Advanced Praise

“Crisply written, thoroughly researched, and chock-full of relevant anecdotes, Radically Transparent is sure to become the definitive guide for members of any company or group who want to join and shape the often brutally honest conversation across social media about their brands, products, and people.”

—TOM GILES, Editor, Technology & Science, BusinessWeek.com

“Radically Transparent is an indispensable guide to managing your reputation online. Beal and Strauss provide a compelling, well-researched, and actionable roadmap to protecting your most competitive asset in this fast-changing networked world. With compelling case studies and tools to use right now, it’s a must-read and a surefire wake-up call!”

—DR. LESLIE GAINES-ROSS, Chief Reputation Strategist, Weber Shandwick

“Just a few years ago, it was fairly easy to outrun a disgruntled customer, a misinformed journalist, or some other minor blunder. That time now belongs to another world. Today’s hyper-connected socially responsible individual can connect with millions across the globe and inform not only friends but legions of others as an exercise of radical transparency. Are you listening or are their words falling on your deaf corporate ears? Are you joining their conversation or hoping you can drown out their words with yours? What do people know about you from a simple online search? Radically Transparent illuminates a path that leads to an engaging conversation with your customers. Read this book so that you can participate, measure, and influence what others are saying about you.”

—BRYAN EISENBERG, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?

“Branding has evolved from a one-way monologue to a two-way conversation. It’s vital you know the strategies needed to join the conversation and build your Radically Transparent reputation.”

—JOHN BATTELLE, Chairman, CEO, Federated Media and national bestselling author of The Search

“One of the best-written books I’ve seen on a vitally important topic: the underbelly of transparency in the age of Google. How do you control your digital identity when everything is findable online? Read this engaging book for practical, persuasive answers.”

—DEBBIE WEIL, corporate blogging and social media consultant and author of The Corporate Blogging Book

“Radically Transparent is a must-read for anyone trying to take their business online. Beal and Strauss have written the first book that gives you the step-by-step advice you need to create, manage, and protect your online reputation—which will be the heart and soul of your brand in the future.”

—TIM SANDERS, former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and bestselling author of Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends

“When your customers can become your most powerful marketers, for better or worse, every individual and company with a brand reputation to protect must know how to swim in the 21st-century waters. In Radically Transparent, Beal and Strauss apply their expertise in online positioning to the tactics of message control in a world where a single individual can undermine a global corporation. This book is not about fighting back. It is about embracing new values, gaining awareness of a company’s total image, and developing a holistic reputation.”

—BRAD HILL, Director, Weblogs, Inc., (AOL) and author of Blogging for Dummies

“This book will teach you how to get connected—and stay connected—to your audience in the brave new world of social media.”

—JIM LANZONE, former CEO of Ask.com

“Businesses no longer have the luxury of hiding their flaws behind faceless contact centers and anonymous press releases. Today, their every move is documented, scrutinized, and discussed by an army of constituents, who share their observations and opinions with like-minded people around the world. There’s no place to hide any more. The new global conversations will change institutions forever. Radically Transparent is a survival guide for the future of business. Expertly researched and skillfully written, it documents momentous change in the business landscape and offers plain-talk advice to executives and marketers who are trying to keep up. Read this book if you want your job and your business to be relevant five years from now.”

—PAUL GILLIN, author of The New Influencers, former editor-in-chief, TechTarget.com and Computerworld

“I literally could not put this book down. In fact, I Krazy Glued it to my left hand just to make sure. But my eyes were glued to every page, also. Radically Transparent is both simple to understand and profound in its implications. If you think that the Web won’t affect your business, that your public relations folks will safeguard your reputation, and that you just need to redouble your efforts at message control, let Andy Beal and Judy Strauss open your eyes. There’s still time for you to wake up, but don’t let the alarm ring too long—it might be the bell that tolls for you.”

—MIKE MORAN, author of Do It Wrong Quickly and coauthor of Search Engine Marketing, Inc.

