Home / Archive by category 'news flash'
-->
In a context of online reputation management, we refer to crowdsourcing as social bookmarking or collaborative tagging. So what does that have to do with brands and brand monitoring? Well, these days, pretty much everything. The latest example comes to us from Sears, a large department store chain in the US:
A couple had just bought a freezer from a Sears store in Dripping Springs, Texas. It would be delivered directly to their home free of charge. When the Sears truck arrived, the family dog, Toot, ran out to investigate the new visitor. As the truck was about to a stop, a loud yelp was heard. Toot had been run over and died shortly thereafter.
Understandably, the dog’s mom was upset and went to see the store owner. She wanted to bring closure to the tragic event. The owner apologized, but went on to say that it was not Sears fault. It was the couple had let the dog out in the yard. This did not help the woman to find closure and when she got home, her husband was unhappy about how Sears had treated her.
He called the store, the owner repeated that it was the couples fault, the dog should have moved. He would have been wiser in offering an apology without placing the blame on a distraught customer.
The couple bought a domain name, SearsKilledMyDog.com and created a website telling about their experience. Once live, they forwarded it to their friends and family, and posted it on Facebook. As with any viral story, the response was immediate. Within 24 hours, their website was generating heavy traffic, and the tragic tale was trending as number 1 on Reddit while becoming a Twitter phenomenon via The Consumerist.
At this point Sears customer service entered to execute online reputation management and active damage control. High level executives called the couple personally to apologize and offer restitution for pain and suffering. The couple felt they had been heard and the SearsKilledMyDog.com website was taken down. Next, Sears added their voice to the conversation raging at The Consumerist. They requested to add a response in the article itself;
“We are very sorry about the loss of the dog of a devoted Sears customer. As soon as we heard about this (which was at 5 PM CT on Dec-11-2009), our team acted swiftly to contact the customer who purchased the freezer from our Hometown Store in Dripping Springs, Texas. In fact, Will Powell, our business unit President, spoke to the customer just before 7 PM CT on Dec-11-2009 and extended our apologies and the customer graciously accepted. As a symbol of our deep regret for the accident, we offered to reimburse him for the cost of his dog as well as to refund the original sale.”
After the update, Sears identified the people with most influence who had Tweeted the article and sent them a link with the update. This enabled 3rd parties to post an update to the article via their own accounts, adding online reputation management credibility since such re-tweets would not come from Sears directly.
The conventional definition of crowdsourcing is that it is the completion of tasks that normally would be performed by in-house employees or contractors, and out-sourcing them to a random set of people (that’s the crowd). The Sears story shows how the term applies to online reputation management too. With engagement, sincerity and personal interaction, Sears was able to turn the negative crowdsourcing around to a positive.
Feel like getting started with online reputation management? Sign up for a free Imooty.eu trial today!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4961309b-0c84-407c-a320-08d1f7f1e562)
The first step step beyond social media monitoring is developing listening skills. Needless to say, companies have a lot to gain from understanding the customers problems. By providing solutions and sharing knowledge, content is likely to be passed on and advocated by consumers.
So what’s the problem?
When you say that you have an open and receptive online presence, it creates an expectation. Specifically, an expectation of being heard. Active social media monitoring and a policy for when/how to respond to feedback, is priority number one for building customer relationships and trust. Do not make the mistake of ignoring a customer who expects being heard.
Most companies hesitate to take the step from social media monitoring to active interaction because of perceived risks. A fear that everything will spin out of control if people start communicating via Twitter. However, there are also risks associated with not participating. The indecisiveness is an expression of sticking with the status quo and keeping with the old hierarchical communication structure. However, adapting to social media is unlikely to undo the company. Mistakes will be made, sure, but that is part of what makes social media appealing.
Companies seem to have a hard time speaking about anything else than their products. To avoid looking pushy, or worse, boring, find topics that connect to the bigger picture. Kodak’s photography blog for example isn’t just about their products.
Also, users increasingly expect websites to be interactive, not just an online version of the company brochure. They’re looking for fresh content, articles, videos, podcasts and links to the latest developments in your industry. Content generation is unlikely to work very well in a top-down structure. If the IT department needs to recode the website every time someone wants to contribute, social interaction will never happen. It is important to have an easy to publish CMS. Once the new PR and communiation policy is in place, everyone should be able to share and contribute.
Taking the step from social media monitoring to participation doesn’t have to be a major undertaking. It doesn’t take hi-tech tools to connect with your customers. Think corporate blog, Twitter and a Facebook page.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8b5ac959-c28e-4f53-b28b-45f3dd2b63fb)
The Communication Summit is the yearly highlight for PR and Communication professionals in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. During a panel discussion on online PR and communication, Mr. Volker Gaßner from Greenpeace, made an interesting contribution to the topic of online reputation monitoring.
