Posts Tagged ‘online reputation’

First stop London. Started the day at our London office talking about online reputation management at a breakfast meeting with clients and colleagues. The question came up about whether CEOs should be blogging.  Someone mentioned that one company does not let its top execs blog while another welcomes the practice. My sense is that it is fine to let senior executives blog as long as guidelines exist and policies are clearly outlined and articulated. I bet  that less than 25% of employees even know that their company has employee guidelines for social media.  As for CEOs blogging, I think it depends on the company’s culture, whether the CEO has anything to say and whether employees think his or her time would be better spent with customers and employees face-to-face. It is a 50-50 proposition since it works for some companies and can be an irritant to others. 

One of our findings in Risky Business: Reputations Online was that the vast majority of executives (87%) have sent or received at least one email that they should not have. My colleague mentioned an incident that happened in London last week. Apparently one company sent its board meeting minutes to the entire workforce. Not a good thing.  Will find out more.

While on the train now to my next market, Paris, I read Lucy Kellaway’s article about recent reader emails that are drifting back to more formal punctuation and grammar. No longer is she opening a message with “Hey there” or “Rgds.”  Today her unsolicited emails begin with “Dear Ms. Kellaway”  and close with “Sincerely.”  I agree with Ms. Kellaway that the recession has sobered up a lot of people: “When people are losing their jobs, correct dress and usage of words seem like a good insurance policy.” People are clearly more conscious of their personal reputation and understand that every impression counts, online and offline.

Will continue to write about my impressions as I travel the continent.

 

   

Just caught myself intrigued by an article about Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales possibly losing his board seat. It was on gawker.com and not very complimentary (understatement). Then these few sentences about Wikipedia and made me think it really ought to be called repupedia. "Incompetence and infighting are endemic to nonprofits, of course. But Wikipedia's bureaucracy is distinctly, fearsomely awful. The site, which dictates the online reputation of countless living people and companies, itself operates by rules that are completely incomprehensible, determined by a self-appointed group of volunteer editors who can seldom stop arguing over obscurities to explain their ways to outsiders." Food for thought about how Wikipedia catalogues all these institutions' and individuals' reputations online.

Fast Company talks about the “reputation economy” in its December issue. We have heard that term before because it applies to the exercise of lifting your own reviewer ratings when you write something on Wikipedia or post a video online.  Companies such as amazon and ebay have always been about the reputation economy as people review books and sell or buy products online.  The reputation economy has become more complicated as newcomers arrive such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, Angie’s List and Urbanspoon.  I have gone to all these sites looking for reviews although I must say that I am never sure how to discern which reviewers I can trust. I mostly get overwhelmed and move on. The article in Fast Company, however, is about a dispute at Yelp where they banned some members and they in turn started a class-action lawsuit along with the customary Yelp-sucks.com site. The argument is about who has the power to censor and harm another’s reputation. Sounds like a whole new class of lawyer will have to emerge to settle these types of disputes on the reputation trade.

 

I thought I would also mention another interesting dispute covered in Advertising Age. A message on Twitter complained about a management consulting company’s trade booth at Adobe Max and called them complete clowns.  A digital strategy director at the company, Sapient, debated about sending back an angry response – will it draw more attention? Should I wait and see how much impact the original twitter made? As the Sapient exec Freddie Laker said, “Social media presents tremendous opportunities to connect with potential customers but it also requires a thick skin, some self-restraint and most importantly, the wisdom to know when and how to communicate.” Among the advice he offers, one is uppermost in my mind…think twice before you respond. In fact, I would say think thrice (three times).

 

Reputations are increasingly vulnerable online and no one will be spared. That is obvious at this point.