“An important read for graduating students entering the job market. Beal and Strauss provide step-by-step instructions for creating a positive Web presence to draw and impress recruiters.”

—MILTON D. GLICK, President, University of Nevada, Reno

“Don’t be reputation roadkill. Get Radically Transparent to protect your business online.”

—CATHERINE SEDA, author of How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders

“Radical transparency is the currency of modern marketing and brand management, and we are all brands whether we realize it or not. The river’s already flowing, but you really don’t want to jump in until you learn how to navigate, and that’s what Beal and Strauss offer with this invaluable book. As they show again and again, it’s definitely better to swim—in the direction you desire—than to sink into the mudflats of the new Web 2.0 world!”

—DAVE TAYLOR, strategic management, social networking consultant and blogger, Intuitive.com

“In today’s modern marketing world, the influence has shifted to participants online. They share their opinion about products, services, and brands and thus impacting the purchasing decision of their network. Your reputation, which is being discussed online, will need to be monitored so you can eventually take part in the conversation. You’ll need a book like Radically Transparent to be part of this conversation.”

—JEREMIAH OWYANG, author of Web Strategy Blog

“If the Internet has enabled one thing it is the ease with which anyone—a person or company—can easily create and manage their own unique brand identity. Radically Transparent is a must-read because it outlines exactly how you can keep track of your brand identity in a world where the difference between a great reputation and a tarnished one is the click of a mouse.”

—AVINASH KAUSHIK, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

“Finding the best marketing techniques to engage with your online audience as they participate in social networks is one of the biggest challenges facing you as a marketer today. Previous books focusing on online PR have been limited to war stories and self-promotion but have been short on practical advice. In Radically Transparent, all the practical questions are answered in an engaging style: how do I create buzz around my campaign? What type of blog do I need? How do I make it more effective? How do I monitor and manage my reputation in the social networks? Exactly what you expect from two leading web marketers.”

—DAVE CHAFFEY, Director, Marketing Insights Limited and author of Internet Marketing and SEO Best Practice Guide

“There is simply nothing that will contribute more to your success or failure over the next five years than your online transparency. Beal and Strauss not only clue you in to what the Internet is saying about you, they show you how to steer that conversation to your maximum advantage.”

—BRETT J. TROUT, ESQ., author of Cyber Law

“Many small businesses and professionals find it challenging to use the internet for marketing their goods and services. This book will help. Radically Transparent shows how to use press releases, blogs, search engine optimization, multimedia, and other tactics to create a buzz about your business and build your online reputation. Beal and Strauss offer practical advice, step-by-step instructions, and plenty of case studies in an easy-to-read style. Read this book if you want to develop a competitive online presence and profit from the increased visibility.”

—SAM MALES, State Director, Nevada Small Business Development Center and past president of the national Association of Small Business Development Centers

“In this new world of instant connection and networked customers, understanding what people are saying about your company, your products, and your competitors is vital for business success. Reputations, like trust, are built over time, but can be destroyed in an instant. Follow carefully what this book says—the career you save might be your own!”

—DAVID L. SIFRY, Founder and Chairman, Technorati, Inc.

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

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Beal, Andy, 1974-

Radically transparent : monitoring and managing reputations online / Andy Beal, Judy Strauss.

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1. Corporate image—Computer networks. 2. Corporations—Public relations—Computer networks. I. Strauss, Judy. II. Title.

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Dear Reader

Thank you for choosing Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online. This book is part of a family of premium quality Sybex books, all written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than thirty years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at nedde@wiley.com, or if you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

Best regards,

Neil Edde

Vice President and Publisher

Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

In memory of my dad, the greatest man I ever knew.

—Andy Beal

For my precious siblings: Jeff, Janet Tracey and Dee

—Judy Strauss

Acknowledgments

It is our pleasure to express our appreciation to the many individuals who helped us create this written work. First, we have enormous gratitude for the individuals who generously shared their opinions, experiences, and expertise by allowing us to interview them. Their stories enrich these pages. Next, we thank the hundreds of pioneers who learned the hard way that reputations online are valuable assets easily scarred in the social media. Stories of their struggles and triumphs helped us to create a blueprint for successful reputation management online.

