are they’re probably actors/O2 employees etc, who’ve been paid to do it! I can just see the new launch being a flop – because O2 are alienating the people they need to make it a success.
The moral of this story? Just because you may have your customers held over a barrel, it doesn’t excuse you treating them badly. This is a lesson that can be applied to all businesses – large and small. If you’re a small business providing a service that no-one else does, or if you’ve got customers locked into a contract – it shouldn’t affect the way you treat them. Never assume that you can ignore them or give them a second rate service just because they have no choice. Customers are king as far as small businesses are concerned and you should treat every single one like gold-dust!
June 9, 2009
Heard of a little thing called Twitter? I hope so! At SMEketing in Hampshire, not a day goes past where we don’t read some kind of article on it. They’re not always positive articles – like most success stories, there are people who love it, and people who loathe it. But at the end of the day you can no longer ignore it. Twitter is here to stay, and it can help your small business.
How? Well, many of the articles I read surround success stories of Twitter – how it has directly helped businesses gain more customers. And you know what? They’re always small businesses – these are the people who are using Twitter to maximise their product/brand awareness and as a result are generating new businesses and boosting the spend of existing customers.
Here’s a couple of Twitter success stories:
Hubspot, a fantastic source for online marketing, recently wrote about the Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck in LA. They’ve been using social media, and in particular Twitter, with astonishing affect. They identified that their young, techno-savvy customers were using Twitter, so they got involved too. They now have a community of over 14,000 people. They used Twitter to broadcast the locations of their trucks, solicited new names for their trucks and are also designing new company t-shirts via their blog and Twitter. As a result, they now have constant queues of people, lining up to get their hands on one of their tacos. Considering the current state of the economy, that’s a pretty nice position to be in!
Another, well documented Twitter success story is that of CoffeeGroundz, a coffee shop that has credited Twitter with almost doubling their clientele! CoffeeGroundz owner, J.R.Cohen registered with Twitter and started following members of his local Twitterati (definition: the tweet elite, whose feeds attract thousands of followers and whose 140-character spews capture the attention of the rapt who doggedly monitor them) – he soon build up over 1000 followers. One day one of his followers called Sean, sent a direct tweet to Cohen, saying that “I want to pre order a bkfast wrap so I can zip thru drive thru to get back for gas man. C’est possible?”. Cohen replied straight away saying ‘Wi. What do you want on it?”. Ten minutes later Sean had been through the drive-thru and had picked up his breakfast wrap. This simple exchange generated a lot of buzz on Twitter, and was hailed as the first time a to-go order had ever been placed via the medium. Grasping the opportunity with both hands Cohen started taking to-go orders via direct messages from any of his Twitter followers.
CoffeeGroundz has also expanded on their Twitter success by hosting a Tweet-Up – an event where local Twitterers meet up to chat, network and generally get to know people better. Not only did this generate great PR for CoffeeGroundz, but they also kept the 100+ Twitterers well fed and watered – lining their pockets even further!
There are many examples of how small businesses are using Twitter for their advantage. It can be as simple as confirming an appointment, offering some advice, or just commenting on other people’s conversations. The point is that you can’t gain from the benefits if you’re not there. Twitter is perfect for small businesses – it doesn’t cost a penny, and it allows you to reinforce one of your key USPs – your individual character and personal touch to business.
What else can you use Twitter for?
- Understand your customers - by using Twitter polls, you can gain insight on your followers that can be fed back into business
- Form valuable business relationships - it’s not just your customers who are using Twitter. It’s likely that journalists and body representatives are using it too, so use if to build relationships with these key people
- Events and reporting - if you are hosting an event, create buzz about it by broadcasting details via Twitter
- Offer exclusive offers and promotions - offer discounts to Twitterers only
- Reputation management - use Twitter to make followers aware of your service levels, answer customer questions and engage i conversations about your offerings
If you’re still not sure if Twitter is right for your small business, come and talk to us at SMEketing. Based in Southampton, Hampshire, we can help you plan your Social Media Marketing campaigns to ensure you receive best possible results from your investment. Get in touch, even if it’s just for a quick bit of advice! Of course, you can always reach a SMEketer on Twitter – follow us at http://twitter.com/SMEketing
If you’re already using Twitter to great success then let us know. It’s always good to hear from small businesses that are doing well – especially in the current economic climate. Leave a comment at the bottom of the post…
For information and advice on setting up a Twitter account – stay tuned. This will be the subject of the next SMEketing blog post.
April 14, 2009
I was sitting at my laptop last weekend brainstorming ideas for our small business marketing blog when I got a call from a friend of mine to see what I was up to.
When I told her that I was brainstorming ideas for my blog on a sunny Hampshire Saturday afternoon she thought I had gone mad!! She pretty much told that they are a waste of time, that they are for teenagers or for people that love to complain about the world. So it quickly came apparent to me that the subject of SMEketing’s first blog post should be about why every small business should be maintaining a blog.
So here it is…. 5 Reasons To Blog!
1 – Blogs are AMAZING for search engine optimisation purposes. You can use them to build links into your main site, search engine spyders crawl your blog and follow your links into your site so you get crawled more often. They are great for you site’s stats as you can use them to generate traffic via social bookmarking (and build more backlinks), if your content is interesting people will spend longer on your site so the search engines think you have valuable information and this will help improve search rankings.
2 – You can control your brand reputation through your blog so don’t be afraid to approve negative comments. It is better to have the negative comments about your business in your blog over anywhere on the net that you might not find out about until it has damaged your business. Often you can use the negative comments and turn it into a positive situation with a well planned and structured response.
3 – Share the love! Add social share icons into your blogs so your clients, employees and potential customers can share your information, services and products with the world!
4 – Blogging for small businesses is a brilliant opportunity for your employees to take an active role in promoting the company. Blogging should be done with a passion so sharing the responsibility keeps it fresh and ensures you don’t get burnt out. Share the task with a range of your employees and colleagues so they can deliver a new perspective and have time to be creative and capture their point!
5 – Remember that people buy your products and services, so give them a window into your operations so they get a feel for your style. This can help increase your chances of getting that next deal or closing the one already on the table.
I wish I could go more than 5 reasons, the rest will have to wait for another time. If you have any other reasons why you think blogging is great for small businesses, leave a comment below.
March 29, 2009