Greenpeace does online reputation monitoring of companies they see as “greenwashing” their corporate image (i.e. claiming without merit that they are green and sustainable). He used an example of RWE, a large energy provider, who recently hired a high profile PR and marketing agency to create a video to improve their corporate image. The video depicts an animated version of the energy giant planting windmills, wave power generators and fixing broken power lines.
In fact, only 2% of RWE’s energy comes from green and sustainable energy and Greenpeace sees the RWE video as a typical “greenwashing” campaign. Accordingly, Greenpeace re-cut and altered the video to be shown on a TV monitor, sitting in a wasteland of nuclear energy plants (RWE owns 5 of them in Germany).
After only a few weeks the Greenpeace response has almost as many YouTube views as the original, it backfired.
Mr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management at Daimler AG, also addressed the topic at his opening Keynote to the Communication Summit. The challenges for PR and communication professionals in communicating green technology efforts are indeed real. It is not only a complex and difficult technology to understand (especially in the car industry), it is also easy to fall for the temptation of playing with statistics and nice imagery.
Mr. Zetsche concluded that only communication of real substance is likely to gain trust and goodwill. It is also safe to assume that Greenpeace, as well as competitors, will continue with online reputation monitoring, to keep track of greenwashing and misleading advertising.
Last week Imooty was awarded a Ruban d’Honneur for its business intelligence application at the European Business Awards! We were nominated in the Business Innovation of the Year category.
The Awards ceremony took place at the Westin Excelsior in Rome where about 200 business leaders and esteemed guests showed up. We were awarded the Ruban d’Honneur by former President of Romania, Mr Emil Constantinescu.
From 7000 entered companies, 99 Ruban d’Honneurs were awarded and 10 overall category winners announced. Reaching this level of recognition is a major achievement for our young company and we look forward to participating again next year.
Try our business intelligence application for FREE today!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=89d07b6a-f36a-47d8-bbb2-12e4be7b1c4f)
The result of financial downturn and crisis is a “shake out” of unsustainable business models and unhealthy companies. The media sector is going through a period of major restructuring and Darwin, born 200 years ago today, would probably see this as a natural development.
The internet started to change how we access information over a decade ago. Different media formats, text (newspaper articles), audio (radio programs) and video (TV programs) are merged in a single browser.
The consequence for ‘old media’ is devastating; old business models are going out of business! For newspapers the problem is sinking subscription sales, dwindling interest in their classifieds and advertisers who increasingly become aware that they’re being overcharged. And News Flash; Broadcasters face similar struggles as users access the internet for audiovisual content.
Meanwhile, the question of how to monetize on the web remains unanswered. Today Youtube announced a system of micro payment for offline content on their blog. Would you pay for content on Youtube?
So far conventional wisdom show that it is difficult to charge for media content on the web. Part of the problem is diversity, why should I pay here when I get it for free over there? YouTube’s efforts will be interesting to follow…
Locate market intelligence with Imooty.eu today!
In preparing our market launch, Imooty is doing a survey. If you’d like to help us out, please have a look here.
Feel free to fwd. this to anyone who might be interested.
Presenting Imooty at the European Mediatech and European Venture Summit was a challenging experience. Investors are understandably weary these days and would like to see cash flow before even thinking about making a commitment. One could definitely sense a market saturation for ‘nice to have’ social media / network applications.
Feedback confirmed that Imooty does not fall in this category because we have a concrete media intelligence tool with ‘have to have’ benefits for European SME’s. As a cost saving alternative to existing business intelligence applications and media monitoring services, Imooty has the qualities of a disruptive business model.
Want to try it out? Get your mobile news with Imooty.mobi!
Through our partnership with Helios Media, we were invited to attend the Kommunikationskongress in Berlin. The event is the most important PR / Communication event in Germany and presented an excellent opportunity for Imooty to network and meet with prospective collaboration partners and potential subscribers to our online reputation monitoring platform.
The conference featured many interesting speakers, among others Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s interior minister who held a talk on transparency and credibility in political communication.
Take the first step in online reputation managment and register for a FREE media monitoring trial!
We’re pleased to announce that our online monitoring service has been awarded the VALOR label. It is awarded by PRO INNO Europe, a new initiative of Directorate General Enterprise and Industry, which aims to become the focal point for innovation policy analysis, learning and development in Europe.
The letter notifying us of the decision states that the “[b]ackground of this positive decision is the quality of your project, its technological content, its commercial value, its implementability and international ambitions; all crucial aspects to the context of the pilot program launched under the InnoNet Project VALOR.”
Visit Imooty.eu to create your own media monitoring report today!
News Flash; We were today interviewed by the Tagesspiegel, a major German newspaper based here in Berlin. The feature will issue later this month in a special FU contribution.
You can read the article about our personalized news service here!