We also gratefully acknowledge the many editors at Wiley who gave us a place for showcasing our ideas. Our sincere thanks to Willem Knibbe (who recognized the need for a book on reputation management and helped us keep our sanity during the writing); Cindy Akus, a phenomenal technical editor who helped us improve the book through her many great suggestions; Pete Gaughan, our hard-working editorial manager; Eric Charbonneau, the production editor who brought it all together; copyeditor Liz Welch; and the other talented members of the Wiley production team.

Finally, we want to thank the friends, family, and colleagues who gave us their support and accommodated us while we burned the midnight oil and put other projects on hold. To them we are indebted beyond words.

Andy Beal

I would like to thank God for the blessings that came with the opportunity to write this book. I’m thankful that many great people motivated me to share my thoughts and provided advice along the way—in particular, Avinash Kaushik, Catherine Seda, and Bryan Eisenberg. And my heartfelt thanks to my wonderful coauthor, for being there to encourage and guide me through each step of my first book.

I’m grateful to the many talented people that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the course of my career. The list is long but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say thank you to Mike Grehan, Danny Sullivan, and Ben Wills.

When you write a book, you realize just how much you rely on the support of your friends and family. My sincere thanks for the prayers and support from everyone including Ted and Eleanor Franks; my wonderful in-laws, Dickie and Judy Jarrett; and of course my family, especially my parents Trevor and Valerie Beal.

Lastly, I could not have written this book without the support, encouragement, and love of my beautiful wife Sheila. Every day she reminds me to live my life “authentically,” and her belief in me is the source of my drive and motivation to be a better person. I love you, sweetheart.

Judy Strauss

My smart and competent daughters, Cyndi and Malia Jakus, gave me excellent counsel and listened to my endless tales while writing this book. I am very grateful for their love and support. I also want to thank my women friends for their encouragement and good ideas—especially Susan Buchanan and Judy Miller.

I dedicate this book to my siblings—Jeff, Janet, and Tracey Snoyer, and Dee Key—because they have put up with me over the years and never wavered in their love and confidence. Janet gave me many great ideas for the book, and she and Tracey were my personal cheering section. Jeff and his wife Lynn have always been there for me, and Dee is my newest best friend. My father left a great legacy with his children, my siblings.

Finally, I want to thank my teachers. Andy Beal taught me many things, not the least of which was the proper expansion of the acronym, SERP (search engine results pages). Dave LaPlante helped get me started on this topic, and our brainstorming sessions were very valuable. I have also learned more from my university students over the years than they realize. I am blessed to work with them.

About the Authors

Andy Beal is a consultant and one of the world’s most respected experts in online reputation monitoring and management. He has worked with Motorola, Lowe’s, Quicken Loans, NBC, GlaxoSmithKline, and SAS. Founder of the award-winning Marketing Pilgrim blog (marketingpilgrim.com), Beal has been featured in Dow Jones, Washington Post, and BusinessWeek. He is a frequent speaker at such trade shows as Search Engine Strategies and Direct Marketing Association, has published more than three dozen articles, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and BusinessWeek.

Dr. Judy Strauss is a consultant, international speaker, former entrepreneur, and previous marketing director of two companies. She is an award-winning author of 11 books and numerous scholarly articles on internet marketing topics. She coauthored E-Marketing, the first textbook on internet marketing. She currently teaches e-marketing, communication, and strategy topics to MBA and undergraduate students at the University of Nevada, Reno. She has won numerous awards for teaching, writing, and entrepreneurial activities.

Foreword

It’s not easy being transparent. We’re taught not to share intimate private details with others lest that information be used against us. At work we are taught by PR professionals to stay quiet unless approved to speak, and even then, to give only “talking points.” In business school we’re taught to write official communications like press releases and how to make sure they don’t say things that’ll get you into trouble.

Let’s not even start on your advertising department. If you stand in the middle of Times Square in New York City, you’ll see hundreds of advertisements from tons of big companies like Nike, Kodak, and General Motors. Now, based on any of those ads, can you tell me five facts about any product? For instance, what those products do well at and what they don’t do well at?

No.

Our entire corporate world is based on keeping secrets, only sharing information that’s been decided on by committees, and only letting “media trained” employees speak on behalf of the company. Heck, at some companies like Apple it’s even worse. Almost no one is allowed to talk to the press on the record and, then, you better not get quoted saying something that is “off message.”

So why would anyone want to be transparent in this kind of “command and control” corporate age? One where PR professionals and lawyers look out for risky speech and make sure that the committees stay in control of the message? Why would you want to let your—gasp—lowest employees speak on blogs or on social media sites, or post videos on YouTube?

Here are a few reasons:

1. You’ll get better product feedback. The Google Calendar team tells me they watch blog search engines every morning for people who say something about their products and then people on the team answer that blog in its comments. This gets better feedback. Why? Because people stop giving feedback if they don’t think they are being listened to. Or, even worse, they might increase the level of critical commentary until they do get listened to.

2. Your best customers will become more evangelistic. I once met a guy who had a Plymouth Prowler. He knew the color of the factory floor, among other facts. Clearly he had been given a tour and had friends who built the cars, and because of this knowledge he was an even more authoritative and interesting evangelist on behalf of the company. You’ll need evangelists like this to spread the good news about your products far and wide.

3. Your recruiting will improve. The guy who runs Facebook’s application platform told me he left Apple Computer, at least in part, because he wasn’t able to blog while working at Apple. It’s not the first time I’ve heard something like this. At Microsoft, the Channel 9 videoblog was mentioned by college students more than any other single thing as a reason why they sent their resume in.

4. You’ll have fewer PR crises—and the ones you do have will be over faster and with less brand damage. If your employees can answer the tough questions without worrying about whether they are “approved” to speak on the company’s behalf, they’ll head off PR troubles earlier.

5. You’ll have better Google Rankings. Think about a company the size of General Motors or Microsoft. Tens of thousands of employees blogging or adding info on social networking sites like Facebook. That’s bound to have an effect on how corporate pages show up in Google.

At Microsoft we opened up by using blogs and by hosting videos shot with a $250 camera on Channel 9 and saw all these results. Even better, people started praising us for becoming “more human.” That was an attribute that couldn’t have been gained any other way.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Here are some downsides:

1. You’ll have some rude comments. The Internet doesn’t have accountability and even lets people post totally anonymously. Lots of times you’ll get comments or replies that’ll drive you nuts. I’ve even seen threatening comments or racially charged ones. You’ll need to have a policy about how to deal with these, but on corporate sites I run I institute a “living room rule.” If I wouldn’t be comfortable with the speech in my own living room (and I’m pretty liberal there), then I just delete the post.

2. You’ll need to know your corporate culture well. I got to know Microsoft’s lawyers and PR professionals and what they worry about. At Microsoft we had a mailing list for all bloggers to share information and get help. I highly recommend doing that internally in your own company. Being transparent sometimes means knowing just how many clothes you can take off before your coworkers start to get nervous.

3. It takes work. In the old world you might send a press release out or call a few reporters. Shel Israel, a seasoned Silicon Valley PR professional, told me that he used to be able to call a handful of reporters to get buzz for his clients. Now, he told me, he has to deal with dozens of journalists and bloggers to get the same kind of coverage (and he has a blog and other sites as well).

4. It’s possible to make mistakes. Are you writing a corporate blog without having a team check over posts (I never had anyone check my posts before publishing). Well, you might make a mistake. You might leak a product detail that you thought was already discussed in public. Or you might discuss something else that strains relationships with customers, suppliers, partners, or coworkers. What do you do if you make a mistake? This book helps you avoid them, but also deal with the aftermath of a firestorm.

Some other things you might not be comfortable with or know how to do. How about building your own personal brand? Yeah, those of us who read Tom Peters might know why this is important and have some sense of how you might go about it, but how about those of you who don’t have any clue who Tom Peters is? You’ll learn here how to build your own brand and also how to build your own personal network.

Plus, now monitoring your company’s reputation online isn’t as easy as the old days when you had a press clipping service. This book provides lots of tools and helpful hints to measure how you’re doing online and to help you respond to customer concerns.

The latest thing that I’m using to increase my transparency and engagement with my constituencies is live, cell phone-based videos that I can do from anywhere there’s a cell phone network: Qik, Mogulus, Seesmic, etc. I even interviewed the founders of YouTube on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show by using Qik.

Are you trying new approaches to try to be more transparent and available? Some other things I do:

1. Post my phone number on my blog. You wouldn’t believe the good things that come my way because of this. One day I got on the BBC because they couldn’t get ahold of Microsoft’s PR department, for instance.

2. Share my personal photos on Flickr or SmugMug. By doing this people get to see I’m creatively doing photography and they also get to see what kinds of things I enjoy shooting pictures of. Plus they can add their own comments, which makes it more likely we’ll have a conversation about something that interests them.

3. I post a new video every day, sometimes to Qik, sometimes to other places. This lets them get to know me and see how I behave. If I have visual things to show off, this lets me share those as well. For instance, want to see my new laptop? It’s hard to explain what’s cool about it, but in one minute of video you’ll see why I like it so much.

4. I participate in microblogging communities like on Twitter, Pownce, or Tumblr. Microblogging tools are often easier to post to and sites like Twitter force posts to be fewer than 140 characters. It’s hard to get “wordy” when you have so few characters to work with.

This book will help you do all of this, and more. It’ll be interesting to see what you do on your path to lead a radically transparent life. For me, I’ve found transparent life to be one that’s very rewarding and fulfilling. Every time I travel I have someone to go to dinner with because of my personal transparency, and other good things are coming my way, too. John Edwards, for instance, invited me on his plane when he announced he was running for President of the United States. Why? Because he needed someone who was credible and transparently communicating to verify for the world how he was using social media in his campaign.

If presidential candidates are getting it, why not you?

—Robert Scoble, managing director of FastCompany.TV, coauthor of Naked Conversations

Introduction

You can’t buy a good reputation. It is something earned over time, based on your character, words, and actions. You work hard to build and protect a good reputation that earns you, your company, and its brands respect and trust. This turns into sales, better partner and customer relationships, and less trouble when you make that inevitable mistake while in the media spotlight.

Have you checked the internet lately to see whether it is helping or hurting your reputation-building effort? There’s a conversation about you online right this minute and you are probably unaware of its contents. Somewhere online, a disgruntled customer might be posting a video of your product malfunctioning (it happened to Kryptonite), talking trash about your product performance (it brought both Dell and Dr. Katrina Tang to their knees), or a stranger may be sending a false company memo to the online news media (it happened to Apple Computer). In the meantime, you are diligently providing exciting new content for your website and crafting digital brand messages that will boost your sales to new heights—unaware of the reputation undermining happening elsewhere online, and unaware of how to use the internet’s new frontiers to your reputation’s advantage.

The internet is flooded with words, images, and pictures that affect your reputation, both positively and negatively. What does this content reveal about you? This book will help you to monitor, build, manage, and repair your reputation online. It will help you harness this powerful always-on, radically transparent new networked world. A search for “reputation management” in Google in November 2007 yielded 54.8 million links to web pages, with the number increasing daily. This book has fewer pages and will save you time in this valiant effort.

Social Media Changed the Rules

Everyone is a publisher in the social media world of blogs, wikis, photo and video sharing, forums, and networks for meeting like-minded people. Social media are online tools and platforms that allow internet users to collaborate on content, share insights and experiences, and connect for business or pleasure. And we believe what we read from strangers in the social media: some 52% of survey respondents from developed nations said they find “a person like yourself” to provide the most credible information—equal only to the trust in doctors, and much higher than that from your CEO or company spokesperson (according to PR firm Edelman).

Businesses previously needed only to worry about something negative when it appeared in a newspaper or on the evening news. Now there are more than 110 million blogs, with over 1.6 million posts per day, and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media tracked by blog search engine Technorati. Individuals previously lived in relative anonymity, and potential employers knew nothing beyond the contents of a resume or testimony of a given reference. No longer.

The name of the game is egalitarian participation by one and all from the Fortune 100 CEO to your dentist—they are talking about you and they are being talked about by others. These conversations used to be limited to traditional media, e-mail, or the water cooler, but now they appear where millions can see them online. Word-of-mouth was previously spread among friends and families, but now extends across continents to the masses with the click of a mouse. Consider these examples:

• In an article for MSN.com, columnist Scott Burns asked, “Is Home Depot Shafting Shoppers?” His description of personal experiences at the retailer led to a conclusion that home improvement company Home Depot “is a consistent abuser of its customers’ time.” That same day, the MSN staff received 10,000 e-mails and 4,000 comments in the story’s Talk Back section describing all of Home Depot’s problems.

• Commercial blender company Blendtec received over 6 million page views in a one-week period for its hilarious “Will It Blend?” series, posted on YouTube and the company’s website. In the series, CEO Tom Dickson attempts to blend everything from an iPhone to a garden rake. The videos were created to introduce the new and pricey home food blender and resulted in a 40% increase in blender sales, according to The Wall Street Journal.

• Matt Mullenweg, WordPress blog platform creator, is the #1 Matt in the world, according to Google. At his blog you’ll see a radically transparent Matt, with writing about his open source software philosophies, and plenty of personal information from his interest in jazz to his next speaking engagement and his last trip with his girlfriend. Matt had a huge reputation blemish when he was exposed for using search engine spamming to reach the #1 spot (a mistake he quickly corrected). He is the comeback kid with a great reputation through lots of positive content (at age 22).

What Is Radically Transparent?

Radically transparent means being open and honest online, admitting mistakes, engaging stakeholders in discussions about you and your brands, and even revealing your internal processes. There is little censorship in the world of online social media—the community values raw truth. The internet community immediately comes down hard on those who employ conversation spin, control, manipulation, or spam. Anonymity is discouraged, and nearly all posts to a conversation include the author’s real identity. On this new playing field, you need to be authentic or someone will discover the truth and you’ll be exposed to millions. Astute companies, such as Wired Magazine and Dell Computer, are taking it a step further and being radically transparent by revealing their internal processes. They engage customers, listen to them, make changes in company procedures and products, and report back in open forums via social media. This book will tell you how to become forward-thinking like these companies.

Why Reputation Management and Monitoring?

Traditional word-of-mouth has long been considered one of the most powerful of market forces, and the social media made it public. “What’s new is the extent to which consumer opinion drives reputations,” said Andy Sernovitz in Fast Company. “A third of the population has reviewed something online, and any one of those reviews can be read by millions of people.” Social media are like word-of-mouth on steroids. Consider the following compelling facts:

• Ninety-five percent of chief executives believe that corporate reputation plays an important role in achieving their business objectives, according to a survey by PR firm Burson-Marsteller.

• Sixty-three percent of a company’s market value is attributable to reputation, according to PR firm Weber Shandwick.

• The top 10 “World’s Most Admired Companies” enjoy a total shareholder return of nearly three times that of the S&P 500 as a whole (18.5% versus 7.1%), says The Hay Group, a global marketing consultancy and Fortune magazine partner.

You may already have a reputation management plan in place, or perhaps a plan to repair your reputation during a time of crisis. If so, does it include monitoring the internet for rumors and capitalizing on the social media to build your good name online? The people who trust each other more than they trust you will write about you online the minute you make an error. This book will show you how to detect this conversation or find the images immediately; tell you whether, when, where, and how to respond; and give you step-by-step instructions on engaging with stakeholders online in reputation-building ways.

What Skills Do I Need?

Stellar reputation monitoring and management online takes research, public relations, and search engine optimization skills. Content is king online, so you’ll need to write, take photos, and perhaps create online videos and podcasts—or find staff who are good at these skills. We give you very specific guidance in this book, suggesting reputation-enhancing ways to build a buzz online and showing you how to write engaging blog posts, and we even show you how to make the lowly e-mail into a reputation-enhancing tool. You’ll learn how to post comments online that emphasize your expertise, and how to move all of this good content to the top of Google’s search engine results pages for your keywords. We even help you to reevaluate the “About Us” portion of your web page, your head shot, and every detail in your own web content channels.

How Long Will It Take?

Crafting and executing a reputation management and monitoring plan depends on whether you are a Fortune 100 company, the owner of a small business, or an individual employee who is upwardly mobile. It depends on how much content you currently have online and how much you already know about the social media. You can set up some basic reputation monitors for your company, brands, or personal names with as little as two hours startup time. Or you can spend more time to become the first in your industry to fully embrace the social media and rise to the top quickly. You can outsource some of it, but online reputation management and monitoring needs your personal touch—or that of your staff. Only you can distill that online chatter into actionable items for improving your offerings and reputation.

Who Needs This Book?

Companies, both large and small: A stellar reputation helps your company achieve objectives, retain customers and employees, build partner and supplier relationships, protect them in times of crisis, and ultimately increase shareholder value.

Brands. Product and service brands live and die on their reputations for delivering as promised. The social media provide abundant opportunities for engaging stakeholders in ways that will improve your offerings and make your reputation soar.

Directors and C-level executives: Your CEO’s reputation is a very important component of your company’s reputation, according to 87% of the respondents in a study by PR firm Hill and Knowlton. Also important are reputations of your CFO (75%), your company chairman (40%), and other nonexecutive directors (23%).

Individuals: Individual reputations are especially important for business owners, managers, CEOs, politicians, professionals, salespeople, graduating students, and just about anyone who has a client-based business. Most of us rush to Google to check out someone we’ve just met as a prospect, salesperson, or for any type of future collaboration. Do you want to stay marketable in your profession? According to ExecuNet, a leading recruiting firm, 78% of executive recruiters routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates, and 35% have eliminated candidates based on the information they found.

What’s Inside

Part 1, “Understanding Your Online Reputation,” demonstrates the power of social media online to build or destroy your reputation and how to engage customers on this new playing field.

Chapter 1: Your World Is Now Radically Transparent The switch from traditional media and corporate monologues on websites to social media on the internet makes everyone a journalist. They will judge you, your company, and your brand. Reputation management requires new skills in this radically transparent world.

Chapter 2: You Don’t Own Your Company’s Reputation Companies can spend millions of dollars each year to promote and manage their brands, yet a single negative blog post can destroy a reputation within days. The power to control a brand is rapidly shifting away from the companies that have the deepest pockets, and instead, it’s the companies that best listen to and engage their customers that win the reputation race.

Chapter 3: Developing Your Personal Brand Individual director, CEO, and employee reputations are key components of company and brand reputations. Entrepreneurs and professionals live or die based on their contacts and reputations. The internet adds another layer of complexity to individual reputation building; however, there are first-mover advantages for those individuals who act now, using the internet to increase their connections with relationship-enhancing content.

Chapter 4: Navigating the New Rules of Engagement The shift from traditional to social media requires new skills, tools, and an understanding of social media platforms. Customer engagement means trusting, listening, and learning from your stakeholder communities, and responding to their comments with quality content in an honest, authentic manner. It also means joining and participating in networks they frequent, and having the courage to be radically transparent.

Part 2, “Building Your Radically Transparent Reputation,” gives you specific tools and shows you how to use them for building your stellar reputation online.

Chapter 5: The Art of Generating Buzz In your quest to become radically transparent, you’ll need to impress those who control the media. While mainstream journalists used to hold the power to influence your customers, that power is now shifting to bloggers and citizen journalists. By understanding how public relations has evolved—and learning the new approaches to sharing your message—you can influence what’s said about you.

Chapter 6: Managing Your Reputation with SEO The contents of 10 blue search engine links can decide whether your company wins a new contract or you win that promotion. Although you can’t guarantee which web pages will appear in a Google search, search engine optimization (SEO) can help tip the scales in your favor.

Chapter 7: Using Multimedia Content to Engage Your Audience Astute companies use relevant digital images, video, and audio to demonstrate their expertise and gain respect. You can solicit fabulous multimedia content produced by the citizen journalists and also craft your own content for posting on your websites and in the social media.

Chapter 8: Writing Engaging Text Great writing will engage your important stakeholders and enhance your reputation online. Regardless of whether you write white papers, books, blogs, web pages, e-mails, or instant messages, make every word count. You can do this with professional, engaging, and deliberate writing adapted to any situation, as described in this chapter.

Chapter 9: The Power of Blogs Building and launching a blog can add a lot of value to you and your business but is not something that should be done halfheartedly. The software you select, the style of blog you use, and the way you engage your readers all play an important role in determining your success or failure in the blogosphere. Understanding what your stakeholders expect from you and how to reach them with an authentic, radically transparent voice will ensure your blog is a positive reflection on your reputation.

Chapter 10: Social Networking Social networking provides an opportunity for your stakeholders to connect with one another and discuss your reputation. By understanding the different types of social networking platforms—and the best way to engage them—you can lay a foundation that builds a positive reputation for you or your business.

Chapter 11: Your Online Activities: You Are What You Do Your actions have a huge impact on your reputation. Stakeholders review your books at Amazon, your products at Epinions, your online retail store at Shopzilla, and your performance on eBay—the more positive the reviews, the better your reputation. In Second Life and other virtual worlds, you can build a fantastic reputation that will cross over to your first life—it may be time to join the 11 million avatars in that virtual world.

Part 3, “Monitoring, Repairing, and Planning your Online Reputation,” gets you started on discovering your current reputation online and turning it into the one of your dreams.

Chapter 12: The Importance of Reputation Monitoring Monitoring the Web will ensure you’re alerted the moment your reputation faces critique. To get the most out of your online reputation monitoring, you’ll need to know why it is important, what keywords to monitor, where to watch, and when to take action.

Chapter 13: Monitoring Your Online Reputation Many free and inexpensive tools make it possible to set up a monitoring system without breaking your budget. If you prefer to automate your monitoring efforts, there are some solutions that offer to do the heavy lifting for you—while still keeping you in full control. Alternatively, if you’d rather your reputation-monitoring campaign be handled by experts, you can outsource the task to a professional monitoring firm.

Chapter 14: Repairing Your Online Reputation Despite your best efforts to build a positive reputation, there will be occasions when your brand faces an attack from a blog, forum, or social network. How do you identify a reputation attack, when should you engage your attackers, and what steps should you take to repair your damaged reputation?

Chapter 15: Seven-Step Action Plan To craft the kind of reputation online that will open any door, you need a reputation management and monitoring plan. The seven-step plan in this chapter asks you to do some deep introspection about your offline character and goals, then to devise strategies and objectives for reaching your reputation dreams using online media. In the process, you’ll set up monitoring tactics and a crisis management plan for long-term sustainability.

Ready to get started? Turn the page and prepare for a stellar reputation online!

I

Understanding Your Online Reputation

Companies can spend millions of dollars each year to promote and manage their brands, yet a single negative blog post can destroy a reputation within days. The switch from corporate monologues to customer dialogue online means that you have more reputation risk than in the past.

These chapters lay the groundwork for your radically transparent online reputation. You’ll learn about the social media and how the balance of power has moved from companies to internet users. We’ll focus on the company and its brands as well as individual reputations on this new playing field. You can use this environment to your advantage if you learn the new rules of engagement.

Chapter 1 Your World Is Now Radically Transparent

Chapter 2 You Don’t Own Your Company’s Reputation

Chapter 3 Developing Your Personal Brand

Chapter 4 Navigating the New Rules of Engagement

1

Your World Is Now Radically Transparent

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!